Sammlung Schack

The Schack Collection (Sammlung Schack) in Munich is a significant painting collection and part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. It grew out of the private art holdings of Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack, who lived in the Bavarian capital from 1856 and devoted himself intensively to contemporary painting. As a patron, he supported German artists in a targeted way, buying entire groups of works and providing them with financial backing. His selections reflected a conservative taste in art, rooted in German Classicism and Idealism. As a result, the collection consists mainly of landscapes and history paintings, while Realism and genre painting are barely represented. Schack favored subjects from Italy, Spain, and Greece, countries he had visited himself.

The heart of the collection is made up of around two hundred original works by 19th-century German painters, including pieces by Franz von Lenbach, Moritz von Schwind, and Carl Spitzweg. This core is complemented by about eighty copies after Old Masters, which Schack commissioned in order to gain access to the original works of the Venetian Renaissance, especially Titian, as well as Flemish and Spanish painting. These copies, made by artists such as August Wolf and Lenbach, are regarded as one of the most important German collections of copies of their era. The works are displayed in a dedicated gallery building on Prinzregentenstrasse, which was constructed in 1909 as an architectural unit with the former Prussian Legation.

You can experience the collection in thematically arranged exhibition rooms, where literary passages that match the paintings appear on the walls. The presentation invites you to linger and reflects the Romantic mindset of the 19th century. Since the Neue Pinakothek closed for renovation, selected paintings from its holdings that fit the collection thematically or artistically have also been on view at the Schack Collection. With its halls on the ground, upper, and top floors, the building provides a setting that shows off both the historic originals and the high-quality copies, offering insight into the artistic preferences of an influential private collector.