• Admission: 16 € / concessions 12 €

  • Children / young people under 18 : free

  • Members of Friends of the Kunstpalast: free

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Monet – Cézanne – Matisse

The Scharf Collection

12 Mar – 9 Aug 2026

Monet – Cézanne – Matisse
Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, 1903

Date

12 Mar – 9 Aug 2026

Location

» Kunstpalast

  • Admission: 16 € / concessions 12 €

  • Children / young people under 18: free

  • Members of Friends of the Kunstpalast: free

Box office open

If the online contingent is fully booked, you can still get tickets at our box office. As a member of the Freundeskreis, you can visit the exhibition at any time without waiting.

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Please note that only bags up to a maximum size of A4 may be brought into the exhibition. Larger bags, rucksacks and jackets must be left in the cloakroom.

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Monet, Cézanne, Matisse – few defining names of modern art are absent from the Scharf Collection. For the first time, Germany’s most important private collection of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism will be presented to the public.

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Pierre Bonnard, Vase with Flowers, 1933
Pierre Bonnard, Vase with Flowers, 1933

Bringing together around 180 works, an exhibition at the Kunstpalast highlights the remarkable breadth of the holdings, which span from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Alongside masterpieces by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard, the presentation also includes works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri Matisse, another central focus of the Scharf Collection.

Until now, the Scharf Collection has remained anonymous and has only rarely been shown publicly, through a small number of loans. The exhibition, conceived together with the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, where it proved a major public success, will be expanded in Düsseldorf by more than 60 additional works. These include pieces by Edgar Degas and Henri Matisse, as well as nineteenth-century Japanese colour woodcuts. The exhibition brings together paintings, works on paper and sculptures spanning three centuries.

Henri Matisse, Icarus, Plate VIII from the Jazz series (book of twenty illustrations and texts), 1947
Henri Matisse, Icarus, Plate VIII from the Jazz series (book of twenty illustrations and texts), 1947

The Scharf Collection traces its origins to a branch of the renowned Berlin collection assembled by Otto Gerstenberg (1848–1935). Around 1900, he began collecting art on a significant scale. Soon he expanded the collection to include nineteenth-century European painting, acquiring works by artists such as Francisco de Goya, John Constable and Gustave Courbet, before turning to the art of his own time. Gerstenberg assembled outstanding works by, among others, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, laying the foundation for the present-day Scharf Collection’s emphasis on French Impressionism.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Young Woman with a Flower Hat, 1877–1879
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Young Woman with a Flower Hat, 1877–1879

The present-day Scharf Collection descends from the branch of the family associated with Walther Scharf, who, together with his wife Eve and their son René, further developed the collection’s focus on French art and expanded it with key works. Among them is Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge (1903), part of a series of around forty paintings depicting the famous London bridge in constantly shifting colour and light. The collection was also enriched by Pierre Bonnard’s intimate painting The Large Bath (1937/39), which shows his wife Marthe reclining in a bathtub. With Henri Matisse’s artist’s book Jazz (1947), the collection includes an icon of modernism, bringing together twenty of his characteristic paper cut-outs.

Paul Cézanne, River Landscape with Houses, circa 1904
Paul Cézanne, River Landscape with Houses, circa 1904

René Scharf, who worked for Christie’s and the Museum of Modern Art from 1984 to 2003 before becoming an art dealer in New York, expanded the core of the collection to include works of classical modernism and Abstract Expressionism, among them paintings by Sam Francis. Today, René and his wife Christiane Scharf – a lawyer specialising in copyright and media law – have also turned their attention to contemporary art, continuing the family’s collecting tradition into the present. Recent acquisitions include works by international figures such as Robert Longo and Sean Scully, alongside artists from Berlin’s emerging art scene. Their works reflect the diversity of contemporary painting in its approaches to colour and form.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) Jane Avril (Zustand I), 1893
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) Jane Avril (Zustand I), 1893

An interest in the possibilities of painting has guided the collection across four generations. In doing so, the Scharf Collection also reveals how artists continually learn from one another, refer to one another and develop artistic ideas further. The chronological route through the Scharf Collection’s eleven exhibition rooms becomes a journey through a range of artistic approaches – and a reminder that artistic renewal rarely emerges from a complete break with the past, but rather builds upon it.

The exhibition at Kunstpalast was organised in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Curator: Kathrin DuBois, Head of Collection Painting until 1900, Kunstpalast

Special opening hours

From Friday, 17 April, to Sunday, 26 April, the Kunstpalast will be open daily from 10 a.m. The museum will also be open on Monday, 20 April. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday (23–25 April), opening hours will be extended until 9 p.m.

Friday, 17 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Saturday, 18 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Sunday, 19 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Monday, 20 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Tuesday, 21 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Wednesday, 22 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Thursday, 23 April: 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
Friday, 24 April: 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
Saturday, 25 April: 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
Sunday, 26 April: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Plan your visit

Private guided Tours


Whether alone, as a couple, as a birthday present or as a team event – discover Monet – Cézanne – Matisse. The Scharf Collection as part of a private tour!

Our experienced art educators will give you and your group a compact overview of the exhibition and will be happy to answer your questions and address your interests.
Private tours are overview tours of our special exhibitions or the collection and can be booked individually for your group.

The fee for a 60-minute foreign-language guided tour is 108 €, plus admission for all participants.

A maximum of 20 people can take part in each tour.

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Exhibition catalogue

Published by Kunstpalast, Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin | 244 pages | 200 mostly colour illustrations | 23.5 x 28.5 cm | German | Hardcover | museum shop price: 39,90 €

48,00 €

Delivery time: 3-5 days

Free shipping in Germany
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Accompanying pro­gramme

    René and Christiane Scharf, photo: Anne Orthen
    René and Christiane Scharf, photo: Anne Orthen

    René and Christiane Scharf in conversation with Kathrin DuBois

    Tue, 14 April 2026, 6 pm

    Please note: The talk will be held in German.
    The Scharf Collection continues the fourth generation of a branch of the renowned Otto Gerstenberg Collection in Berlin, which focuses on French art from the beginnings of modernism to the post-war period. Today, René Scharf and his wife Christiane Scharf also specialise in international contemporary artists, including works by Sam Francis, Martin Eder and Katharina Grosse.

    In conversation with Kathrin DuBois, curator of the exhibition, they discuss the family tradition of collecting, their particular interest in the medium of painting, and the relationship between figurative and abstract pictorial worlds.

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