Notable Sales: Antonio Stradivari | Violin, 1703
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Ex-Dancla
Cremona, 1703
labelled Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1703
length of back 35.6cm.
The 1703 ‘ex-Dancla’ passed from the ownership of the French Baron Roger to that of Hilaire E. Halma during the first half of the 19th century. Halma was awarded the Premier Prix at the Paris Conservatory in 1824 for his excellent playing. In circa 1854 Halma sold the violin through Bernardel Frères to Charles Dancla, an important violinist and collector who owned 4 strads, all of which were named after him.
Charles sold the now ‘ex-Dancla’ through the Chanot-Chardon firm to Charles Wilmotte in 1876. In 1883, David Laurie, a distinguished violin collector known for his friendship with J.B. Vuillaume, bought the violin and passed it to Mr Labitte, an amateur who is also thought to have owned the ‘Gould’ Stradivari of 1704. The ‘ex-Dancla’ made its way back to David Laurie in 1887 before being sold to William Croall in 1888. On the left is David Laurie’s letterhead describing him as a ‘Dealer in Cremonese and other high class stringed instruments’.
Croall also owned the ‘Ex-Croall; McEwen’ Strad, which sold for nearly £2 million at Ingles & Hayday in 2017. Croall owned the ‘ex-Dancla’ until his death in 1906, when it was sold by his executors to James Kirkhope of Edinburgh. Kirkhope only owned the violin for a year, selling it through Chrisie’s in 1907 to W.E. Hill & Sons. Hill’s sold the violin to Richard Bennett in 1918 an incredibly important 20th century collector who owned over 20 Strads and over 40 instruments in total, including the 1721 Lady Blunt Strad, sold by Sotheby’s in their June 1971 auction for £84,000, a record-breaking amount at the time. Bennett sold the ‘ex-Dancla’ through W.E. Hill & Sons in 1926 to an unknown amateur violinist and collector before it was bought by Henry Werro in 1938. Werro and his father were both violin makers. Henry graduated from the Markneukirchen School of Violin Making with highest honours and, with his father, went on to win gold at the 1927 Geneva violin competition.
In 1942, The violin was bought by Fridolin Hamma of Stuttgart, an influential German violin maker known for writing both “Meister italienischer Geigenbaukunst” and “Meister deutscher Geigenbaukunst”. Hamma sold the violin to Raoul Berger, an American legal scholar and former concert violinist, in 1954. The ‘ex-Dancla’ passed from Berger to Siegfried Kahl, a German diamond merchant living in Geneva, who sold the violin to Carl Mächler in 1959. Mächler was a fine Swiss maker who’s record at auction is $5,000 in November 2020.The violin was sold twice more in 1959, first to Mr Fiez of Lucerne, then through Christie’s to James Reno of Manchester.
The ‘ex-Dancla’ went unsold in Sotheby’s November 1990 auction and was subsequently sold privately to Jack Rothstein, a Polish-born violinist and conductor who settled in London and studied at the Guildhall School of Music. Rothstein co-led the Bath Festival Orchestra with Yehudi Menuhin and led the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, as well as conducting the Johann Strauss Orchestra and his own ensemble, the Viennese Orchestra of London.
Rothstein sold the ‘ex-Dancla’ in 1988. It joined the collection of the Landeskreditbank Baden-Wurttemberg and is currently loaned to Linus Roth.
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