Rudolf J. Heinemann

Rudolph J. Heinemann, also known as Rudolf J. Heinemann, (1901 – February 7, 1975) was a German-born American art dealer and collector of Old Masters. He was an advisor to Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, and helped him established a museum in Lugano, Switzerland. Heinemann and later, his wife Lore, donated works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and the Morgan Library & Museum.

Early life Heinemann was born in 1901 in Germany. His father and grandfather were art dealers. He was educated in Munich, Berlin, and Florence.

Career Heinemann began his career as an assistant at his father's Galerie Heinemann in Munich.

Heinemann was an advisor to Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. According to The New York Times, his became "one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings and drawings in private hands."

In 2015, an El Greco painting that had passed through Heinemann's Pinakos Gallery, Portrait of a Gentleman, was restituted to the heirs of Julius Priester, after the painting's false provenance was discovered to conceal Nazi looting of the Priester collection. Heinemann had purchased the El Greco from art dealer Frederick Mont.

In 2019, the heirs to the Nazi businessman Rudolf-August Oetker restituted Carl Spitzweg's Der Hexenmeister to the family of Leo Bendel, who had been murdered by the Nazis. The painting was auctioned at Galerie Heinemann in Munich in 1937.

Personal life and death Heinemann married Loretta Leiter. Rudolf and Lore Heinemann also made donations to the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Heinemann died on February 7, 1975, in Lugano, Switzerland.