page_title: Max Michaelis
section_title: Philanthropy and Art
hierarchical_section_title: Max Michaelis / Later life / Philanthropy and Art
caption_attribution_description: English: The Old Town House, Cape Town, where the Michaelis Collection is exhibited.
context_page_description: Sir Maximillian Michaelis, KCMG was a South African financier, mining magnate, benefactor and patron of the arts.
context_section_description: In 1913 he had presented a collection of Dutch and Flemish old masters to the Union government, a gift leading to his being knighted. These formed the basis of the Michaelis Collection and were housed in the Old Town House in Cape Town. The decision to house the collection in Cape Town, came in for a great deal of criticism – public sentiment at the time was that the money had originated from the Reef gold mines and that the collection belonged in Johannesburg. Besides, a lot of the works were regarded as being of indifferent quality (Portrait of a Woman by Frans Hals being the cynosure of the collection) and there was at least one painting of questionable attribution. These works had been collected by Lady Phillips (wife of Sir Lionel Phillips, Bt) and Sir Hugh Lane. 
  In June 1920 at the urging of Lady Phillips, he endowed the chair of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and in return was rewarded with an honorary LL.D. He also donated a large number of art works to museums in Kimberley and Johannesburg. In 1924 a knighthood was conferred on Max Michaelis. He died of cancer at Bellariastraße 7 in Zürich on 26 January 1932.
  Lady Michaelis, who returned to England on the death of Max Michaelis, presented large collections of art to the National Art Gallery in Cape Town and to Pretoria, with further gifts to the Michaelis Collection in Cape Town. She was also the founder of the Lady Michaelis Orthopaedic Home in Cape Town. Moses Kottler created a bronze bust of Sir Max, which was placed in the garden of the Old Town House in Cape Town.
  In 1920, Max Michaelis acquired the Montebello estate in Newlands. Before his death in 1996, his son Cecil Michaelis, the artist, resenting government expropriation of the estate, donated Montebello to the University of Cape Town on condition the estate was used to promote design – this is now known as the Montebello Design Centre and the old residence as Michaelis House, the junior boarding house of the South African College Schools.
caption: The Old Town House where the Michaelis Collection is exhibited. Cape Town, 2008
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