Purchases continued throughout the 19th century, with 345 works acquired during the inaugural directorship of Gustav Friedrich Waagen from 1830-1868, though paintings competed with antiquities for rather reduced purchasing budgets.
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This was handled for the museum by the art historian Wilhelm von Bode, who had joined in 1872, and was to be the Berlin Museums' greatest Director.
A pamphlet on the brothers Van Eyck led in 1832 to his appointment to the directorship of the newly founded Berlin Museum, now vastly expanded as the Berlin State Museums, although his main interest was the paintings in what is now the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.
He was a specialist in Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Renaissance, who volunteered at the Kupferstichkabinett or prints collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin in 1891 under Friedrich Lippmann.
--IS THIS THE CORRECT LOCATION THE Gemäldegalerie? IF NOT THEN THERE DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE ANY OTHER LINK TO A MUSEM OF THAT NAME IN BERLIN-->Gemeldiche Museum in Berlin, Germany as well as one performance at the Berliner Philharmonie.
In Berlin, Comfort was influenced by meetings and studies with the philosopher Friedrich Kaulbach, Carl Richard Lepsius (curator of Egyptology at the Berlin Museum), Gemäldegalerie director Gustav Waagen, Leopold von Ranke, among others.
A small number of paintings are also thought to be his work, notably the Pair of Lovers in Gotha, the Speyer Altarpiece (divided among Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, the Städel, Frankfurt, and Augustiner Museum Freiburg, and the Holy Family (Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, since 2004).
Unsigned, it was commissioned by the St George Guild of Archers in Antwerp for their banqueting hall and is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister within the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel.
He has also since been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions organized by Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1981), Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1984), Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1987), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1988), Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (1998), and Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima (2000 and 2004).