Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950 9781501342769, 9781501342790, 9781501342776

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market

Contextualizing Art Markets This series presents new, original research that reconceives the scope and function of art markets throughout history by examining them in the context of broader institutional practices, knowledge networks, social structures, collecting activities, and creative strategies. In many cases, art market activities have been studied in isolation from broader themes within art history, a trend that has tended to stifle exchange across disciplinary boundaries. Contextualizing Art Markets seeks to foster increased dialogue between art historians, artists, curators, economists, gallerists, and other market professionals by contextualizing art markets around the world within wider art historical discourses and institutional practices. The series has been developed in the belief that the reciprocal relation between art and finance is undergoing a period of change: artists are adopting innovative strategies for the commercial promotion of their work, auction houses are expanding their educational programmes, art fairs are attracting unprecedented audience numbers, museums are becoming global brands, private galleries are showing increasingly “curated” exhibitions, and collectors are establishing new exhibition spaces. As the divide between public and private practices narrows, questions about the social and ethical impact of market activities on the production, collection, and reception of art have become newly pertinent. By combining trends within the broader discipline of art history with investigations of marketplace dynamics, Contextualizing Art Markets explores the imbrication of art and economics as a driving force behind the aesthetic and social development of the art world. We welcome proposals that debate these issues across a range of historical periods and geographies. Series Editor: Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University, UK Editorial Board: Véronique Chagnon-Burke, Christie’s Education, USA Christel H. Force, Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA Charlotte Galloway, Australian National University, Australia Mel Jordan, Coventry University, UK Alain Quemin, Université Paris-8, France Mark Westgarth, University of Leeds, UK

Forthcoming Volumes in the Series: Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States: 1550–1950, edited by Susan Bracken and Adriana Turpin Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market: An Avant-Garde Landscape Painter in Nineteenth-Century France, by Simon Kelly

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950

Edited by Christel H. Force

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Selection and editorial matter © Christel H. Force, 2020 Individual chapters © their authors, 2020 Christel H. Force has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xviii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Caricature of Etienne Bignou by Cesar Abin, from Abin’s book Leurs Figures: 56 portraits d’artistes, critiques et marchands d’aujourdhui, Paris: Muller, 1932. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Force, Christel H., editor. Title: Pioneers of the global art market : Paris-based dealer networks, 1850-1950 / edited by Christel H. Force. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. | Series: Contextualizing art markets | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035978 (print) | LCCN 2020035979 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501342769 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501342783 (epub) | ISBN 9781501342776 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Art dealers–France–Paris–History–19th century. | Art dealers–France–Paris–History–20th century. | Art and globalization– History–19th century. | Art and globalization–History–20th century. Classification: LCC N8620 .P56 2020 (print) | LCC N8620 (ebook) | DDC 709.2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035978 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035979 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4276-9 ePDF: 978-1-5013-4277-6 eBook: 978-1-5013-4278-3 Series: Contextualizing Art Markets Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Illustrations Series Editor’s Introduction Acknowledgments Introduction - Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950 Christel H. Force 2 Parisian Dealers and the American Market, 1860–1920 Paolo Serafini (translated by Angelica Modabber) 3 Old and New Worlds: Durand-Ruel and the International Market for Impressionism Jennifer A. Thompson 4 Moving Mountains: Paris-Based Dealers and the Economics of Translocation David M. Challis 5 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s International Partnerships, 1907–1937 Vérane Tasseau (translated by Celia Abele) 6 Promoting Modernism in the 1920s: The Art Journals of Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, and Alfred Flechtheim Ambre Gauthier 7 Paul Guillaume, Marius de Zayas, and African Arts: A Transatlantic Partnership, 1914–1923 Yaëlle Biro 8 The Thannhauser Galleries: Forming International Alliances in an Era of Change Valerie Nikola Ender 9 “A Viking Sailing over the Savage Sea, Far, Far to the North”: Walther Halvorsen Christel H. Force 10 When French Dealers “Turned Their Eyes toward Scandinavia”: The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm Christina Brandberg

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11 The Galerie Paul Rosenberg and the American Market in the Interwar Era MaryKate Cleary 12 International Dealer Networks and the Market for Impressionism in London and Glasgow: Etienne Bignou, A.J. McNeill Reid, and Ernest Lefèvre Frances Fowle 13 Etienne Bignou: The Gallery as Antechamber of the Museum Christel H. Force 14 Capricious Cohorts: René Gimpel’s Associates, Rivals, and Patrons Diana J. Kostyrko 15 Valentine Dudensing and the Valentine Gallery: Selling the United States on the School of Paris Julia May Boddewyn 16 Conclusion Veronique Chagnon-Burke Contributors  Index

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Caricature of Etienne Bignou by Cesar Abin from the latter’s book Leurs Figures: 56 portraits d’artistes, critiques et marchands d’aujourdhui. Paris: Muller, 1932. Pablo Picasso, Sebastià Junyer i Vidal Calls on Durand-Ruel. Paris, 1904. Ink and colored pencils on paper, 22 × 16 cm. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal, 1966 (70.807). Photography, Gasull Fotografia. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Alberto Pasini, Visite à la mosquée, private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai. Giuseppe De Nittis, Route de Naples à Brindisi, 1872. Oil on canvas, 27 × 52 cm. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Collection of R. Eno. Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Edgar Degas, The Dancing Class, c. 1870. Oil on wood, 7 3/4 × 10 5/8 in. (19.7 × 27 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.184). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog, 1901. Oil on canvas, 25 7/8 × 39 7/16 in. (65.7 × 100.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Anne Thomson in memory of her father, Frank Thomson, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Thomson (1954–66-6). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives. Edouard Manet, Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1830–1906) at Bellevue, 1880. Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (80.6 × 60.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 (1997.391.4). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1892–95. Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (BF 13). The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission.

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List of Illustrations Twentieth-century translocation of Paul Cézanne’s thirty-seven Montagne Sainte-Victoire paintings. Source: data from Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, http://www.cezannecatalogue. com/catalogue/index.php (Accessed September 14, 2018). Appreciation of the United States dollar, English pound, Australian pound, Japanese yen, and Argentinian peso against the French franc, 1916–40. Values shown as multiple increases against the franc. Source: data from FRASER®, Federal Reserve Archives, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. Cézanne acquisitions by Barnes per year against United States dollar appreciation, 1916–40. Sources: data from FRASER®, Federal Reserve Archives, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis; and Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, http://www.cezannecatalogue.com/ collections/ (Accessed July 1, 2018). Henri Matisse. Paysage marocain, Acanthes, 1912. Oil on canvas, 115 × 80 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Gift of Walther Halvorsen, 1917. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Henri Matisse. Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges, 1914. Oil on canvas, 147 × 97 cm. Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. Legs Baronne Eva Gourgaud, 1965. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Artist unknown, presumed after Jean-Baptiste André Gauthier-Dagoty. Portrait of Madame du Barry and the Page Zamore, late eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, 39 × 31 cm, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Henri Matisse, Seated Odalisque, 1926. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (73 × 60 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (62.112). © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Pablo Picasso, Melancholy Woman, 1902. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 27 1/4 in. (100 × 69.2 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts (70.190). © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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Pablo Picasso, Sebastià Junyer i Vidal Calls on Durand-Ruel. Paris, 1904. Ink and colored pencils on paper, 22 × 16 cm. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal, 1966 (70.807). Photography, Gasull Fotografia. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Alberto Pasini, Femmes Turques (Les Eaux douces d’Asie sur le Bosphore), private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai Alberto Pasini, Visite à la mosquée, private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai Giuseppe De Nittis, Route de Naples à Brindisi, 1872. Oil on canvas, 27 x 52 cm. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Collection of R. Eno. Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields Vittorio Matteo Corcos, On the Terrace, private collection. Photo courtesy Studio Paul Nicholls, Milan Photograph by Dornac (Paul Marsan, French 1858–1941), Paul Durand-Ruel in his Gallery, c. 1910. Photo Archives Durand-Ruel © Durand-Ruel & Cie Edgar Degas, The Dancing Class, c. 1870. Oil on wood, 7 3/4 × 10 5/8 in. (19.7 × 27 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.184). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog, 1901. Oil on canvas, 25 7/8 × 39 7/16 in. (65.7 × 100.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Anne Thomson in memory of her father, Frank Thomson, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Thomson (1954–66-6). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives Edouard Manet, Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1830–1906) at Bellevue, 1880. Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (80.6 × 60.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 (1997.391.4). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1892–95. Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (BF 13). The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission

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List of Illustrations Cablegram, Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, June 29, 1920. The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission Cablegram transfer, Albert Barnes to Galerie Durand-Ruel. The Barnes Foundation Archive, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission Photo by Pablo Picasso. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in Picasso’s studio at 11 boulevard de Clichy, Paris, Fall 1910. Positive from a glass plate negative, 12 × 9 cm. Musée national Picasso, Paris; Don Succession Picasso, 1992 (APPH17382). Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris)/image RMN-GP/© Succession Picasso 2020 Page from the exhibition catalogue In Memoriam Juan Gris (Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, February 1930) showing Kahnweiler standing at left and Flechtheim seated at right Cover of the exhibition catalogue Manolo, Galerie Simon, Paris; Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Düsseldorf; Galerie Flechtheim & Kahnweiler, Frankfurt/Main, 1929 Firm J.F.G. Umlauff, Hambourg, 1913. Kamerun Sammlung, plate I. University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives, Director’s Office— George B. Gordon—Heinrich Umlauff (image n° 239154). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Museum Archives Photographer unknown, c. 1913. Reliquary element forming a head, Fang style, Gabon, nineteenth century. © The Joseph and Ernest Brummer Records. Series IV, Subseries IV.B. The Cloisters Library and Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art (published by the Modern Gallery, New York, 1916) in which plate 1, “’Nimba’ Idol of Maternity, French Guinea” is reproduced, also reproduced in Sculptures Nègres, see figure 7.4 Sculptures Nègres. Chez Paul Guillaume, 1917, plate IX, Idole de la Maternité, Rivières du Sud (Guinée), also reproduced in African Negro Art, see figure 7.3 Justin K. Thannhauser in 1957 before Picasso’s Fernande with a Black Mantilla (1905/6) which he bought from the Feilchenfeldt family in 1956. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission Entrance of Galerie Thannhauser at Bellevuestraße 13, Berlin, 1927, with paintings by Degas and van Gogh on display. The modern entrance with its curved glass panel was designed by the Berlin architects Hans and Wassili Luckhardt and Alfons Anker.

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Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission 123 8.3 Installation photograph of the Picasso exhibition at Galeria Müller, Calle Florida 935, Buenos Aires, October 1934. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission 125 8.4 Dinner of the Syndicat des Éditeurs d’Art et Négociants en Tableaux Modernes, Paris, 1938. From left to right: [Gaston?] Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Pétridès, Justin Thannhauser, Pierre Loeb, Léonce Rosenberg, André Schoeller, Mme Pierre Loeb, Josse Bernheim-Jeune, Mme Guillaume Leray, Paul Rosenberg, etc. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission 127 9.1 Henri Matisse. Paysage marocain, Acanthes, 1912. Oil on canvas, 115 × 80 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Gift of Walther Halvorsen, 1917. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 142 9.2 Henri Matisse. Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges, 1914. Oil on canvas, 147 × 97 cm. Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. Legs Baronne Eva Gourgaud, 1965. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 144 9.3 Photograph taken on the occasion of a visit by Matisse and Halvorsen to Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) at “Les Collettes,” Cagnessur-Mer, on March 11, 1918. Renoir, seated, surrounded by, left to right: Albert Marquet, Walther Halvorsen, Henri Matisse, and Andrée Heuschling. © Archives du Musée Renoir, Ville de Cagnes-sur-Mer 145 9.4 Photograph taken in 1918 on the occasion of a visit by Matisse and Halvorsen to Pierre-Auguste Renoir at “Les Collettes,” Cagnes-surMer. Left to right, seated: Henri Matisse, Auguste Renoir, and Greta Prozor; standing: Walther Halvorsen and Pierre Renoir. © Archives Henri Matisse, Issy-les-Moulineaux 146 10.1 The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in 1919. Konstbiblioteket, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Reprinted by permission of the National Museum of Sweden 162 10.2 Gösta Olson and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1959 at the opening of the new premises of the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet at Drottninggatan in Stockholm. © Dagens Bild 165 10.3 Photograph by Bertil Höders. Picasso and Léger works in the “Jubileumsutställning” at the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, December 14, 1953. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Reproduced by permission 166

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10.4 Photograph by Bertil Höders. Picasso and Léger works in the “Jubileumsutställning” at the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, December 14, 1953. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Reproduced by permission 167 11.1 Photograph by Henri Manuel (1874–1947). Paul Rosenberg, late 1920s. Centre Pompidou/MNAM-CCI/Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Fonds Paul Rosenberg. Reproduced by permission 172 11.2 The front of Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 21 rue La Boètie, Paris, c. 1924. 172 Source: La Renaissance de l’art français et des industries de luxe 1 (1924) 11.3 Galerie Paul Rosenberg inventory data card, Liste de Photographies no. 216. The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Reproduced by permission 178 11.4 Installation view, Paul Rosenberg’s “Great Masters of French Art” (Braque, Picasso and Matisse), Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, March 1934. The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Reproduced by permission 179 12.1 A. J. McNeill Reid in Royal Flying Corps uniform, 1917. Photograph © Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland 187 12.2 Samuel Courtauld, 1920s. Photograph © The Courtauld Institute of Art, London 189 12.3 Sir William Burrell, c. 1906. Photograph © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection 191 12.4 Elizabeth Workman on board Nyria, 1920. By kind permission of the Janson family 192 13.1 Dinner in honor of Henri Matisse, Galeries Georges Petit, June 16, 1931. Bignou presiding at the left. Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Gallery Archives, 28C8, Chester Dale Papers. © 2020 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 208 13.2 Henri Matisse and Etienne Bignou at the Matisse exhibition, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1931. Photo © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/ CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images. © 2020 Succession H. Matisse/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 210 13.3 Bignou during his return journey on the Ile-de-France, December 16, 1933, after the exhibition of Vollard’s collection in New York. Fonds Etienne Bignou, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York 211

List of Illustrations 13.4 Photograph of Ambroise Vollard dedicated by the latter to Etienne Bignou: “To he who loves painting so much/To Etienne Bignou.” Fonds Etienne Bignou, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. © Estate of Thérèse Bonney/Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, CA. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York 13.5 Etienne Bignou in his dry bar before it was decorated by Picasso, Lurçat, Dufy, Braque. Unidentified photographer. Chester Dale papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photo courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution 14.1 Ernest and René Gimpel, with their dog Leprince, 1896. Courtesy © Gimpel Family Archives 14.2 Louis Sabattier, “La vente de la collection Cronier à la galerie Georges Petit,” L’Ilustration, December 9, 1905: 397. The auctioneer’s assistant is holding up Fragonard’s Billet doux (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which Wildenstein and Gimpel bought with Eugène Kraemer for 420,000 francs 14.3 Artist unknown, presumed after Jean-Baptiste André Gauthier-Dagoty. Portrait of Madame du Barry and the Page Zamore, late eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, 39 × 31 cm. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon 14.4 Christian Duvivier, Studio portrait of René Gimpel in uniform, 1916 (detail). René Gimpel papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced with permission 14.5 Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Legendary Saints of France, gouache, central panel of triptych. Courtesy Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena 15.1 Carl Van Vechten, Valentine Dudensing. Photograph courtesy: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University 15.2 Henri Matisse, Seated Odalisque, 1926. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (73 × 60 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (62.112). © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 15.3 Pablo Picasso, Melancholy Woman, 1902. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 27 1/4 in. (100 × 69.2 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts (70.190). © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 15.4 Cover of Art News, January 11, 1936. Copyright © Artnews Media, LLC. Reproduced by permission

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Series Editor’s Introduction Art markets are often described as “winner-take-all” environments. Narratives that highlight competition between dealers, rivalry among artists, and scenes of financial contest in auction houses have contributed to the idea that there are clearly defined winners and losers in histories of art commerce. The chapters in the present volume debunk key elements of this mythology. By focusing on dealer networks that developed in and from Paris between 1850 and 1950, authors reveal the important role played by professional collaboration in the emergence of a market for avant-garde art. Instead of understanding dealers as individuals who single-mindedly promote their own vision of art and its associated values, the following discussions show how national and transnational markets for modernist art arose from multifarious personal, professional, and social allegiances among peers. By studying a range of commercial connections, the contributors to this book challenge familiar ideas about both the role of the art dealer and the ways in which markets for art come into being. First, individuals are shown to play roles that differ according to context. In addition to running their primary businesses, art dealers are seen to act as agents for colleagues in other jurisdictions, as scouts for collectors, and as promoters for preferred artists. Their interests and activities span the realms of law, finance, regulation, and publishing as well as those relating to the acquisition, collection, and display of art. Against this background, competition between dealers in one sphere could be transformed into mutually advantageous cooperation in another. Secondly, dealers are seen to exercise considerable influence in creating the contexts in which art markets arise and function. Case studies examined in this book show that art professionals had to work together for the purpose of developing and promoting critical frameworks for the reception of European modernist art. Developing a trade for avant-garde production meant, of necessity, creating an associated value system that received endorsement by a range of potentially interested parties. In this case, collaboration could serve professional and strategic ends while also encouraging the development of a nascent market. By closely examining these networking activities, the authors of the present volume reveal a dynamic and densely structured international trade in modernist art fueled by intersecting—and sometimes conflicting—aims and motivations among its protagonists. While the following chapters show how dealers collaborate for the purpose of transforming existing cultural and socioeconomic structures to suit the marketing of new creative practices, authors are also alert to problems associated with this kind of networking. The formation of tactical alliances within and across national borders could lead to a range of anti-competitive practices, many of which would be illegal in the contemporary artworld. By exploring the point at which collaborative networks shade into cartels, this book offers unique insight into the changing regulatory framework for art businesses and

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highlights shifting attitudes to practices of knowledge sharing. One of the most important and original contributions of the volume is to reorient critical perspectives on dealer networks by dismantling assumptions derived from contemporary attitudes toward the benefits of open competition. The discussion thus challenges dominant narratives about the dynamics of professional cooperation and significantly alters prevailing conceptions of competitive practices in the art market prior to the end of the Second World War. While this book takes Paris as the base from which to examine the emergence of dealer networks, it becomes clear that the model of internationalization studied in these chapters can also be traced to other art centres. The creation, interaction, and collision of transactional market contexts forms part of a dynamic strategy that promotes ideas about art across linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries. In many respects, therefore, the global market for contemporary art in the twenty-first century can be traced to the cultural entrepreneurship of, and collaboration between, the individuals discussed in the following pages. It is with great pleasure that I welcome this volume into the Contextualizing Art Markets series. Kathryn Brown Loughborough, Spring 2020

Acknowledgments First and foremost, I want to thank the authors who generously contributed to this volume and to acknowledge the archivists whose essential work this book built upon, as the archival documents and photographic records cited in the endnotes and captions reflect. The history of collecting in general and the historical art market in particular, not to mention ownership history, are disciplines that depend on the preservation, organization, and availability of dealer records, as well as artist, collector, and museum archives. I am especially grateful to Georges Matisse at the Archives Henri Matisse in Issy-les-Moulineaux; Isabelle Rouge-Ducos at the Archives Picasso in Paris; Diego Buenaño at Fundació Museu Picasso in Barcelona; Floriane Dauberville at the Archives Bernheim-Jeune in Paris; Flavie Durand-Ruel and Paul-Louis DurandRuel at the Durand-Ruel Archives in Paris; the Gimpel Family Archives; the Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives at the Morgan Library in New York; Elaine Rosenberg, Ilda François, and Donald Prochera at the Paul Rosenberg Archives in New York; Alex Corcoran for access to the Reid & Lefevre records at The Tate in London; the Barnes Foundation Archives in Philadelphia; Sally McKay and Karen Meyer Roux at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; Marisa Bourgoin at the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC; Gunther Herzog at ZADIK in Cologne; Laurence Wodey at the Grande Chancellerie de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris; Michelle Elligott at the Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Sylvie Patry, Isabelle Gaetan, and Denise Faife at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris; and Elodie Schaefer at the Service des Musées de Cagnes. My gratitude also goes to the many colleagues whose expertise I relied on, especially Sébastien Chauffour, Felix Pavia, Inès Rotermund-Reynard, Adrian Sudhalter, and Julie Verlaine. It extends to Celia Abele and Angelica Modabber for translating two chapters from the French and Italian, respectively, as well as Matt Gilbert for efficiently copyediting the entire volume. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the unwavering support of my husband, Pierre Force, my daughter, Charlotte, and my son, Eliot. Christel H. Force

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- Introduction Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950 Christel H. Force

In studies of the art market covering the period when Paris was the capital of the art world, the focus has essentially been the dealer as agent for and pivot between artist and collector. The storyline is that from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, artists and collectors from all over the world converged toward Paris where traders acted as intermediaries between maker and amateur. The market has essentially been depicted as hinging on relationships between artists and dealers as well as those between dealers and collectors. Conversely the present study broaches the oft-overlooked topic of business relationships that art dealers cultivated with each other. This book addresses the fact that as the professionalization of the modern-art dealer occurred, enterprising Parisian promoters of contemporary painting had vision and agency, and systematically operated within international networks of peers. From the 1850s through the interwar period, transactional relationships and patterns of allegiance between dealers were pervasive. Concurrent with the idiosyncratic purchases of individual collectors who flocked to France, a more systematic and extensive movement of goods and information was engineered by generations of traders who deliberately disseminated modernism through a web of connections radiating from and converging toward the French capital. Paris was the center of the arts not only by virtue of being the hub toward which all converged, but also by being a center from which the art market radiated. This has become abundantly clear in the course of research on modernist art that I conducted in various dealer records throughout my career. Etienne Bignou in particular always struck me as the embodiment of this phenomenon [see book cover and plate 1] and it is with him in mind that, when a conference came up titled “Creating Markets,” I decided to propose a session on Paris-based dealer networks. The compelling talks that resulted from this call for papers led to the present publication—essentially the proceedings of a conference session in London in 2016 and a symposium in New York the following year.1 Given their genesis, the chapters assembled here do not claim to cover the topic exhaustively; however, by virtue of discussing webs of relationships they cast a wider net than might be assumed from their titles. They address a broad range of topics,

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from major dealers who have been the subject of recent exhibitions to lesser-known ones who were very important in their day.2 As a whole, the book sheds new light on familiar names while bringing others to the fore. Incidentally, the pronoun “he” is used here as the dealers covered in these papers are all men. This is not to say that women were not involved in the art market—I would have welcomed papers on Käte Perls, Grete Ring and Marianne Feilchenfeldt, for instance; however, none were submitted.3 The chapters in this volume present new scholarship on the collaborative work of art dealers that furthered the transnational circulation of Parisian art as they pushed frontiers north, east, and west. They result from the close study of a wide range of gallery records where clear patterns of business relationships appear, namely long-lasting partnerships, shifting associations, joint purchases, shared profits, and collaborative work on publications and exhibitions. The dealers studied in the chapters of this book are not all French, or located in Paris, but all of them exemplify links between France and other countries. They not only include Paris galleries branching out internationally but also encompass foreign dealers whose ties to Paris were key (e.g., Valentine Dudensing, Walther Halvorsen, Gösta Olson, Heinrich Thannhauser, Marius de Zayas). In other words, if one were to visualize the network whose nexus was Paris, one would add “rays” converging to the city to those radiating from it. Our topic is the market for contemporary art produced in Paris from the midnineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, and more specifically transnational trade patterns that enabled the export of academic and Barbizon paintings first, then Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Modernism.4 It does not take into account the market for antiquities and old masters, which was a separate trade altogether.5 Traditionally, there was a chasm between the market for tableaux anciens and that for contemporary art in Paris, as the art critic Philippe Burty already pointed out in 1867.6 This distinction was later evidenced by the existence in France of, on the one hand, the Corporation des marchands d'art moderne (from 1901) then the Syndicat des éditeurs d’art et négociants en tableaux modernes (1925–40) whose members sold modern art, and on the other hand, the Chambre syndicale des négociants en objets d’art, tableaux, et curiosités (1901–49) whose members sold fine and decorative arts from prior periods.7 As Floriane Dauberville put it, “The syndicat was created by a group of ambitious art dealers who stood against the conservatism of the [Chambre syndicale] des Antiquaires.”8 The difference roughly corresponds to the distinction between the primary and secondary markets, although the common denominator between négociants en tableaux modernes— who will be our focus—was strictly that they sold contemporary art: a primary dealer with a stable of modernists could occasionally or routinely operate on the secondary market, where much Impressionist and modern art circulated.9 Given that these chapters center on discrete clusters of interacting players, we shall address here the question of how they fit into the historical art market as described in the scholarship, and how they coalesce into a distinctive modern phenomenon, with a few questions in mind such as: Why this time period? Why Paris? What distinguishes modern-art dealers from any others? Why are dealer networks meaningful? What did dealers contribute to the history of art?

Introduction

3

“A Valuable and Creative Role” The difference between an antiquarian who sells rare old objects of undisputed value and a modern-art dealer—that is, a champion of innovation who promotes unrecognized, difficult art—amounts to the challenge, the risk, and the merit of creating value where there is none. The work of dealers who enabled and championed trailblazers in the period under consideration (when modernist art was largely ridiculed) is unique and commendable by virtue of the vision, dedication, and resolve it required. Whether they shielded and supported misfits or merely sold contemporary art on the secondary market, profit was not their sole motivation as there were easier, less risky lines of business. As Alan Bowness put it, “Those who promote the new and unfamiliar play a valuable and creative role.”10 Focusing on broadly defined historical modernism makes sense in a discussion of the art market, as established in a landmark publication by Harrison and Cynthia White. They posited that the slow disintegration of the French Academy system and its official Salon coincided with the progressive recognition of Impressionism in the late nineteenth century and that this major watershed ushered in the art market as we know it today, namely, as they coined it, the “dealer-critic system.”11 The Whites argued that dealers and critics lent legitimacy to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists; that art galleries played a crucial role in enabling innovators and “recognized, encouraged and catered to the new social markets.”12 As David Galenson and Robert Jensen pointed out, this change was only operated by very few dealers at first, and not very successfully at that: There were very few dealers of contemporary art in the 1860s to 1880s, and even fewer who represented the modernists; for the most part they endorsed the Salonapproved artists with an established reputation. Galenson and Jensen disputed the Whites’ argument by positing that painters themselves caused the downfall of the Academy’s official Salon and replaced it with a plethora of artist-run salons (the Salons system), of which the independent Impressionist exhibitions were but one manifestation. They countered that the art market did not effectively support the Impressionists or the Post-Impressionists during their lifetime; in other words, that the Academy system was followed by the Salons system, and the dealer–critic system did not cause a shift but at most resulted from changes implemented by artists and critics.13 The first art dealers who endorsed the Impressionists may not have been successful from the onset, but Paul Durand-Ruel, Georges Petit, and Theo van Gogh at Boussod, Valadon & Cie deserve credit for trying, and undeniably set a precedent that many others followed. A shift definitely occurred in the course of the late nineteenth century, albeit slowly, that shaped the twentieth-century art world. What this book contends is that if the dealer–critic system did not reach its full potential until the twentieth century, it ultimately achieved its goal by embracing two essential strategies: the French market for contemporary art expanded to transnational trade, and competing domestic monopolies gave way to international oligopolies.

4

Pioneers of the Global Art Market

Growing Pains The canonical art historical narrative of French modernism, which largely took shape between 1860 and 1914, posits a linear evolution from conformism to individualism; that is, from the virtuoso application of academic rules to the free expression of an individual temperament. The storyline begins with an omnipotent state-controlled system that promoted an accepted canon and upheld conventions and traditions, followed by an open, independent, de-nationalized art market that rewarded originality and innovation. As Robert Jensen stated, the accepted narrative is an “exclusionary, disjunctive model of modernism in which ‘movements’ succeed and cancel out their immediate predecessors in a linear march to an ever more perfect, more modern art.”14 According to this narrative, those who achieved recognition and obtained accolades and financial rewards during their lifetime within the academic system are condemned to (relative) posthumous oblivion, whereas the mavericks who were largely excluded and derided during their lifetime stand to be vindicated as they attain immortality. The “Intransigents,” as the Impressionists called themselves, are the celebrated artists whose works now fetch astronomical prices at auctions. The ethos of historical modernism is thus entwined with its marketing, as “a rhetoric of [initial] exclusion or neglect and subsequent vindication.”15 From the seventeenth century through most of the nineteenth century in France, the Academy provided artists’ training, assured their livelihoods, and governed the creation, exhibition, and recognition of contemporary art through its Salon, which alone could bestow visibility and legitimacy. As Galenson and Jensen stated: Prior to the 1870s only the Salon exhibitions had the capacity to attract consistent, serious, and widespread attention from critics. The Salon’s monopoly over careerbuilding exhibitions disappeared after 1874 [although] such was its prestige that it continued to receive the most critical attention.16

By the end of the nineteenth century, this centralized state sponsorship, which fostered nepotism and status quo, had gradually given way to a free, de-nationalized art market where supply and demand ruled, which ultimately rewarded originals, outcasts, and visionaries through sales—especially sales abroad.17 This shift gained momentum with the Impressionists’ group exhibitions, which took place from 1874 to 1886. They highlighted the structural problems inherent to the academic system and the renegade artists’ yearning for an alternative support structure, but due to growing pains and the lasting effects of two major financial crisis, in 1873 and 1882, the art market did not effectively offer a viable solution until the 1890s. From then on dealers would be tasked with ensuring the subsistence of contemporary artists and the promotion of their works. This change occurred over the course of decades, in large part thanks to the continued efforts of Durand-Ruel who, at great personal cost and through the active pursuit of foreign markets, managed to put the Impressionists on the map. According to the Whites, Durand-Ruel ushered in the concept of the entrepreneurial dealer as patron, “in the Renaissance sense of the word”:

Introduction

5

The dealer who bought or exhibited some works of a young, unknown painter was speculating for his own profit; but he was at the same time awarding a prize akin to a “medal of encouragement” or honorable mention. The dealer who supported a painter with a monthly “salary” in return for promised works was emulating the old patronage system.18

Once the dealer–critic system was operative, in the twentieth century, artists depended on their dealer for a steady income as well as “support, recognition, and praise.”19 Durand-Ruel did not single-handedly effect this change: the slow process occurred via slight variations on the Salon model initiated by artists in the second half of the century. The state-sanctioned Salon ceased to be controlled by the Academy in 1881 and was replaced by the Salon de la Société des artistes français. Other examples include the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts (created at the initiative of dealer Louis Martinet in 1862 and revived in 1890), the Salon des Indépendants (1884–), and the Salon d’Automne (1903–), which showcased canvases that art dealers started to promote and commercialize in earnest.20 The 200-year-old Salon was also made redundant by the Salon des Refusés (sponsored by the French government in 1863, 1874, 1875, and 1886) and the eight independent exhibitions of the Impressionists (1874–86).21 Those exhibitions, initially intended as a temporary solution in the face of an inflexible but largely unchallenged official Salon, turned out to be a successful formula. Perceived as defiant and marginal at first, they offered a model for the art market that would exploit novelty and shock to their advantage. Concurrently, as Jensen argued, German and British critics constructed the “historical exegesis” whereby “French modernism became the hegemonic way of elucidating modern aesthetics” everywhere, and American collectors unquestionably lent “financial muscle” to this discourse.22 An independent, de-centralized, transnational, entrepreneurial, and more inclusive system took shape, which progressively replaced the outmoded state-controlled apparatus that failed a growing number of artists, including an increasingly large number of foreigners, and led to a more profitable economy that benefited all parties involved. There were art dealers before the Impressionists, of course, but artists mostly relied on official patronage and commissions, and traders on auctions and the indiscriminate sale of antiques, medieval and Renaissance art, as well as curiosities. The sale of original contemporary artworks was uncommon and strictly focused on Salon-sanctioned painting at first. For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the activities of art galleries primarily revolved around reproductions: essentially prints made after paintings, produced and sold by the likes of Edmé F. Gersaint, Rittner & Goupil, Alphonse Giroux, Ernest Gambart, and Edmond Durand-Ruel, as well as bronzes that were cast and marketed by Nicolas and Victor Susse, for instance. Galleries also enabled clients to imitate paintings themselves by renting them. Rentals were more prevalent than sales, and copies more desirable than originals.23 Additionally, those artists who relied extensively on the market, like William Bouguereau, were known to compromise their art in the interest of sales; that is, to cater to wealthy patrons’ preferences. Thus the market was seen as perverting art or otherwise lowering it to the level of bourgeois taste.

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market

A Wondrous Alchemy As opposed to paintings that resulted from and existed within the academic system, the avant-garde was inherently defiant and vexing. Born from an intrinsically free, individualistic creative process, modernist art was inventive and provocative. Authentic, original, avant-garde art was uncompromising, disruptive, and anticommercial, in other words unsellable. The conundrum was that while their art was a hard sell, modernists had to rely on the market to make a name for themselves and survive. For the first dealers who took on the promotion of intransigent art, from Durand-Ruel on, it was a real challenge and it remained so through the interwar years, although Post-Impressionism had started to appreciate by then.24 Demand had to be wangled out of thin air through very persuasive, inventive, and involved promotional practices. The role of modern-art dealers was not merely to cater to collectors’ needs, but to provide visibility, publicity, support, and income for the artists.25 Thanks to the market, nonconformist talent eventually triumphed: if Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism were coined by critics in jest and ridiculed by the public, the all-inclusive art market absorbed them. Enlightened dealers were willing to endorse experimental painting, audacious collectors decided to buy it, both speculating on ultimate recognition. As the Whites stated, the draw consisted in seeing one’s investment multiply tenfold: The financial speculation in art found its cultural counterpart in the speculation in taste. As critics and dealers were wont to say to the “discerning buyer”: “In twenty years he will be considered a master, and his painting will be worth a fortune!”26 … It was said, in effect, that public rejection and disapproval of an artist were sure predictors of his eventual acceptance as a master.27

And sure enough, today Cézanne and van Gogh command respect and admiration in museums worldwide and far surpass Bouguereau and Delaroche according to the modernist rhetoric of the avant-garde as a succession of innovators and influencers, and the ultimate triumph of the misunderstood genius. In other words, as several authors have shown, modernism was not merely shaped by artists; the market played a key part in this scenario.28 Durand-Ruel, then Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paul Rosenberg, and many others provided material and logistical support to their artists, taking care of the promotion and sale of their art, enabling them to focus on their production and achieve total creative freedom. The art market successfully replaced the academic model because it “provided more widely and generously for a larger number of artists” who craved recognition, purchases, a steady income, and social support.29 The modern-art dealer’s challenge was to create demand for unwonted and unwanted art forms, which required vision and dedication as well as business savvy. Art market studies that focus on modernism thus inherently revolve around a paradox, namely, how the most disinterested of human activities—pure artistic creation—was both co-opted and enabled by the market.30

Introduction

7

Through a wondrous alchemy, when the primary market was at its best, modernart dealers eventually turned worthless avant-garde works into desirable commodities, which are now considered invaluable masterpieces. In the process they delivered critical acclaim and procured validation through sales. In short, they were not merely traders but patrons; they were artists’ truest champions; they bestowed freedom and manufactured fame; they were visionaries and tastemakers. As the Whites articulated it, if dealers managed to sell collectors on the idea of modernism from the late nineteenth century, it was largely thanks to the crucial role of critics—novelists and poets as well as professional art critics—who built artists’ reputations. This they called a “machinery for legitimation.”31 Critics, in their role as “publicists, ideologues and theorists,” wrote catalogue prefaces, exhibition reviews in widely read newspapers, as well as influential articles in local or foreign publications.32 Together, certainly by the early twentieth century, dealers and critics made new trends seem logical and necessary by situating them within a historical lineage; they justified innovation by inscribing it within the modernist discourse of perpetual change. Alan Bowness expressed the view that artists and critics played a more essential role than dealers; namely, that for artists there is “a four-stage process on the way to success. The first is peer recognition. … The second stage is recognition by the serious critics. The third stage is recognition by collectors and dealers, and the last is recognition by the general public.”33 Along the same lines, Galenson and Jensen, ostensibly countering the Whites’ argument, posited that the “Salons system” in general and the Impressionists in particular were instrumental in bringing about the collapse of the academic system as artists promoted their art and organized independent exhibitions themselves— before Paul Durand-Ruel and Francis Petit started to represent them—and that “the press generally ignored dealer shows.”34 They stated: “Dealers were not leaders in the development of modern art and its markets in the late nineteenth century, but remained followers. They played their role only after talented painters had created the new art and sophisticated critics had analyzed it.”35 The Impressionists undeniably had considerable agency, although they were destitute and despondent. As Galenson and Jensen themselves stated, “Advanced art simply didn’t sell well in nineteenth century Paris … [and] lagged far behind the considerable successes of the leading artists still showing at the Salon.”36 Moreover, the few Parisian collectors who bought Impressionist works in the 1870s and 1880s acquired them from the artists directly rather than through Durand-Ruel.37 The latter could not achieve success until his painters were recognized, until the primary dealer’s role became more widely accepted, especially abroad, and until the effects of the Panic of 1873 and the crisis of 1882 subsided; but once Durand-Ruel overcame those hurdles, his artists were forced to recognize the key role he played in the equation. Neither artists nor critics could play the dealer’s part, with the exception of Mary Cassatt who acted as agent between Durand-Ruel and American collectors for years.38 Without her, the dealer might not have fully comprehended the immense potential of the American market, or thought to exploit it by deliberately cultivating clients in New York—the very patrons who ultimately saved Durand-Ruel’s business from bankruptcy. Cassatt had a hand in shaping the Durand-Ruel business model that all

8

Pioneers of the Global Art Market

other modern-art dealers emulated, although she vigorously denied playing any part in the market (believing that it would have undermined her credibility), and her role has consequently been downplayed. While dealers were not leaders in the development of modernist art, they could be characterized as early champions and essential facilitators. They worked tirelessly at its promotion and dissemination in France and beyond. They achieved more than what painters were either willing or able to contribute in that regard, as the requirements of the trade contravene the artistic temperament. The Impressionists could rally to exhibit their works as a group in Paris (albeit “only under the severest external pressure, cognitive and material”39 and not without a good dose of dissension) but they had neither the time nor the disposition to effectively publicize, circulate, publish, and sell their paintings, let alone regularly show them abroad, as Durand-Ruel and his twentieth-century emulators did. Dealers followed in the creators’ footsteps diligently and efficiently, with much commitment and perseverance, and what they achieved cannot be denied. As Kahnweiler put it, “Great painters create great dealers.”40 And the other way around.

Modernist Art and the Modern Market Whether the dealer–critic system upended the prior state-controlled Academy/Salon system, as the Whites suggested; or whether artists themselves upset the establishment with their independent exhibitions, together with the influential critics who built a compelling discourse around them, as Galenson and Jensen argued41; or else the impact of Drouot sales and growing speculation were key, as Raymonde Moulin and Gérard Monnier believed,42 the result is the same: by 1900 the French art world had changed drastically, seeing the concomitant ascendency of the modern market and modernist art. In the twentieth century the import of art morphed from use value (the commission of portraits and bespoke decorative schemes, the glorification of state and church, the exaltation of history, and ethical didacticism of the grandes machines favored by the Salon) to exchange value, as a free-market economy (ruled by supply and demand) took hold.43 Within the course of a few years the commodification of art, which at first was equated with the gratification of bourgeois taste (realistic landscape and genre scenes of manageable size for middle-class interiors), was ultimately understood to foster innovation and reward visionaries. As Robert Herbert argued, the laissez-faire market was both a consequence of and a plea for unrestricted artistic freedom.44 Once Durand-Ruel ultimately met with success—after twenty years and mostly abroad: in America from the 1890s, then in Germany from around 1900—value could more confidently be placed on innovation and radicalism. His example was emulated by countless other dealers who henceforth believed that artistic freedom and commercial success were compatible, and it opened the door for an uninterrupted succession of modernists who hoped to similarly be recognized [Figure 1.1].

Introduction

9

Figure 1.1  Pablo Picasso, Sebastià Junyer i Vidal Calls on Durand-Ruel. Paris, 1904. Ink, and colored pencils on paper, 22 × 16 cm. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal, 1966 (70.807). Photography, Gasull Fotografia. Last sheet of a six-page comic-stripstyle account of Picasso’s trip from Barcelona to Paris in 1904, accompanied by his friend Junyer. It depicts an imaginary encounter with Durand-Ruel where the latter hands a bag of money to Junyer in exchange for a painting—likely a dream shared by countless artists who flocked to the French capital. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (See Color Plate 1.)

Of course Monet did not wait for Durand-Ruel to be who he was and paint as he did any more than Cézanne waited for Vollard, Matisse for Bernheim-Jeune, or Picasso for Kahnweiler—they were very much themselves regardless. However, without their dealers they would have struggled much longer and collectors would not have known where to go to see and buy their artworks. Thanks to dealers, an increasing number of small specialized exhibitions and solo shows flourished where artists could exhibit more paintings than was ever possible

10

Pioneers of the Global Art Market

at a Salon, conferring visibility and legitimacy to their works while accruing their commercial value.45 The artist retrospective (which was posthumous originally46), presented at a Salon or in a gallery but typically pulling from a primary dealer’s stock and his patrons’ collections, played a seminal role as well in the construct of modernism, as Jensen underscored when he situated “the retrospective as the primary site of the canonization of artists within history, the chief intersection between historiography and the marketplace.”47 Jumping from market to museum, Jensen further reflected that “it seems impossible to imagine an artist’s career without the canonical function of the retrospective. We have only begun to examine the role of the museum as the archive of taste and the arbiter of historical value.”48 Art dealers held such retrospectives before museum curators ever did—before museums of modern art existed in fact—and therefore deserve to be credited as pioneers, and the original arbiters of taste. Nevertheless, this took a long time; the new art did not sell much at all for a while. As the Whites pointed out, “The dealers and buyers of [paintings of past centuries] operated at a higher financial and social level than most buyers of contemporary paintings.”49 For the most ambitious dealers, such as Jacques Seligmann, Roland Knoedler, Nathan Wildenstein, and Ernest Gimpel, modern painting played second fiddle to decorative arts and old masters.50 Their firms did not sell modernist art until the 1920s, once it had become more profitable, but it represented a fraction of their revenue even then. The key for these entrepreneurs was to minimize the cost price and maximize the asking price by buying in Europe and selling in America, where the purchasing power was stronger. Navigating favorable currency exchange rates was key. The few galleries that specialized in modernism early on were small fish in comparison to these international firms, and often relied on just one or two amateurs to keep afloat.51 Only the most resolute, vehement dealers took on the task of promoting unknown modernists after Durand-Ruel, such as Père Tanguy, Ambroise Vollard, Bernheim-Jeune, Clovis Sagot, Kahnweiler, or Berthe Weill. A second wave followed from around the time of the First World War, who were unabashed entrepreneurs, including Alfred Flechtheim, Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, Paul Rosenberg, Etienne Bignou, and Cesar M. de Hauke.52

The Entrepreneurial Promoter The term “dealer” designates any actor in the art market who trades, but it encompasses various categories ranging from gallery owner—with brick-and-mortar premises and a stock—to manager, salesman, agent, and scout. Thus many dealers do not have a gallery in their name nor possess an inventory. Agents are independent traders who act as go-betweens and are sometimes hired by firms with a storefront to locate, buy, and sell art on their behalf. Employees and go-betweens do not usually own property shares but get sales commissions (and scouts get finder’s commissions) upon realization, which are smaller percentages of the markup than the shareowners’ cut. Gallery owners typically have more overhead expenses and wider responsibilities (such as exhibitions) and their activities are regulated.

Introduction

11

Moreover, all sorts of nuances existed at the time; gallery stocks varied greatly in terms of depth, range, quantity, and quality (Père Tanguy’s did not match DurandRuel’s, for instance).53 An agent without a storefront could still own stock, which was usually called a “collection.” Some collectors traded privately to sustain their incessant purchases (like Wilhelm Uhde), or opened a gallery (like Uhde briefly, Flechtheim, or André Level). Some dealers had both a stock and a private collection (like DurandRuel); others called their gallery inventory a collection (like Guillaume).54 Some gallery owners had a modest shop (like Père Soulier); some had a proper but bare space (Ambroise Vollard); others had grandiose premises (Georges Petit), or headed a major international firm (Adolphe Goupil, Seligmann). Branches could be located in Europe (Rosenberg & Helft) or expand to the transatlantic market (Durand-Ruel, M. Knoedler & Co, Nathan Wildenstein). Some did not have branches but had antennas in other countries. A number of firms had several addresses and much personnel, while smaller boutiques had little to no staff. Some galleries did not organize exhibitions on their premises but farmed them out instead (Kahnweiler from 1908 to 1914); some had a registered business address that merely served as officecum-storage; others organized shows ranging from simple to elaborate. Sometimes an employee or agent played a crucial role (like Theo van Gogh at Boussod, Valadon & Cie; Felix Fénéon at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune; Bignou at Knoedler, de Hauke at Seligmann). A trader could move from one role to another (Pierre Matisse was a scout for Dudensing at first, before opening his own gallery), or assume several at once (Bignou had his own gallery while assuming the role of scout and agent for others). As many configurations existed as personalities and backgrounds were involved. Some dealers were originally artists (Halvorsen), or related to one (Theo van Gogh, Pierre Matisse); others initially owned an art supply shop (Alphonse Giroux, Edmond Durand-Ruel, Père Tanguy).55 Some dealers had a legal background (Vollard) or came from the finance (Kahnweiler) or business worlds (Level, Flechtheim). Some dealers started from scratch (Guillaume) while others were born into dynasties (Durand-Ruel, Seligmann, Wildenstein, Bernheim-Jeune, Rosenberg). To these intrinsic differences one can add broader categories that have emerged in the scholarship, which reflect the way modern-art dealers styled themselves. Excluding antiquarians and traders of old masters, or “marchands de tout et faiseurs de rien” as Moulin called them,56 they are: 1. The marchand en chambre, defined by Malcolm Gee as a dealer without a gallery, whose “transactions were private and uncontrolled by legislation,”57 exemplified by Halvorsen and Uhde, for instance. He can be an independent agent who buys and sells his own inventory—akin to a collection in flux—and/or a go-between for other traders.58 2. The expert, described by Andrew McClellan and exemplified by Edmé François Gersaint who introduced auction sales in eighteenth-century France.59 This trader styles himself as a fine connoisseur rather than a merchant; a knowledgeable professional who is a reliable authority on provenance, attribution, authenticity, and appraisal. He poses as a benign, disinterested amateur who, while actively promoting sales through auctions, assumes an anti-commercial stance, fostering

12

Pioneers of the Global Art Market

a rhetoric of impartiality, respectability, and trustworthiness.60 This is an enduring type as many art dealers served as experts at Drouot auctions through the twentieth century (like Durand-Ruel, Jos Hessel, Léonce Rosenberg).61 Art dealers were also the first and most prolific authors of catalogues raisonnés, which typify their expertise.62 3. The entrepreneurial dealer, defined by Albert Boime, best exemplified by Goupil, Gambart, and Petit. He is the quintessential modern dealer whose openly mercantile approach embraces speculation, for whom the imperatives of supplyand-demand rule, and is motivated by competition.63 He seeks to satisfy clients— typically entrepreneurs themselves—wherever they are, whatever they want, and is quite creative in terms of staging, advertising, and promoting artworks; preferably offering works that have already obtained public accolades at the salons. His roots are in the highly profitable print business of the mid-nineteenth century, which sought mass sales, large profits, and aggressively pursued transnational markets.64 4. The ideological dealer, described as such by Jensen, portrayed as a “patron” by the Whites, labelled marchand découvreur (pioneer) or marchand mécène (champion) by Moulin, best exemplified by Durand-Ruel, Vollard, Bernheim-Jeune, and Kahnweiler.65 He is an exclusively Parisian phenomenon at first; a disinterested primary dealer who no longer deals in pictures but promotes innovators.66 Some articulated this difference in terms of the priority of careers over canvases.67 As Moulin phrased it, this dealer is situated “upstream and no longer downstream of creation.”68 “He does not sell paintings that are in demand but imposes a new type of painting.”69 As Jensen put it, his efforts “transcend the image of the merchant to be a servant of the elite call of art”; he is “an enlightened amateur, ready to sacrifice … to his artistic convictions.”70 The ideological dealer militantly champions a stable of innovators; he is a patron rather than a merchant. He is “a Medici of contemporary art, for whom commerce is an unfortunate sideline.”71 He is often seen as a visionary on par with the unrecognized geniuses he supports.72 5. The entrepreneurial promoter, described (with idiosyncratic nuances under various labels) by the Whites, Moulin, Bernier, and Jensen73—best exemplified by Rosenberg, Guillaume, or Bignou—is a composite of pioneer, champion, patron, entrepreneur, and speculator. He is the quintessential dealer of early twentiethcentury Paris who pursues exclusive contracts with unrecognized artists or otherwise asserts a monopoly or oligopoly, who doesn’t just hope that the value of his stock will appreciate but energetically promotes it—especially abroad—and consequently realizes large profits. He also operates (sometimes chiefly) on the secondary market with a stock of modernist works acquired in single or joint ownership. He navigates the market across borders by relying on a network of colleagues, and his strategy is ultimately to buy low in Europe and sell high in America. He regards modernist art as a sound investment.74 This type essentially straddles the romantic notion of a disinterested champion of modernism (the ideological dealer) and the realities of a market economy. He unabashedly embraces the fact that he is not just an enlightened amateur but a professional, deliberate trader.75

Introduction

13

Trying to categorize dealers is neither simple nor perhaps all that useful, as some don’t exactly fit in any profile and most arguably fit into several.76 These types are not mutually exclusive; they mostly overlap and even coalesce through teamwork. It could be argued that in the century roughly ending in 1950, the quintessential dealer of modernist art oscillated between such categories and thrived through joint efforts. This book highlights some exemplary entrepreneurs, promoters, and idealists who banked on, invested in, and championed contemporary art in general and modernism in particular. More specifically, it highlights how each one was part of a transnational network of peers that played a crucial role in the dissemination of modernism.

Oligopoly There appears to be a consensus in the literature around the idea that the modus operandi of the market for historical modernism revolved around a few key notions, namely, exclusivity, speculation, and competition.77 What such monopolistic practices implied was that the dealer invested in and speculated on artists whose artworks appreciated over the long term while actively promoting their visibility and dissemination through exhibitions and publications—an investment of time and effort which, if successful, could yield large profits. The most famous primary dealers in Paris had their stable of innovators, typically subsumed under a specific “ism”—for DurandRuel it was Impressionism; for Vollard and Bernheim-Jeune, Post-Impressionism; for Kahnweiler, Fauvism and Cubism. They aggressively asserted their control through exclusive contracts or through bulk purchases of a studio’s contents, and by monitoring auction sales.78 The image of a Darwinian jungle has been evoked regarding the bitter competition that pitched them against each other.79 In L’Oeuvre (1886), one of the earliest assessments of the French art market, the novelist and art critic Emile Zola introduced the image of a pyramidal hierarchy of dealers based on their perceived wealth and ambition with, at the top, the prosperous Francis Petit who, as Jensen wrote: wants to ruin the Goupil firm, to surpass Brame, to be the first, to centralize … In all of Zola’s thumbnail sketches there is a biting critique of dealer practices, unrelenting at all levels. It is the image of the middleman more concerned with profits than art, despite the public veneer of enlightened respectability.80

Zola thus perpetuated the eighteenth-century trope of intense rivalry between acquisitive traders.81 Yet gallery records show that by the mid-nineteenth century dealers often worked in concert when acquiring, consigning, exhibiting, and selling artworks—a facet of the market that is typically glossed over. While primary dealers strove to secure a monopoly on the production of designated artists, it was only for a given region and period, and they had limited control over the secondary market. A primary dealer could be the sole representative of an artist in France (like Kahnweiler for Picasso in 1912–14) but

14

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act as a wholesaler; that is, have several antennas exhibit and sell the artist’s works in Germany (in Kahnweiler’s case: Heinrich Thannhauser, Otto Feldmann, Hans Goltz, and Flechtheim), and another in America (Michael Brenner and Robert Coady).82 Dealers typically banded together to corner the market for a given artist in different locations (for a time), as was the case when Picasso was represented by Rosenberg in Paris and Wildenstein in New York in the 1920s. In other words, collaboration went hand in hand with the concept of exclusivity. If anything, we ought to talk of monopolistic collusion, or oligopoly.83 Dealers frequently obtained consignments from, and lent paintings to, their competitors. Exclusive contracts meant that a given gallery had to work with the monopoly holder in order to borrow works from that coveted stock if it wished to exhibit them or had prospective buyers. The monopoly holder often depended on sales by peers abroad to expand a dwindling client base at home. This was a major facet of dealers’ activity: much back and forth occurred regarding related matters, such as shipping, insurance, customs, storage, exhibition reviews, prospective buyers, and sales commissions. Primary dealers also depended on the designated expert (a dealer) at Hôtel Drouot sales if one of their artists’ artworks came up at auction in their effort to maintain its market value (cote) and stake their claim. But Parisian dealers had no leverage when it came to private sales and little access to auctions in other countries, unless colleagues were willing to intervene on their behalf. This is what happened, for instance, on the occasion of the sale of John Quinn’s estate in 1924: the dealer Joseph Brummer, who assisted the executors in New York, enabled Paul Rosenberg—then Picasso’s primary dealer in Paris—to acquire all Quinn’s Picassos. Monopolies were sustained by agreements between competitors. Dealers paid commissions to colleagues who sent information or clients their way. They kept each other abreast according to complex and shifting webs of allegiance, within Europe and beyond. Two or more dealers could make joint purchases together and pass exhibitions from one gallery to another. Such agreements between perceived rivals were meant to restrict competition, keep cost prices low and asking prices high, and increase value by creating scarcity. Finally, from 1901, the most important Parisian dealers belonged to a corporation/syndicate through which they met regularly (as mentioned above), which included foreign members, fostered collaboration around shared interests, and encouraged working relationships.84 The notion that an acquisitive disposition and bitter rivalry pitched dealers against each other is largely contradicted by the evidence of countless mutually beneficial professional interactions. While the modus operandi of any market economy is undeniably self-interest, which implies a healthy dose of competition, it also typically relies on a complex fabric of transnational business relations when it comes to sourcing and distributing the goods. Notwithstanding their respective territories, art dealers often acted in accord to safeguard mutual interests and obtain lucrative deals. They actively sought reciprocally profitable arrangements through professional relations that oscillated between a national association and an international cartel. This conception of the art trade—when dealers curtailed competition by jointly controlling supply in order to keep prices high—characterizes a bygone era when

Introduction

15

anticompetitive practices had not yet been outlawed, or were at least broadly tolerated. Indeed the legal protection of competition, which favors the consumer, did not become the norm in France until after the Second World War.85 In the period under consideration here, art dealers did not fully compete, they joined forces at the expense of buyers. Cartels like those operated by art dealers at the time would be illegal today; therefore one generally assumes that art dealers in the past competed openly when in fact very often they did not. In an exhaustive article titled “The Legal Protection of Competition in France,” Stefan A. Riesenfeld summarized the period thus: During the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century there existed only limited concern about the curbing of such activities and, at some periods between the two world wars, concentration and cartelization were even fostered officially, especially by administrative action. … The passage of the Law of 1884 establishing full freedom of association was deemed to be a legislative recognition of the principle that trade associations and combinations for economic purposes were not illegal per se and resulted in, or at least strengthened, a doctrinal and decisional trend of differentiating between “good” and “bad” cartels. [Cartels] were found not to be illicit even where they engaged in price-fixing, division of markets, or restriction of production … The economic crisis of the thirties and the impact of World War II resulted in a further strengthening of the status and role of the cartels. … As a result, the [French] government between 1935 and 1938 proceeded to foster or even require cartelization in a number of industries and trades.86

Alliances were entered into for commercial purposes, either informally and temporarily or through formal contracts and long-term agreements, and they typically reached far and wide. As Jensen put it, in a rare instance where cooperation is acknowledged in the literature, albeit without any elaboration: Durand-Ruel and Goupil pursued the rich new markets of the industrial elites then coming to cultural prominence in Brussels, Manchester, and New York. As a class they represented a mere handful of dealers (e.g., Goupil, Durand-Ruel, and Francis Petit in Paris; William Agnew and Gambart in London), overtly competitors, but nonetheless linked in a cooperative net of purchases, loans, and contacts that spread from Paris to London, Brussels, and New York.87

Dealers consistently and deliberately pursued and maintained an international presence through ongoing partnerships as well as punctual deals among peers which, as extant art dealers’ archives show, were the norm rather than the exception. This was compounded by the fact that during these two centuries, France was forced to counter the devastating effects of revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871), wars (1803–15, 1870, 1914–18, and 1939–45), inflation (impacting Scandinavia and Germany in the 1920s), as well as periods of dire and protracted financial crisis (following the Panic of 1873, the stock market crash of 1882 and that of 1929), which stalled the art market locally or globally. These were also the years when American

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collectors’ interest and purchasing power increased steadfastly, from the Gilded Age onward. The social, political, and economic turmoil in France rendered transatlantic trade not just desirable, but necessary. Increasingly, the onus was on dealers to buy on one side of the ocean and sell on the other, which ultimately spelled the “catastrophic diaspora” of French modernism.88 Savvy French dealers opened branches in London—such as Goupil (with Ernest Gambart, 1841), Durand-Ruel (1870), Michel Knoedler (1908), Nathan Wildenstein (1925), and Paul Rosenberg (1934)—as well as other European cities. Many also opened branches in New York, such as Goupil (1848, owned by Michel Knoedler from 1857), Durand-Ruel (1888), Wildenstein (1903), Jacques Seligmann (1914), Bignou (1935), and Rosenberg (1940), and their center of gravity progressively shifted in that direction. The promotion of Impressionist and modernist art outside of France relied not only on the London and New York branches of French firms, however, but also on tactical alliances between Parisian galleries and foreign dealers. Such bridges were vital to increase their odds when both sourcing and marketing their stock as they tapped into a limited pool of buyers and sellers. The scope of this phenomenon is broader than directors at the helm of various branches for any given gallery or their employees shipping artworks back and forth between Paris, London, and New York, and updating each other on a regular basis. It does not merely involve the affiliations of agents and scouts to established firms, although they are certainly relevant, but oligopolies binding discrete, independent galleries. It involves cross pollination between separate galleries; webs of relationships between distinct firms that encouraged the movement of art across borders to draw in new patrons. We are talking about dealers who might have been expected to compete against each other sharing a scout, making joint acquisitions, and co-organizing shows to increase their buying power and expand their client base (e.g., Bignou in Paris working with Reid & Lefevre in London as well as Knoedler and Seligmann in New York). We are talking about fluid arrangements between various associates who implicitly trusted each other and relied on one other, with agents acting as connectors and catalysts. We are talking about the merging of different solar systems, so to speak, each with its own planets and moons—like Knoedler, with satellites Colnaghi in London and Matthiesen in Berlin, working with the firm Seligmann & Co which had its own associates—to form a constellation. Joint ventures hinged on trust; they meant co-dependence, prompted information sharing, and ultimately facilitated better control of the market. Transnational partnerships  required a good handle on constant currency fluctuation (dealers always juggled with French francs, German marks, British pounds, and US dollars when recording cost, asking, and sale prices) and transactions often hinged on such fluctuations.89 Dealers invested a considerable amount of time and resources in information gathering, record keeping, and communication, while the asymmetry of information was a pillar of the market. Secrecy and confidentiality were key, while collecting, recording, and sharing information among associated dealers was an essential component of the job.90 One can find evidence of dealers working together— sporadically or systematically—in gallery ledgers, correspondence, and internal memos where a continual stream of news—new or renewed agreements, conversations,

Introduction

17

opportunities, prices quoted, and causes for mistrust—was shared quickly and effectively. They document the proactive and interactive role of Parisian dealers and their omnipresence on the international scene, which profoundly impacted the history of collecting, and ultimately the history of art.91

Modernism and Internationalism As Moulin stated, it is revealing that Leonardo da Vinci died in the arms of the king of France, François I, whereas Antoine Watteau died in the arms of his dealer, Gersaint.92 What she meant is that our notion of the art dealer as a benevolent patron to his artist is a relatively new phenomenon. Royal and church patronage gave way to an open market economy, which has itself evolved through various phases. The focus of this book is merely one such phase, namely, the transnational marketing of contemporary art from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries when Paris was its fulcrum, with a special focus on webs of alliances among dealers. The history of why French art came to be universally sought after is interesting in and of itself, but it falls outside the purview of this book. Suffice it to say, its export on a grand scale started during the French Revolution, when countless chateaux and hôtels particuliers were emptied of their contents as aristocratic families fled the country. The outflow of eighteenth-century French paintings and decorative arts—in particular on the London market, which competed with Paris then—is exemplified by the Wallace collection and Waddesdon Manor.93 This was soon followed in the nineteenth century by a demand for academic painting, Barbizon school and Impressionism, and while many foreign collectors came to Paris, these paintings were simultaneously the object of a deliberate wave of export engineered by dealers. Ever since the craze for all things French has been on par with the quest for all things Italian (Antiquity, Renaissance), or for Flemish paintings and the Dutch Golden Age since their heyday. However, as more and more artists from other countries came to the French capital and stayed for years or for life—from Cassatt and van Gogh to Constantin Brancuși, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso, to name but a few—the art produced in Paris came to epitomize an international ethos. French art gave way to the School of Paris, which was universally relevant. As Harold Rosenberg put it: What was done in Paris demonstrated clearly and for all time that such a thing as international culture could exist. Moreover, that this culture had a definite style: the Modern … Because Paris was the opposite of the national in art, the art of every nation increased through Paris.94

And the Paris art market concurrently expanded into a global web, until the Second World War. The internationalization of modernism and the market coincided. The provocative title of Serge Guilbaut’s 1985 book How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art implies that New York appropriated Paris’s leading position.95 Yet New York had claimed modern art well before the Second Word War—Guilbault’s terminus post

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market

quem—through sheer purchasing power. Before America produced and celebrated its own art in earnest, plenty of French artworks were acquired by Americans by the 1850s, and with renewed energy after the Armory Show of 1913. Paris hemorrhaged its modernism, so that much of its art and many of its artists were in New York when the latter arrogated the title of capital of the art world. If not in terms of production, in terms of consumption America had been growing into the title for a century. And the market continued to evolve and change. As the title of this book intimates, today there is no longer one presumptive capital but many nuclei: the market is now global. As the increasing number of worldwide art fairs dedicated to contemporary art indicates, nowadays there are countless hubs throughout the world where dealers and collectors congregate, which challenge the prior Eurocentric or Western-centric approach.96 Yet as this book will demonstrate, even while it had a capital, the art world’s ethos was truly international already. What characterizes the historical art market in France is that it was essentially shaped by, and has come to be identified with, modernist art; that is, Impressionism, Neo-, and Post-Impressionism—which represented a sharp turn in terms of unapologetic innovation—entwined with the birth of twentieth-century modernism. Such “isms” are subsumed under historical Modernism, understood as the “living” art of the period— distinct from our understanding of “contemporary art” as postwar art. During most of the twentieth century this distinction did not exist: the word “modern” connoted innovation, renewal, and novelty; modern meant new, “of today,” that is, contemporary and universal. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, founded in 1929 as a repository for contemporary art, thus had a conflicted relationship with the notion of a permanent collection, since by definition contemporary art is perpetually superseded and renewed: what’s new for one generation is old to the next. As a result, in the 1930s and 1940s MoMA determined that it should divest itself of artworks that were twenty years old or more— works by Cezanne, van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso—and ought to transfer them to the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met).97 And so they did, until they realized they shouldn’t, because historical Modernism is a discrete phenomenon, as distinct from postwar art as the Renaissance is from the Baroque. Today The Met has a department of “Modern and Contemporary Art,” for instance, acknowledging the distinction.

From Market to Museum As Moulin stated, “the purpose of art market studies is to reflect on priceless things.”98 More specifically, when it comes to modernist art, its purpose is to study the fascinating process through which it morphed from worthless to invaluable, as it was characteristically deemed offensive and unsellable at first. From the time subversive artists are still unrecognized to the time when they are renowned, especially posthumously, their artworks can appreciate considerably. Paintings are commodities for as long as they pass through the hands of dealers and collectors, but are regarded as invaluable once they enter the hallowed walls of museums, their validity being henceforth unquestionable and their value inestimable.

Introduction

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The evolution from hors de prix (pricey) to sans prix (priceless) parallels the move from market to museum. Yet they are the same objects—only our point of view changes. The market banks on this hope that at the end of an object’s trajectory is the ultimate consecration brought about by its inclusion in a museum. Some have thus argued that “museums are little more than the warehouses of the art market”99; others that the art market depends on the museum to uphold standards of quality.100 And because museums feature art that is deemed exemplary, the market today often rides the wave of a museum exhibition. But the market impacts the museum as much or more than the museum stimulates the market. The ideological dealers and entrepreneurial promoters discussed above acquired, showed, and sold paintings regardless of their perceived value, or lack thereof, but they did not just hope that the artist’s merit would ultimately be recognized— they purposefully provided visibility, manufactured reputations, and built value. They carefully placed works in the best collections so they would end up in museums, and sometimes placed them in museums themselves.101 In that sense, the art gallery was the antechamber of the museum—more specifically, the Parisian gallery was the antechamber of museums worldwide.102 The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections are shaped by gifts from the likes of Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer; the National Gallery of Art’s by gifts such as Chester Dale’s, and the taste of these American collectors is upheld as the canon, but one has to recall that these private collections originated in and depended on the art market. Paris-based galleries were procurers, galvanizers, advisers, and influencers. Durand-Ruel, Vollard, Bernheim-Jeune, Kahnweiler, and countless other Parisian dealers held the treasures—back when they were vilified—that found pride of place in private collections, then in museums all over the world. The collector’s role is more readily acknowledged than the dealer’s, but amateurs implicitly depended on galleries and agents to procure artworks as well as for advice, and often emulated dealers’ collections at a time when museums could not be relied on to see modern art.103 There was little opportunity to appreciate such art outside of commercial galleries and private collections for most of the period in question.104 Just as the Impressionists created ahead of the fledgling modern-art market, the market operated ahead of the creation of museums of modern art. Modernist art didn’t enter French national collections for a long time.105 The French state’s rejection of a large part of the Caillebotte bequest in 1894–96 indicates how far public opinion was from accepting Impressionism then, let alone holding it in high regard. On the occasion of the exhibitions of Post-Impressionism in London in 1910 and 1912, the Sonderbund in Cologne in 1912, and the Armory show in New York in 1913, the modernists were still vilified. By the second half of the twentieth century things had changed drastically; the same artworks were now in museum collections and their market value had increased considerably. Today in Europe most museums comprise collections whose origins predate the modern art market, including royal collections, state and church commissions, war loot, colonial pillage, and acquisitions from national academies and official salons, but most artworks from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries passed through

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dealers. In America, museum collections are composed of objects that for the most part passed through the market and followed the trajectory from pricey to priceless. Indeed, the triumph of the art museum coincides with that of the art market. As a result, we have come to think that the logical trajectory of “museum-quality” art, especially Impressionist and modern art, is to leave the art market and enter a museum collection where it can be enjoyed by all. Yet whereas in Europe an artwork’s entrance into a museum truly represents its definite removal from the market—since it becomes the inalienable property of the nation—conversely in the United States it remains subject to shifting tastes and calls for liquidity: unless it is part of a gift or bequest with an ironclad stipulation preventing it, at any point an object can be deaccessioned and return to the market.106 As it reverts to the trade, such an object is demoted from invaluable back to marketable (albeit quite valuable given its pedigree, as deaccessioning typically hinges on administrative priorities rather than the object’s intrinsic quality). In terms of what is museum worthy and what is not, Bowness distinguished between the journeyman, who produces art for the market, and the genius, who produces art for museums—whereby he meant a difference of intent and implied that true, uncompromising innovation is unsellable—but it is important to recall that both passed through the market, albeit perhaps not the same dealers.107 Countless museum gems and other museum-quality artworks hail from the Parisian art market and its worldwide network, which therefore deserves to be better understood. Having considered the questions of when, why and how the contemporary-art market took shape, this introduction hopefully provides a useful historical context for the chapters that follow. Whereas prior scholarship essentially focused on how the modern-art market followed the French Academy as a viable support system for contemporary artists from the nineteenth century onward, this book addresses the mechanisms through which the art market ultimately met its goal. If most authors in the past shared the view that rival galleries jealously speculated on innovators and competitively defended their respective monopolies, this book highlights the existence of interactive networks of dealers, some amounting to international cartels, and the crucial role they played in promoting their artists at a transnational level. It gives an account of how, one nexus of peer relationships after another, a powerful web of strategic international trade relations was created before 1950, resulting in an efficient worldwide market whose accomplishments are palpable to this day. Some philanthropic and idealistic art dealers took on the cause of renegade innovators, with much daring, dedication, and persistence, and were ultimately successful thanks to their network abroad. Durand-Ruel and Kahnweiler, for instance, mostly sold Impressionism in America from the 1890s and Cubism in Germany before 1914, respectively, because that’s where the early collectors were. The next generation of entrepreneurial dealers in turn systematically exploited transnational networks of peers, generating demand while controlling supply, and turning modern art into a universally desirable form of cultural production. They played a key role in the emergence of modern art as a central tenet of our cultural landscape.

Introduction

21

Notes 1

2 3

4

5 6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

The chapters of this book essentially reprise papers presented at the conference “Creating Markets, Collecting Art: Celebrating 250 years of Christie’s,” Christie’s, London, July 14–15, 2016, and at a symposium, Christie’s Education, New York, March 17–18, 2017. See Rabinow 2006; Patry 2014; Monnier 2017. There were few women dealers in the period under consideration (most were active post-war), and many fall outside the purview of this book (like Berthe Weill or Johanna Ey, for instance), which focuses on pre-war global networks. The topic of women dealers was recently addressed head on in the colloquiums “Women Art Dealers, 1940–1990,” Christie’s Education, New York, May 17–18, 2019, and “Marchandes d’art, XIXe-XXIe siècles,” Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, November 13–15, 2019; or the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition “Galeries du 20e Siècle” (spring 2019–April 5, 2020). American collectors increasingly appreciated modernist trends, like George A. Lucas, Henry Walters, Abram Eisenberg, Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer, Bertha and Potter Palmer, Claribel and Etta Cone, Stephen C. Clark, Duncan Phillips, Chester Dale, etc. See Watson 1992: 219. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 18, 51 n. 43. Note that Hoog 1991: 28 places the start of the market’s separation between old and new art around 1830–40. On the creation of the Syndicat des négociants en tableaux modernes, see “Un nouveau syndicat d’art moderne,” Le Bulletin de la vie artistique, October 1, 1925: 434–5. The successor of the Syndicat des négociants en tableaux modernes since 1947 is the Comité professionnel des Galeries d’art; see Verlaine 2017. The successor of the Chambre syndicale des négociants en objets d’art, tableaux, et curiosités, in 1949, was the Syndicat national des antiquaires, négociants en objets d’art, tableaux anciens et modernes—which blurred the distinction. Letter from Floriane Dauberville (Archives Bernheim-Jeune) to the author, November 7, 2019. The term “modernist” here is accepted in the general sense of innovation understood as a negation of or break with tradition, encompassing Impressionism, PostImpressionism and twentieth-century modernism. Burger 1984: 59–63, takes exception to this Anglo-American view, stating that “Newness as an aesthetic category existed long before Modernism” (witness the seventeenth-century quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns) but it is an accepted art historical category for the period under consideration here. Bowness 1989: 39. White & White 1965: 94–8, 150–2. Watson 1992: xxvi. White & White 1965: 94. Galenson & Jensen 2002. Jensen 1994: 6. Jensen 1994: 15. A variant is the painter, critic and curator Roger Fry’s interpretation in “Art and Commerce” (1926) according to which state- and church-sanctioned art, and contrived, stereotypical, crowd-pleasing artworks—which he calls “opifacts,” produced by “opificers”—ought to be distinguished from genuine art, which is uncompromising and inherently disruptive and can only appeal to the true aesthete.

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16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43

Pioneers of the Global Art Market In his opinion, true art appeared in “Paris in the period 1830–70, which he found to be one of the most fertile environments for artistic creativity in modern times.” Goodwin 1998: 20, 48 & passim. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 14. White & White 1965: 128. On reactionary French collectors versus purchases by foreigners, see Moulin 1967: 237; Jensen 1994: 50. White & White 1965: 95. White & White 1965: 126, also 150, 158. Many others existed, such as the Salon de l’Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs (1881); the Exposition des arts incohérents (1882–92); the Salon de la Rose + Croix (1892–97); the Salon de l’art nouveau (1895–96), the Salon d’Hiver (1897–1950), etc. On artist-generated salons and group shows, see Galenson & Jensen 2002: 24–32 & passim; White & White 1965: 140–9; Jones 2016: 52–63. See Jensen 1994: 4–9, 32–3, 212–13, 219–20 & passim, on the impact of authors Théodore Duret, Richard Muther, Julius Meier-Graefe, Hugo Von Tschudi, and Roger Fry. Also Watson 1992: 92–4, 98, 160, 178 & passim. See Tabarant 1963: 12–13, 155. White & White 1965: 79–80. Bernier 1977: 58. Hoog 1991: 64–5. Jensen 1994: 34–5, 52. Monnier 1995: 150, 153–62. Helmreich 2011. Penot 2017. When Roger Fry introduced (and coined) Post-Impressionism in England with his two exhibitions at the Grafton Galleries, “Manet and the Post-Impressionists” in 1910 and the “Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition” in 1912, they still caused virulent criticism. White & White 1965: 150 ff. White & White 1965: 99. White & White 1965: 123, also cites such comments by Emile Zola, Théodore Duret, etc. White & White 1965. Pomian 1992. Jensen 1994. FitzGerald 1996. White & White 1965: 150–1. Jensen 1994 brilliantly expounded this conundrum. White & White 1965: 2, also 150ff. White & White 1965: 121ff, also 95ff. Bowness 1989: 11ff. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 27, also 31, 32–5. Jensen 1994. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 44. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 32. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 38–9. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 39. See Laura D. Corey, “The Many Hats of Mary Cassatt: Artist, Advisor, Broker, Tastemaker,” in Catterson 2017. White & White 1965: 111. White & White 1965: 97. Herbert 2007. Galenson & Jensen 2002. Bowness 1989. Moulin 1967: 35–8. Jensen 1994: 51–2, 60. Monnier 1995: 181–2. Rouge-Ducos 2013: 133–46. On the impact of Hôtel Drouot on galleries, from its foundation in 1852, see Léa Saint-Raymond, “Le marché secondaire de l’art: Un aimant pour les galeries parisiennes?”: 35–44, and Lukas Fuchsgruber, “Expertise et circulation: Les marchands d’art et la fondation de l’hôtel Drouot”: 45–62, in Vernerey-Ivanoff 2018. See McClellan 1996 regarding eighteenth-century Paris. Hoog 1991: 75ff. Monnier 1995: 276.

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44 Herbert 2007. 45 See White & White 1965: 125, 140, 144–5. Jensen 1994: 3. The Cézanne exhibition at Vollard’s on rue Laffitte in 1895, for instance. 46 The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d’Automne, for instance. 47 Jensen 1994: 15; see also 16, 107–37. 48 Jensen 1994: 16. 49 White & White 1965: 99. 50 On these dealers’ New York branches, see Watson 1992: 219–21, and Goldstein 2000: 77–93. 51 Bernier 1977: 37–42. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 17–20. 52 On de Hauke, see Chauffour chapter in Catterson 2017. 53 Although after Tanguy’s death in 1894 the sale of his “collection” brought in an impressive sum. 54 Monnier 1995: 287 evokes the marchand-collectionneur, taking as example Paul Guillaume. Guillaume was described as a collector in his 1927 interview in Feuilles Volantes—within a series featuring art dealers. 55 See Monnier 1995: 152–3. Sofio 2018. 56 Moulin 1967: 99. Moulin 1992: 254. 57 Gee 1981: 79. 58 See Moulin 1967: 95–9. For definitions of the marchand en chambre by André Salmon and others, see “Adolphe Basler, critique, marchand d’art et galeriste” in Vernerey-Ivanoff 2018: 262–3, 266–7, 274. 59 As described by McClellan 1996: 439–53. See also Pomian 1992: 20–3. Gersaint was famously a paternal, supportive primary dealer to the painter Antoine Watteau. 60 Hoog 1991: 28–9 mentions that Balzac, in Le Cousin Pons (1848) identified three types of dealers: the brocanteur, the antiquarian, and the erudite collector, the latter category comprising both the amateur and the professional. Going back to the eighteenth century, the art dealer styled himself as a glorified collector with more flair and expertise than business savvy, although he was conversely described as mercenary. 61 See Vernerey-Ivanoff 2018: 45–62 (Fuchsgruber). Note that experts have their own association, the Syndicat français des experts professionnels en oeuvres d’art; see Moulin 1992: 213–14. 62 Catalogues raisonnés authored by dealers count examples such as Gersaint on Rembrandt (1751); Vollard on Renoir (1918), and Morisot (unfinished); Georges Wildenstein on Lancret (1924), Manet (1932), Ingres (1956), Fragonard (1960), Morisot (1961), and Chardin (1969); Christian Zervos on Picasso (1932–78); Cesar M. de Hauke and Hector Brame on Seurat (1961); Daniel Wildenstein on Gauguin (1964), Boucher (1976), Manet (1975), and Monet (1996); Bernheim-Jeune on Bonnard (1965), Renoir (1983–2014), and Matisse (1995); Germain Seligman on La Fresnaye (1969); Klaus Perls on Jules Pascin (1984) and Chaim Soutine (1993); Feilchenfedlt on Cézanne (1996), etc. Not to mention those sponsored by dealers, like de Hauke and Brame (who published the series “Les artistes et leurs œuvres” including Degas in 1947–49 and Lautrec in 1971), Paul Rosenberg, Durand-Ruel (Sisley in 1959, Renoir in 1971), and especially the Wildenstein institute (Wildenstein-Plattner now). The vast majority date from the twentieth century when artworks could be photographed. As late as with Adolphe Tabarant’s Histoire catalographique de Manet (1931) the artworks were described instead of reproduced.Catalogues raisonnés of course are a great marketing tool (when

24

63

64

65

66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Pioneers of the Global Art Market reliable): they posit the dealer as an authority with scholarly expertise; they are typically the last word on attribution, authenticity, and provenance; they can make or break a sale, and can considerably increase a works’ value. Moreover, while gathering information over the course of many years, authors reinforce and expand their circle of contacts as they visit numerous collections, galleries, and museums in various countries. It is undoubtedly also a tribute to the Parisian art market that there are more catalogues raisonnés dedicated to nineteenth-century French artists than any others. Boime 1976: 331–50. Moulin 1967: 146. Moulin 1992: 46–7. Jensen 1994: 22ff, 34ff, 42. Monnier 1995: 184–6. Galenson & Jensen 2002: 20–2. Note that the term originated with Schumpeter’s theorization (in 1942) of entrepreneurial and monopolistic practices centering on innovation (Schumpeter 1951: 126ff). Moulin’s equivalent is the maquignon (Moulin 1967: 143). The marchand-éditeur produced and distributed prints: paintings and related copyrights were acquired by dealers to sell prints at a time when the market favored reproductions. This type is best exemplified by Adolphe Goupil and associates Henry Rittner (from 1827), Leon Boussod (from 1855), René Valadon (from 1878), Michel Manzi and Maurice Joyant (from 1888), and employee Theo van Gogh (from 1873). See Moulin 1967: 53ff. Monnier 1995: 152–8. Penot 2017. Jensen 1994: 49, 54–6. White & White 1965: 126–9. Moulin 1967: 133, 144, 460. Moulin 1992: 47. Monnier 1995: 283. Note that Moulin 1967: 109ff, 117–18, 134, 147–8, also calls Durand-Ruel, Vollard and Kahnweiler entrepreneurs, intermediaries, fighters, facilitators, defenders, pépiniéristes (nurserymen), and orchestra conductors. Kahnweiler was called a “défenseur” (defender) of Cubism in Tériade’s 1927 interview with the dealer in Feuilles Volantes. Moulin 1967: 117. White & White 1965. Galenson & Jensen 2002. Moulin 1992: 254. Moulin 1967: 114. Jensen 1994: 55. Jensen 1994: 56. One example is Vollard, who purchased the contents of Picasso’s studio several times before the First World War. Vollard held two Picasso exhibitions, in 1901 and 1910, but one can’t say that he actively engineered the circulation of Picasso’s work, as Kahnweiler and Rosenberg did. He corresponds to Moulin’s “pépiniériste” (Moulin 1967: 144). On Durand-Ruel’s devotion to his artists, in particular Monet’s statement that the dealer “was looked upon as mad and nearly attacked by bailiffs on our account,” see Goldstein 2000: 87. White & White 1965: 124–6. Moulin 1967: 114–15, 126–32, 219–21, 452–62. Bernier 1977: 37–42. Jensen 1994: 35, 52–4, 61. Monnier 1995: 178–9. See Jensen 1994: 51–2. Regarding the speculative aspect, see FitzGerald 1996: 15–46, on the 1914 sale of La Peau de l’Ours. Paul Rosenberg, for instance, stated: “I find a canvas beautiful when it sells.” Zervos, Les Feuilles volantes, no. 9 (1927): 1. Moulin 1967: 143–9 describes additional dealer types. White & White 1965: 95, 98–9, 123–5, 151, 158. Moulin 1967: 29–38, 52, 99–100, 114, 117–19, 126–9, 319, 328, 453–5. Bernier 1977: 52. Jensen 1994: 35, 37, 52–7, 136. Monnier 1995: 177–9. Regarding artist-dealer contracts, see Force 2019: 18–28. Moulin 1967: 52–3.

Introduction 80 81 82 83 84

85

86 87

88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

25

Jensen 1994: 61. See McClellan 1996. Regarding Kahnweiler’s network in Germany, see Force 2020. “Oligopole” and “polypole” are terms used by Moulin 1967: 453. Verlaine 2013 studied postwar dealer associations, but they existed prior to 1940. By 1929 the board of directors of the Syndicat des Négociants en Tableaux Modernes included a Belgian gallery (Breckpot), and a British one (Brown & Phillips); members included international firms such as Tooth & Sons, Seligmann, and Cassirer; and by 1938 Justin K. Thannhauser. Letter from Floriane Dauberville (Archives Bernheim-Jeune) to the author, November 7, 2019. Price fixing was theoretically illegal in France since a 1791 statute (Loi Le Chapelier) promoting freedom of trade, and a 1926 law protecting “the natural play of demand and supply” which was largely unenforced. The first serious attempt to restrict anticompetitive practices was an August 9, 1953 decree, enforced by the Commission technique des ententes, but its focus was taming inflation rather than enforcing competition. Essentially, coalitions that run counter open competition have been strictly illegal since 1986: Ordonnance 86–1243 (December 1, 1986) art. 1: “Concerted actions, understandings, express or implied agreements, or coalitions in any form and for any reason whatsoever, the object of which is to have the effect of preventing, restricting or distorting competition … are prohibited. … Are prohibited under the same conditions the activities of a firm or a group of firms occupying … a dominant position characterized by a monopoly situation” (My translation). This price legislation, enforced by the Conseil de la concurrence, was revised in 2000 and 2001. In 2008, the “Loi de Modernisation de l’Économie” instituted the Autorité de la concurrence. In the United States, the first antitrust regulations are the Sherman Act of 1890, followed in 1914 by the Clayton Act. Riesenfeld 1960: 576, 577, 579. Jensen 1994: 33–4, citing Boime 1976: 331–50. Hoog 1991: 31 lists Durand-Ruel’s strategy of courage and perseverance, which took twenty years to pay off, as resting on four pillars: exhibition catalogues, artist contracts, financial backing, and an international network; however, he is talking about a network of clients. Helmreich 2011: 74, 81 mentions Goupil’s network and “a relative permeability between competitors.” Catterson 2017 addresses transatlantic trade but does not focus on the Parisian market for modernist art, nor on dealer networks—although Chauffour’s chapter does. Jensen 1994: 8, 62. This diaspora is what prompted the French government to institute strict rules regarding the export of valuable artworks, and the right of national museums to claim for themselves artworks that are sold at auction (droit de préemption); see Hoog 1991: 98–101. On exchange rates, see Bernier 1977: 74, and below. See Hoog 1991: 83–7. Cost, asking, and sale prices were often recorded in code. Such records are also a great source of information on dealers whose archives are lost or inaccessible, whose transactions appear in filigree. Moulin 1967: 25. Bernier 1977: 15–24, 28–9. Pomian 1992: 23–4. Rosenberg 1970: 186, 187. Guilbaut 1985. Art fairs are a post–Second World War phenomenon: São Paulo [1951], Brussels [1968]; Basel [1970]; Sydney [1973]; Paris [FIAC, 1974]; Istanbul [1987]; and La

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Habana [1984]. Most of them have appeared further afield in increasingly rapid succession from the 1990s on: Dakar [1990]; Lyon [1991]; Frieze London and Frieze New York [1991]; Taipei [1992]; Sharjah [1993]; Gwangju [1995]; Shanghai [1996]; Ponce [1996]; Florence [1997]; Berlin [1998]; Liverpool [1998]; Montreal [1998]; Yokohama [2001]; Miami [2002]; Moscow [2003]; Marrakech [2005]; Bucharest [2005]; Singapore [2006]; Dubai [2007]; Herzliya [2007]; New Orleans [Prospect, 2008]; KochiMuziris [2010], not to mention virtual and roving ones. See also Verlaine 2013. 97 See Varnedoe 1995: 12–73. 98 Moulin 1967: 9. 99 Goodwin 1998: 32, speaking of Fry who was a curator at The Met in 1906–10. 100 Pomian 1992: 9–15, 29–31. Jensen 1994: 15–16. 101 Many American collectors give or bequeath their collections to museums. Modernart dealers who did include Justin K. Thannhauser who gave 75 paintings to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York in 1965; and regarding The Met alone: Alfred Stieglitz bequeathed over 400 works by European and American modernists in 1949; Heinz Berggruen gifted 90 works by Paul Klee in 1984; Klaus Perls donated 13 works from the School of Paris in 1997; Pierre Matisse bequeathed a little over 100 artworks in 2002. 102 See the Bignou chapter below regarding this expression. 103 In Fontanella 2017 dealers and collectors are on par. Well-documented examples of agents advising collectors include H-P Roché for John Quinn; Paul Guillaume and Georges Keller for Albert Barnes; André Breton and Paul Eluard for Jacques Doucet, etc. 104 Jensen 1994: 59–60. 105 The entrance of contemporary art in French museums at first occurred at various artists’ initiative, a tradition quite unrelated to official endorsement. Examples include JAD Ingres’s eponymous museum in Montauban, Gustave Courbet’s in Montpellier, Gustave Moreau’s in Paris, Léon Bonnat’s in Bayonne, Auguste Rodin’s in Paris, and Claude Monet’s Water Lilies at the Orangerie in Paris. In 1894 Gustave Caillebotte bequeathed his collection of sixty-seven Impressionist paintings to the Louvre which only accepted part of it with reluctance. A precursor, Pierre André Farcy, created a section for modern art at the art museum in Grenoble in 1919 (thanks to artist gifts, then Marcel Sembat’s bequest). The Musée du Luxembourg, France’s first museum dedicated to living artists, opened in 1818 but hardly any modernists entered its collections. The Musée du Jeu de Paume, at first dedicated to foreign painters from 1922, housed the Impressionists in 1947–86. The Musée National d’Art Moderne did not open until 1947; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1961. Outside of France, examples include the Folkwang Museum in Essen which opened in 1927, the MoMA in New York in 1929, and the Museum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo in 1938. 106 See Moulin 1992: 16. Hoog 1991: 44–8, 98–101. Thielecke & Winter 2019: 325–7. 107 Bowness 1989: 9. Note that Bowness’s journeyman recalls Fry’s “opificer,” see above, note 15.

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Bibliography Bernier 1977. Georges Bernier. L’art et l’argent: Le Marché de l’art au XXe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977. Boime 1976. Albert Boime. “Entrepreneurial Patronage in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Enterprise and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France, edited by Edward C. Carter II, Robert Foster and Joseph N. Moody, 331–50. Baltimore, MD & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Bowness 1989. Alan Bowness. The Conditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame. London: Thames & Hudson, 1989. Burger 1984. Peter Burger. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Catterson 2017. Lynn Catterson, ed. Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940. Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets 2. Leiden & Boston, MA: Brill, 2017. FitzGerald 1996. Michael C. FitzGerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. Fletcher & Helmreich 2011. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–1939. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 2011. Fontanella 2017. Megan Fontanella. Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2017. Force 2019. Christel H. Force. “Intellectual Property and Ownership History.” In Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce, 17–36. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Force 2020. Christel H. Force. “Aux origines de la rencontre entre Cubisme et ‘art nègre’: Otto Feldmann, promoteur de Picasso en Allemagne avant 1914.” In Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, vol. II: Berlin, edited by Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, 74–108. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Galenson & Jensen 2002. David W. Galenson and Robert Jensen. “Careers and Canvases: The Rise of the Market for Modern Art in the Nineteenth Century.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, no. 9123 (September 2002): 3–55. Gee 1981. Malcolm Gee. Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting: Aspects of the Parisian Art Market between 1910 and 1930. New York: Garland Pub, 1981. Goldstein 2000. Malcolm Goldstein. Landscape with Figures: A History of Art Dealing in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Goodwin 1998. Craufurd D. Goodwin, ed. Art and the Market: Roger Fry on Commerce in Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Guilbaut 1985. Serge Guilbaut. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Helmreich 2011. Anne Helmreich. “The Goupil Gallery at the Intersection between London, Continent, and Empire.” In The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–1939, edited by Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreigh, 65–84. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011. Herbert 2007. Robert L. Herbert. “Impressionism, Originality, and Laissez-Faire.” Radical History Review 38 (1997): 7–15. Reprinted in Critical Readings in Impressionism

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and Post-Impressionism. Edited by M. Tomkins Lewis, 23–9. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Hoog 1991. Michel Hoog and Emmanuel Hoog. Le marché de l’art. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991. Jensen 1994. Robert Jensen. Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Johnston & Johnston 2000. Sona K. Johnston and William R. Johnston. “The Collectors.” In Ingres to Matisse: The Triumph of Painting, edited by Sona K. Johnston and William R. Johnston, 9–38. London: Scala, 2000. Exhibition catalogue. Jones 2016. Kimberly A. Jones. “Paris Salons in the Nineteenth Century.” In Documenting the Salon: Paris Salon Catalogs, 1673–1945, edited by John Hagood: 45–65. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art Library, 2016. McClellan 1996. Andrew McClellan. “Watteau's Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (September 1996): 439–53. Monnier 1995. Gérard Monnier. L’art et ses institutions en France de la Révolution à nos jours. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. Monnier 2017. Bruno Monnier and Anne Sinclair. 21 rue La Boétie: Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Léger. Paris: Hazan, 2017. Exhibition catalogue. Moulin 1967. Raymonde Moulin. Le marché de la peinture en France. Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1967. Moulin 1992. Raymonde Moulin. L’Artiste, l’institution et le marché. Paris: Flammarion, 1992. Patry 2014. Sylvie Patry, ed. Paul Durand-Ruel: Le pari de l'impressionnisme. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2014. Exhibition catalogue. Penot 2017. Agnes Penot. La maison Goupil: Galerie d’art internationale au XIXe siècle. Paris: Mare et Martin, 2017. Pomian 1992. Krzysztof Pomian. “Introduction: L’art entre le musée et le marché.” In Le Commerce de l’art de la Renaissance à nos jours, edited by Laurence Bertrand Dorleac, 9–33. Besancon: La Manufacture, 1992. Rabinow 2006. Rebecca A. Rabinow, ed. Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Exhibition catalogue. Riesenfeld 1960. Stefan A. Riesenfeld. “The Legal Protection of Competition in France.” California Law Review 48, no. 4 (October 1960): 574–95. Rosenberg 1970. Harold Rosenberg. “The Fall of Paris” (1940). In The Tradition of the New, edited by Harold Rosenberg, 185–94. London: Paladin, 1970. Schumpeter 1951. Joseph A. Schumpeter. Capitalisme, socialisme et démocratie. Paris: Payot, 1951. Sofio 2018. Séverine Sofio. “Les marchands de couleurs au XIXe siècle, marchands ou experts?” Ethnologie française 1 (2017): 75–86; expanded as “Les marchands de couleurs, de l’épicerie à la galerie d’art: Itinéraires urbains d’un commerce ‘indécis’” (Paris, Tours, XIXe siècle) 2018. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01812801/document Tabarant 1942. Adolphe Tabarant. La vie artistique au temps de Baudelaire (1840–67). Paris: Mercure de France, 1963. Originally published in 1942. Thielecke & Winter 2019. Carola Thielecke and Petra Winter. “A Voyage into the HalfKnown: Museum Ethics in the Early Twentieth Century.” In Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce, 323–34. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Varnedoe 1995. Kirk Varnedoe. “The Evolving Torpedo: Changing Ideas of the Collection of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of Modern Art.” In The Museum of Modern

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Art at Mid-Century: Continuity and Change, Studies in Modern Art 5, edited by John Elderfield, 12–73. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1995. Verlaine 2013. Julie Verlaine. “Les associations professionnelles de marchands d’art après 1945: lobbying et modernisation à Paris et à New York.” Le mouvement social 2, no. 243 (April–June 2013): 53–65. Verlaine 2017. Julie Verlaine. Le Comité professionnel des galeries d’art: 70 ans d’histoire, 1947–2017. Paris: Hazan, 2017. Vernerey-Ivanoff 2018. Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, eds. Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, vol. I: Paris. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2018. Vernerey-Ivanoff 2020. Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, eds. Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, vol. II: Berlin. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Vollard 1937. Ambroise Vollard. Souvenirs d’un marchand de tableaux. Paris: Albin Michel, 1937. reprinted in 2007. Watson 1992. Peter Watson. From Manet to Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market. New York: Random House, 1992. White & White 1965. Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White. Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World. New York, London, & Sydney: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965.

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2

Parisian Dealers and the American Market, 1860–1920 Paolo Serafini

Translated by Angelica Modabber

Art market studies have flourished in recent years thanks to the newfound availability of important gallery archives dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Their current accessibility has led to a wide range of new research; in particular, it gave this author the opportunity to study the Parisian art market from 1860 to 1920 based on data culled from an unprecedented range of documents. The breadth and depth of such records not only afford detailed information on specific artworks but also shed light on the broader framework and functioning of the art market, and lend themselves to a new methodological approach and a richer historical analysis of art dealers’ strategies. The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles has played a pivotal role in this analysis from the 1980s, when they started acquiring the archives of several important art galleries that were active in Paris and New York from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Furthermore, the GRI later launched a digitization process that has enabled academics from all over the globe to access and interpret a wide range of verifiable data remotely, go back to them as often as necessary to compare the records of different galleries, and reach data-driven conclusions. The GRI’s best-known digitized archives are those of the Parisian firm Maison Goupil & Cie (later Boussod, Valadon &  Cie) and those of the Knoedler Gallery in New York.1 Other important Parisian gallery records—such as the stock books of Tedesco Frères, Arnold & Tripp, and Bague & Cie, and the photographic albums of Allard & Noel—have not been digitized and are consequently less studied.2 In a 2016 article published in the Getty Research Journal that presented an exhaustive analysis of five of those record groups, I highlighted the fact that they contain ample evidence of collaboration between the principal Parisian galleries of that era, which formed a veritable network.3 A close scrutiny of extant documents I studied in the GRI archives reveals that this web of relationships between galleries is a distinctive element of the nineteenth-century art market that offers a new and interesting context for most transactions—whether it be dealers’ acquisition of works of art from artists (which they secured through exclusive contracts or a right of first refusal), from other dealers (joint

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ownership in particular), or sales (especially abroad)—as well as regarding the circulation of artworks (exhibitions), their authentication, valuation, etc. It is also revealing in terms of the asymmetry of information that art dealers exploited, as they not only monopolized the source of the art but also possessed and capitalized on all the information that impacted an artwork’s value, such as its provenance, attribution, and authenticity. The inherent functioning of these nineteenth-century Parisian galleries having been examined in detail in that article, my main focus here will be the strategies they used to manage their artists’ careers and to sell art to European and American collectors. The role of exclusive contracts and the right of first refusal has largely been established for twentieth-century Paris,4 but their importance in the second half of the nineteenth century has been overlooked. The GRI’s dealer records show that these contracts were not only drawn up to establish a dealer’s monopoly over the works of a given artist, but that they were construed as a key commercial strategy to control the circulation of important artists’ output and to market them as a coherent group. They were designed to identify a given dealer with a specific school of artists as much as to undermine competing galleries and private agents, as well as to enable each Paris gallery to assert its monopoly while simultaneously consolidating business relationships. Any gallery that had an exclusive contract with a given number of artists and paid them a fixed salary (or equivalent) sold most of the artworks directly to private collectors; however it ceded a certain amount to colleagues who sold them for a small percentage of the markup. The primary dealer, who met all overhead expenses, retained the lion’s share of the markup, but it was a profitable arrangement for all as other dealers avoided the cost and risks inherent to exclusive contracts. Dealers thus performed as a consolidated group benefiting from each other’s monopolies, each gallery thus having the possibility of buying or having on consignment exemplary works by the most important painters. In essence, the galleries all worked together to represent prized artists. It is necessary to look at this broader context not only when looking at occasional or recurring transactions between galleries (such as Tedesco Frères and Maison Goupil5) but also when considering interactions between artists and dealers. One example is the voluminous correspondence exchanged between the Arnold & Tripp gallery and artists such as Felix Ziem, Antoine Vollon, Charles Olivier de Penne, and Henry Harpignies.6 Aside from sales and consignments to other galleries, an exclusive contract or the right of first refusal enabled a primary dealer to shape and advance an artists’ career through the organization of monographic or group exhibitions, the publication of catalogues and articles, and sales to important private collections and museums. One example is the Italian artist Alberto Pasini (1826–99), an orientalist whose works depict Istanbul and other Turkish sites, who is well represented in the ledgers of Maison Goupil & Cie (later Boussod & Valadon Cie) with over 300 works of his listed between 1867 and 1899. His correspondence with the Goupil and Boussod firms illustrates an even-keeled relationship and largely consists of a discerning, lifelong dialogue on artistic and commercial questions including an interesting preoccupation with the public’s taste. Given the large number of Pasini works the gallery possessed, Maison Goupil was able to thoroughly manage both the artist’s career and the market for his artworks: Goupil sold a small number to his Parisian peers but mostly tried to

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sell them to or consign them with foreign dealers so as to maintain absolute control in Paris. The American firm M. Knoedler & Co was the first major purchaser for whom Goupil procured Pasini paintings. Knoedler’s initial purchase, in 1867, was the painting Le passage du Gué, and he would eventually acquire as many as eighty-four. He is followed by the English dealer Henry Wallis, who purchased twenty-five. Goupil promoted Pasini’s works by selling his paintings to museums directly but most notably by reproducing them through prints. The production and sale of engravings, lithography, and photogravures reproducing contemporary paintings was the Parisian art market’s primary focus at the time. Large editions of prints were a crucial way of advertising and cashing in on successful, Salon-approved artists’ works, as has been thoroughly expounded in previous scholarship.7 In essence, these new mediums of reproduction were not only fundamental in shaping the public’s reception of art, but also determined the conditions of that reception. Prints made after Pasini’s paintings were primary vehicles for the diffusion of orientalism and together with the canvases themselves they are documents of great artistic, historical, and cultural value. Two of Pasini’s works exhibited in the Salon of 1870 and acquired by Goupil that year exemplify the dealer’s management of an artist’s career and the prototypical trajectories of artworks in those years. Femmes Turques (Les Eaux douces d’Asie sur le Bosphore)8 [Figure 2.1] was primarily known through its reproduction in a remarkable limited-edition Salon catalogue by Goupil printed on luxurious paper, which signaled

Figure 2.1  Alberto Pasini, Femmes Turques (Les Eaux douces d'Asie sur le Bosphore), private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai.

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the importance, uniqueness, and artistic value of the work and facilitated sales—a marketing strategy often employed by French merchants in the nineteenth century.9 On the other hand, the painting Mosquée de Jeni Djami was sold two years later to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes—a prestigious repository that legitimized the artist’s talent and success.10 It should be underlined that Pasini was also represented in the United States: Goupil had opened a branch in New York in 1848, and Michel Knoedler took over from 1857, and as a result Pasini had a true and proper dealer in New York. The American interest in Pasini was sparked in 1869, under Knoedler’s direction, although it appears to have centered on the artist’s drawings. Pasini himself believed that drawing was a significant medium of artistic expression, a belief corroborated by the many works on paper exhibited at the Salon during those years. When Goupil was rebranded Boussod, Valadon & Cie in 1884, sales of Pasini’s work in the American market sharply increased. One example, the luminous Escorte du pacha,11 was acquired from the artist on May 24, 1897, for 4,000 francs and sold on July 13 of the same year for 6,400 francs. The subject had been deemed quite appealing for a while as in 1878 the first version of the work (which recently appeared at auction in London12) was sold by Boussod, Valadon & Cie for the remarkable sum of 9,000 francs to Samuel Putnam Avery, a famous American dealer in New York.13 Both Visite à la mosquée14 [Figure 2.2] and Scène de marché15 were acquired by Knoedler in 1885 and 1898, respectively. L’Arrivèe à l’abreuvoir, a lovely miniature,16 was acquired by Knoedler for 2,500 francs on September 12, 1899, and resold for 5,000 francs on January 9, 1900, to Fischel Adler & Schwartz, a New York gallery headquartered at 373 Fifth Avenue. Two more works, Le Marchand d’étoffes and L’Abreuvoir17 were jointly acquired by Knoedler from M. Paul Aulard (Commissaire priseur, 6, rue Saint Mac, Paris) on November 27, 1905. One should also note art dealers’ propensity to promote national schools—such as the Italian school from which the examples cited here are drawn—or to otherwise categorize the identity of a group of artists from the same region who shared the same affinities (such as the School of Barbizon). They carefully promoted such schools under the banner of one or two renowned artists whose sales sustained other more modest or emerging artists belonging to the same group. This marketing strategy also served as a buoy when a successful artist decided to leave a dealers’ stable, as followers could be claimed to be of the same school—as was the case with Giuseppe De Nittis, a hugely successful Italian artist coveted by Parisian collectors who after only two years rescinded his contract with Goupil, depriving him of his best interpreter of Mediterranean light. In order to maintain the relevance of the Italian school and counter the loss of its main representative, Goupil proceeded to contract the artist Alceste Campriani who, if less talented than De Nittis, could adequately approximate his style. Moreover, Goupil asked Campriani to recreate the themes and settings of De Nittis’s paintings, such as in Le Retour du marché (private collection), whose white streets bathed in blinding light recall the first major painting that De Nittis painted for Goupil, Route de Naples à Brindisi (Indianapolis Museum of Art) [Figure 2.3].

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Figure 2.2  Alberto Pasini, Visite à la mosquée, private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai. (See Color Plate 3.)

Finally, the right of first refusal enabled art dealers to test emerging trends against prevailing tastes: buying a few artworks in a new vein and testing them during a trial period was a way to promote recent developments with minimal risk. If one or two works were met with success, more new canvases were shown and often a contract ensued, at times an exclusive one. If the new paintings failed to please, the dealer got

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Figure 2.3  Giuseppe De Nittis, Route de Naples à Brindisi, 1872. Oil on canvas, 27 x 52 cm. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Collection of R. Eno. Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. (See Color Plate 4.)

rid of the works by lowering their price and did not renew the experiment. This was the case with the Italian painter Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859–1933), from whom Goupil acquired paintings depicting the new fashion of bourgeois vacations at the beach on a trial basis at first. The Maison Goupil later acquired a great many works from Corcos by the early 1880s. His paintings greatly appealed to American collectors and his most evocative works reside in private American collections to this day. One of Corcos’s earliest compositions—created, as was often the case, at Goupil’s express request—depicts two figures leaning against a terrace balcony facing a beach, and evokes the emerging trend of seaside resorts whose purpose evolved from therapeutic to recreational [Figure 2.4]. Relying on a network of peers presented two key advantages for a dealer, in addition to multiplying the number of customers: it afforded the possibility of acquiring works with other galleries in joint ownership and led to a consensus regarding their valuation. Gallery records are emphatically clear about the large number of artworks owned jointly by two dealers or more as of the mid-nineteenth century. This practice was a viable way to increase their buying power and assemble a large, varied stock at lower cost, thus meeting more collectors’ needs and expectations. It also enabled them to better sustain a (shared) monopoly over the works by any given artist and to alleviate the financial stakes inherent to such investments. Moreover, co-owned artworks were simultaneously and diligently marketed by several dealers within the network, usually in different countries, and were thus more easily sold. On June 26, 1879, the Maison Goupil in Paris and the Knoedler Gallery in New York signed a contract regarding sales in the United States. This contract stipulated that the two galleries would agree on a fixed price for any given work in order to avoid

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Figure 2.4 Vittorio Matteo Corcos, On the Terrace, private collection. Photo courtesy Studio Paul Nicholls, Milan.

divergences that could damage their respective reputations. This remarkable agreement set a precedent for other art dealers who would adopt and uphold the same type of understanding in the ensuing decades. Indeed only two months later, on September 1, a large number of French, Italian, and English dealers, including Colnaghi, Tooth, Lefevre, and McLean, adhered to the contract in question, forming a formidable coalition that monopolized the market by adopting the same valuations.18

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Another crucial marketing strategy was the economic principle of information asymmetry, meaning that the seller always possessed more information than the client and leveraged this asymmetry to secure sales. Parisian dealers used their upper hand to persuade American collectors to invest in French artists, flaunting their expertise and intimidating knowledge of attribution, authenticity, the importance of a particular work in an artist’s career, its rarity, condition, and provenance, which amateurs could neither know nor verify. Other authors have shed light on how reputed Parisian dealers, whose authority was unquestioned, convinced American collectors to consider these elements as conclusive factors to evaluate the historical and artistic significance and financial value of an artwork. The networks of dealers working together as described above, sharing objects and information among them, effectively represented an ironclad system. The dealer, as expert, was the sole arbiter capable of certifying erga omnes the authenticity and value of an artwork. This is evidenced, for instance, in an 1890 certificate of authenticity for a work by Constant Troyon in a Boussod & Valadon album, titled “Attestation Troyon Cl 288.”19 To certify the authenticity of this work, the Boussod & Valadon gallery consulted a large committee of colleagues including Georges Petit, I. Montaignac, Durand-Ruel, E. Le Roy, and Arnold & Tripp, all of which signed the official document. This expression of shared expertise became one of the strongest weapons of art dealers, ensuring that they always had the last word on the authenticity and worth of an artwork. One example among many that conveys the crucial importance of certificates of authenticity for Parisian dealers and American collectors is as follows: in 1901, Knoedler requested a certificate of authenticity from Galerie E. Le Roy & Cie, Tableaux modernes, in Paris, regarding a painting signed by Paul Clays. Unfortunately, the answer was negative: I, the undersigned, declare having examined, at the request of Messieurs M. Knoedler & Cie, the painting reproduced below, painted on canvas, measuring in height fiftyone centimeters and in width seventy-three centimeters. I affirm that this painting is a gross imitation of P. J. Clays’ hand but is not a work by this eminent artist and that the signature at the upper right is forged. Paris, March 19, 1901. E. Le Roy.20

Art dealers also famously detained other crucial information such as the importance of a work in the artistic trajectory of a painter, the exhibitions it was included in, the books and journals it was published in, and its ownership history. Dealers also determined where and how a painting was presented (such as in a prominent location, and strategically positioned in a room with the proper lighting) thus underlining its importance and luring the prospective buyer. Yet dealers could only control so much: by the 1880s, French collectors began having direct contact with contemporary artists; they were well-informed through newspapers, journals, and monographs about painters’ careers, exhibitions, and reputations, and increasingly well-equipped to judge what to buy and how much to pay. At precisely the same time, Parisian dealers pivoted in earnest toward a comparatively virgin market, namely, American collectors. On this uncharted territory they decided

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what to promote, where, how, and with whom to partner. At first they tried to sell the paintings of those artists whom French collectors neglected, either because they were no longer interested or had never been, as shown in the following example: in 1889 some unidentified Parisian dealers decided to launch the late Antoine Chintreuil (1814–73), a landscape painter heavily influenced by Corot, on the American market. An item published in a popular contemporary art journal, The Collector, reveals their marketing strategy, which was to draw the attention of collectors to a “forgotten” French artist whose works still commanded reasonable prices: Tardily Recognized Talent: A Paris correspondent writes me that there is being made in that city a decided run on the works of Chintreuil, and that the indications are that the dealers are cornering the market. This, of course, means a coming boom for the almost forgotten artist, and should be news worth knowing to American collectors, as Chintreuil appears not infrequently in our sales, and does not command an alarming price.21

The article proceeds to tell the story of a struggling old artist endowed with remarkable talent (“a pupil of Corot, a genuine lover of nature … was received at the Salon only in 1863, ten years before his death”) and culminates with a statement as to how the time had come to rediscover and appreciate his works both from an artistic and a financial standpoint: Chintreuil died in 1873 in comparative poverty, and his pictures, deserving as they are of the highest recognition, have, until now, never been in demand even in the country he honored. They are, for the collector, safe purchases, and for the connoisseur prizes worth securing.22

The late Gustave Courbet (1819–77) was similarly the object of a marketing effort in the United States in 1890 via another article in The Collector with an evocative title: “A Coming Courbet Boom.”23 The strategy is similarly one of “rediscovery,” in this case a now-very-famous painter, then allegedly neglected by his nation, whose monumental artistic talent was worthy of a substantial financial investment: All current indications point to a great trade boom in the pictures of Gustave Courbet in this country. His name, once relegated to the obscurest corners of auction sale catalogues, is now commencing to be widely quoted, and the attention of the amateur is being eloquently invited to his claims for patronage.24

Moreover the strategy here hinges on the asymmetry of information; the article recommends that collectors focus on the most important works, and the “right” period of his career: Courbet was, at his best, almost a great painter … After his headlong plunge into the crimson whirlpool of the Commune, in 1871, he seems never to have recovered his artistic sanity … As works of art, the majority of his pictures from 1870 to

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The item goes on to suggest which works are the most valuable and should be acquired: The collector cannot go astray who will add to his collection pictures by Courbet of the period from 1850 to 1870. Among these will be found his most powerful works, many landscapes of a wonderful charm of color and sentiment, and a few figure pieces of equal merit and force … There is no danger that the discreet collector will be deceived in his collection of Courbet’s pictures, for there was no middle ground with him, and his art was either manifestly good or unqualifiedly bad … Those who buy on the strength of names and advertising alone will, however, be fortunate if they do not burn their fingers.

Between the lines one hears loud and clear that it is only with the guidance of an expert that the validity and value of an artwork can be safely established. We have barely begun to understand these truly innovative marketing strategies and their long-term impact—including the nineteenth-century transatlantic networks mentioned here—which will hopefully be further scrutinized in future studies of the art market. More generally, we have only scratched the surface of the broader topic of networks as they relate to the history of collecting, such as my own research on the pioneer American collectors of Brooklyn. But that is a story for another time.

Notes 1

For the online database, see http://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/stockbooks/servlet. starweb?path=stockbooks/stockbooks.web#? 2 Dieterle family records of French art galleries, 1846–1986, inv. no. 900239, Getty Research Institute (GRI), Los Angeles. Tedesco Frères stock books (boxes 16–18); Arnold & Tripp stock books (boxes 19–21); Bague & Cie (boxes 22 and 23); Allard & Noel photo albums (boxes 64–72). 3 Serafini 2016: 109–34. 4 See “The Legal and Esthetic Significance of an Artist’s Signature” in Force 2019: 18–29. 5 Serafini 2016: 115–16. 6 Arnold & Tripp, letters received, 1881–1896 (inv. no. 840089). 7 McIntosh 2000: 31–43; Tedeschi 2005: 8–19 8 Catalogue of the Salon, Paris, 1870: 285, no. 2181; Getty Research Institute, Goupil / Boussod & Valadon stockbooks (GBV), Book no. 4, no. 4857, p. 71. 9 McIntosh 2008: 77–84. 10 Catalogue of the Salon, Paris, 1870: 285, no. 2182; Getty Research Institute, GBV, Book no. 4, no. 4858, p. 71. 11 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 14: 136, no. 24966, Escorte du pacha, photo no. 5.

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12 Christie’s, London, June 15, 2011, no 296, oil on canvas, 91 × 69 cm, signed and dated at lower left Pasini 1878. 13 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 9: 157, no. 12694. 14 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 11: 125, no. 17346. Acquired on March 16, 1885, for 6,400 francs and sold on July 4, 1885, to M. Knoedler & Co, New York, for 9,500 francs. 15 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 14: 176, no. 25567, photo no. 139. Acquired for 1,250 francs on September 1, 1898, and sold to Knoedler New York for 2,300 francs on October 29, 1898. 16 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 14: 223, nos. 26276 and 26277. 17 GBV Stock Books, Book no. 15: 151, nos. 28652 and 28653. 18 Knoedler Archives, GRI, inv. no. 2012.M.54, Correspondence, Box 351, Folders 1 and 2. 19 “Je sous-signé déclare avoir examiné, à la demande de Messieurs M. Knoedler & Cie, le tableau reproduit ci-dessous, peint sur toile, mesurant en hauteur cinquante et un centimètres et en largeur soixante-treize centimètres. J’affirme que cette peinture est une grossière imitation de la manière de P.J. Clays, mais n’est pas l’œuvre de cet éminent artiste et que la signature apposée à droite, en haut, est fausse. Paris le 19 Mars 1901 E. Le Roy.” Boussod & Valadon Photo Albums, GRI, Album no. 10. 20 Knoedler Archives, GRI, inv. no. 2012.M.54, Correspondence, Box 352, Folder 2. 21 The Collector 1889: 20. 22 The Collector 1889: 20. 23 The Collector 1890: 43. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

Bibliography Force 2019. Christel H. Force. “Authorship as Afterthought: The Periphery of Provenance.” In Collecting and Provenance: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, edited by Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce, 17–36. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. McIntosh 2000. Decourcy E. McIntosh. “Goupil et le triomphe américain de Jean-Léon Gérôme.” In Gérôme & Goupil, art et entreprise, edited by Hélène Lafont-Couturier, 31–43. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000. McIntosh 2008. Decourcy E. McIntosh. “Goupil’s Album: Marketing Salon Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Art, edited by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Laurinda S. Dixon, 77–84. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. Serafini 2016. Paolo Serafini. “Archives for the History of the French Art Market (1860–1920): The Dealers’ Network.” Getty Research Journal 8 (2016): 109–134. Tedeschi 2005. Martha Tedeschi. “Where the Picture Cannot Go, the Engravings Penetrate: Prints and the Victorian Art Market.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 31, no. 1 (2005): 8–19; 89–90. The Collector 1889. “Anonymous.” The Collector 1, no. 3 (December 1, 1889): 20. The Collector 1890. “Anonymous.” The Collector 2, no. 6 (January 15, 1890): 43.

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3

Old and New Worlds: Durand-Ruel and the International Market for Impressionism Jennifer A. Thompson

The collapse of the French stock exchange in spring 1882 triggered more than two years of frenetic activity for the Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922). In Paris he leased elegant new spaces on the fashionable boulevard de la Madeleine and organized novel mid-career retrospectives for Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet, PierreAuguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley in 1883. Much of his energy that year, however, was spent looking outside France for new clients and income to pay

Figure 3.1  Photograph by Dornac (Paul Marsan, French 1858–1941), Paul Durand-Ruel in his Gallery, c. 1910. Photo Archives Durand-Ruel © Durand-Ruel & Cie.

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back substantial loans from the failed Union Générale bank. In April the gallery sent eighty-two Impressionist paintings to London for an exhibition at the Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell Gallery; from May to December they lent eighty Barbizon, academic, and Impressionist pictures to a commercial trade fair in Boston; the firm showed Impressionist canvases in Rotterdam in July; and they helped Berlin dealer Fritz Gurlitt organize the first Impressionist exhibition in Germany by lending twenty-four works in October.1 Despite the limited financial return on these ventures initially— there is only one documented sale of a Degas from the London exhibition—they mark a pivotal turning point in the history of the Durand-Ruel Gallery and the reception of Impressionism.2 Over the next four decades, Durand-Ruel dedicated a large portion of his time to nurturing international markets, later acknowledging that these undertakings “saved” him.3 Today Durand-Ruel is recognized for appreciating the “New Painting” before it became known as Impressionism and for devoting his career to encouraging and steadfastly promoting the work of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Édouard Manet. In the 1860s, upon inheriting a modest gallery and artist-supply store from his parents, he learned with painters of the School of 1830—Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, and others—the value of buying directly from artists and working over several years to build their reputations. The income eventually realized from these investments fueled his acquisition of Impressionist paintings a decade later. Following his first encounter with Monet and Pissarro in London in 1870–71—where all three were sitting out the Franco-Prussian War—he bought ten to thirty paintings a year from each of the artists, offering them stipends in return for first rights to their canvases. Buying large quantities of work by relatively unknown artists—paintings that in many cases he would hold for several decades before finding buyers—held substantial risks and left Durand-Ruel vulnerable to economic downturns. Stubbornly dedicated to seeing “his artists” (and his speculative investments) appreciated, Durand-Ruel’s drive has been likened to a “missionary zeal,” one that forced him to adopt an entrepreneurial approach in order to achieve profitability.4 His turn to international markets, motivated by necessity, served to reinvent his business and ultimately transform it with the introduction of new practices. Durand-Ruel’s international activities, especially those in Britain, the United States, and Germany, have been the subject of recent study, though this scholarship has tended to focus on his efforts in a single country or region.5 This chapter looks across six decades of gallery activity, breaking from geography and chronology to identify some of the strategies the firm employed across markets.6 Durand-Ruel’s personal resilience, integrity, and commitment pervaded the business, laying the groundwork for all his enterprises. Under his leadership, the firm was willing to experiment and to learn through trial and error, ultimately finding success in organizing temporary, short-term exhibitions in hotel rooms or borrowed galleries; offering a range of stock beyond Impressionism; and fostering close relationships with foreign artists, collectors, and advisers—business practices that will be examined in case studies here.

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Reputation Paul Durand-Ruel’s international reputation was established as early as 1869 when an American business journal described him as “universally known for his great capacity of appreciating paintings of all schools, ancient and modern, and chiefly to Americans for his fascinating manners and straight forwardness in his dealings.”7 The personal qualities cited—his breadth of art historical knowledge, trustworthiness, and ability to forge relationships with his peers and clients—are ones on which his international ventures hinged. The role that Durand-Ruel’s personal character and charisma played in his success can be glimpsed in the fondness with which he was described by those who encountered him, such as Cleveland industrialist and collector Alfred Atmore Pope: We are off to Chicago this am. We were just about to go yesterday when DurandRuel—the father and younger son—made their arrival known by telephone from the hotel. I wouldn’t miss seeing them so we remained here. I took them about some and they went to the Wades [Jeptha H. Wade II] but wound up by dining here and spending the evening with us … They passed favorable, very favorable, comments on the pictures but I think they would have enjoyed them more if they had sold them to me (or had sold them to someone else). They like to do business.8

Durand-Ruel’s sons had a similar effect on clients, as when Georges, the youngest, paid a call on railroad executive James Hill in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hill’s daughter described the uncommon visit in her diary: “Mr. G. Durand-Ruel arrived in the morning, stayed all day. Papa stayed at home the entire day.”9 As these anecdotes reveal, Durand-Ruel made a substantial personal commitment to the American business, and when he was in the United States visited collectors across the nation—in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, or Chicago—rather than wait for them to come to New York or Paris. His familiarity with American collectors was such that by 1895, he could list more than forty private collections in the country of which he had a personal knowledge.10 Paul Durand-Ruel himself traveled to the United States nine times, roughly once a year from 1886 to 1898.11 Averaging three to four months in length, the trips generally occurred between November and February, the height of the New York season, and required considerable commitment and fortitude for ten-day transatlantic crossings and train travel across the United States when he spoke limited English. All three of his sons, Joseph, Charles, and Georges, were equally active in America. Charles was initially in charge of the American branch, but following his unexpected death in 1892, his brothers shared responsibility for it, each spending several months a year in the country. When Joseph and Georges were not in New York or traveling across the United States, they could be found in Paris, Berlin, or Brussels.12 The business was designed to facilitate communication and accommodate fluctuating staff; official gallery correspondence was often signed simply “Durand-Ruel” without specifying which family member or associate drafted the letter, thus enabling communication to continue seamlessly as personnel traveled. Later the gallery took advantage of new forms of communication: in the 1890s the New York branch, located

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Figure 3.2  Edgar Degas, The Dancing Class, c. 1870. Oil on wood, 7 3/4 × 10 5/8 in. (19.7 × 27 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.184). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See Color Plate 5.)

at 389 Fifth Avenue, had a Western Union Telegraph office in the basement which enabled them to wire messages to Paris; in 1896 they installed their first telephone.13 Thanks to these means, they were able to maintain dual operations in New York and Paris, building strong personal relationships with clients in each country.

Networking Durand-Ruel’s international efforts depended on a network of contacts with fellow dealers and galleries built early in his career. His Memoirs describe a trip made around 1856 in which, “to expand our contacts, and to keep abreast of what was happening outside Paris, I also travelled to Lyon, Bordeaux, Belgium, Holland, England, Berlin, and Hamburg. I took pictures with me, which allowed me to do some business while making useful acquaintances.”14 No further details of this trip survive, though his arrival in London at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War offers clues as to how he drew on existing friendships for assistance. In 1870, the shipment of fifty crates of paintings from Paris to London was received by Henry Wallis of the French Gallery; the works were stored at Thomas McLean’s New Gallery where they were shown in

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October prior to Durand-Ruel taking a four-year lease on a New Bond Street gallery previously known for displaying German art.15 His professional relationships with Wallis and McLean dated back to 1864 when he began selling them French genre paintings.16 Around the same time, his German and American networks also took shape, and he regularly sold paintings to Berlin dealer and auctioneer Rudolph Lepke or to New York dealers Samuel Avery, William Schaus, and Michael Knoedler.17 The most profitable and enduring of his dealer partnerships was that with Paul and Bruno Cassirer, two cousins based in Berlin. After almost fifteen years of working sporadically with dealers such as Lepke or Fritz Gurlitt, and hosting exhibitions in temporary spaces in Berlin and Hamburg, Durand-Ruel’s partnership with the newly founded Cassirer gallery allowed him to leave the logistics of selling Impressionist paintings in Germany to the Cassirers. Following an introduction by the Paris-based writer Julius Meier-Graefe, the partnership lasted from 1898 until the outbreak of the First World War and involved frequent consignments of twenty to thirty high-quality paintings. The importance of this market can be seen in Durand-Ruel’s distribution of paintings acquired from Monet’s Thames series. Following the long-awaited exhibition of the group in 1904, Durand-Ruel bought twenty-four paintings of Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament. That year he sent two to an exhibition in Ireland; eight were consigned to Cassirer in Berlin; five were transferred to the New York branch; two went to the Durand-Ruel family apartment on the rue de Rome; and the remaining seven were sold by the Paris branch to collectors across Europe.18 Smaller-scale partnerships were also sought: in November 1886, after DurandRuel’s fruitful debut of Impressionism at the American Art Association and the National Academy of Design in New York, he desired contacts in Boston and turned to J. Foxcroft Cole, an American landscape painter who assisted Boston collectors in their acquisition of Barbizon and Impressionist paintings. The two had first met around 1874 when Cole bought a Pissarro for Boston collector Henry Clay Angell.19 A decade later, Cole wrote to Boston dealer J. Eastman Chase, “This note will be handed to you by Mr. Durand-Ruel of Paris. He wishes to exhibit a collection of pictures (by the ‘Impressionists’) in Boston. Will you kindly give him any information you can about the best places for such a purpose.”20 The introduction proved successful since DurandRuel exhibited Impressionist paintings at the Chase gallery in May 1888 and again in March 1891. Thereafter, he frequently sold paintings by Boudin, Monet, and others to Chase, ensuring that his name and stock were well known to Boston-area collectors even when he was not present.21

Traveling Exhibitions The Durand-Ruel gallery did not limit itself to showing its stock exclusively in commercial establishments and made use of hotel rooms as temporary exhibition venues, a practice initiated in the 1870s. In August 1872, Mr. Hourquebie, a gallery associate, took rooms at the Hôtel de la Poste in Brussels with fifty-four Impressionist works from the Paris stock.22 The exercise was repeated in reputable hotels in Chicago,

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Pittsburgh, Denver, Berlin, and Hamburg in the 1880s and 1890s, cities conveniently situated on railroad lines and with increasing industrial wealth.23 Arranging parlors or sitting rooms (and in one instance a bedroom) with paintings offered the gallery low overhead, flexibility, and a nimbleness that had parallels in other commercial ventures in the period.24 In Germany, they selected prestigious hotels such as the Hôtel de l’Europe in Hamburg or the Grand Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin to host displays that were described as “mouth-watering elite exhibitions … the first of their kind.”25 Sometimes these visits led to longer-term arrangements, as in Brussels where the initial hotelbased exhibition was followed by the opening of a gallery branch on the rue de Persil. Following the exuberant (and in retrospect overly optimistic) opening of branch galleries in London, Vienna, and Brussels in 1870–73—all of which closed due to financial crises in the spring of 1873—Durand-Ruel took a more cautious approach. The decision to open a New York branch in 1887 was driven by a 30 percent tariff on artwork that made it prohibitive to import works repeatedly, and more advantageous to keep them in the United States and seek buyers there. Durand-Ruel also needed a visible presence in America since other European dealers began to look to New York in the 1880s: Henry Duveen established a branch of that house in 1886 near Washington Square Park, and in 1888 Boussod and Valadon opened a gallery on Fifth Avenue, three doors from Durand-Ruel’s new space. An 1894 letter to Sara Tyson Hallowell, a curator and art advisor based in Chicago, suggests that Durand-Ruel briefly contemplated a Chicago branch, but abandoned the idea due to

Figure 3.3  Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog, 1901. Oil on canvas, 25 7/8 × 39 7/16 in. (65.7 × 100.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Anne Thomson in memory of her father, Frank Thomson, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Thomson (1954-66-6). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives. (See Color Plate 6.)

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cost.26 A case study of the gallery’s activities in Pittsburgh demonstrates the effectiveness of “pop-up” exhibitions as an alternative to a branch gallery. The transformation of Pittsburgh, “the great Pennsylvania iron metropolis,” into an “American city to which all the peripatetic picture-venders look as an oasis of profit on the way to the great Mecca of Chicago,”27 was driven by the Carnegie International—an annual exhibition of contemporary art by American and European artists that inspired collecting and art appreciation in the region. The Durand-Ruel gallery lent eight paintings by Degas, Monet, Puvis de Chavannes, and Anders Zorn to the first International in 1896—which was attended by Durand-Ruel himself—and participated in subsequent exhibitions. Simultaneously, the firm began to organize one or two exhibitions a year in the city, beginning in January 1896 when twenty odd Barbizon paintings were shown at Gillespie’s Art Gallery for a week, an effort repeated in November in apartments of the Carnegie Building with works by Corot, Millet, Delacroix, Theodore Rousseau, Monet, Anthony Van Dyck, and Franz Hals. The papers reported that it was “a charming exhibition such as we are not accustomed to under the auspices of a dealer at all.”28 The firm returned several more times to the Carnegie Building and the Henry Hotel and advertised regularly in Pittsburgh papers, competing with dealers Samuel Avery, Arthur Tooth, S. Collins, Mr. Pettes, Brandus, and Van Gigch who regularly exhibited in the city, and with Knoedler and Co, which opened a Pittsburgh branch in 1897. All of this activity meant that Impressionism was regularly shown in Pittsburgh and the intermittent Durand-Ruel presence there was profitable: Sisley’s View of Saint-Mammes became the first Impressionist painting to be bought by an American museum when the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired it in early 1899,29 and collectors Henry Clay Frick and David Watson acquired Monet landscapes from the gallery in 1898 and 1901.30

Stock Strategies In Pittsburgh as in Chicago, Hamburg, and Berlin, the gallery lured collectors with the Old Masters and artists like Corot, Constant Troyon, and Millet before introducing them to the Impressionists; in London works by Edward Burne-Jones, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, or Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema were hung alongside French paintings.31 A February 1890 exhibition in room 348 of Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel organized by Joseph Durand-Ruel contained works by Jean-Antoine Watteau, Carle Vanloo, Claude Lorrain, David Teniers, Corot, Charles Daubigny, Delacroix, and Rousseau, along with a single ballet subject by Degas.32 Such an eclectic selection was merited by the tastes of local collectors and drew on the firm’s reputation as a trustworthy source for works of the School of 1830. The transportation magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes made his first purchases from the gallery—a Rembrandt and a Jan Steen—in September 1890, followed a year later by a Pissarro, a Monet, and a Sisley.33 While Yerkes acquired predominantly older works from the firm, he was a regular client, as were fellow Chicagoans Martin Ryerson, Charles Hutchinson, and Berthe and Potter Palmer. The latter couple, as owners of the Palmer House Hotel, might have encouraged the gallery’s appearance there since they bought their first Degas and Renoir from Durand-Ruel in 1889.34 Despite the scores of Impressionist pictures that the firm sold in the city in the 1890s, El Greco’s monumental Assumption of

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the Virgin was the first work the Durand-Ruel gallery sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906, a fitting purchase given their approach to cultivating collectors in the city.35 The conversion from the Old Masters to the Impressionists could be initiated by an invitation to visit the Durand-Ruel family apartments, where clients could see less traditional work. Lawyer John Quinn was invited to see a Renoir painting in an upstairs apartment in New York, a visit perhaps not dissimilar to that experienced by critic Bernhard Berenson in 1894: We refreshed ourselves by going around to Durand-Ruel’s who have a fine palace here. The old gentleman is here and received us cordially. He was very unhappy about people here buying nothing but false English and Dutch pictures. He has next to nothing of consequence in the shop, but he took us up stairs where the walls were literally covered with the superbest Monets, Pissarros, Degas, Manets, Daumiers—a feast for the gods, which he said he dared not show in his shop for fear of scaring people away. I rarely had a greater treat. He even had a fine Forain, and Renoirs that were delicious.36

Showing clients private rooms stocked with Impressionist paintings was a tactic the family also employed in Paris, when they entertained clients in their apartment on the rue de Rome, building a sense of exclusivity around the works and suggesting that they required collectors with adventurous taste.

Publicity The German art critic Emil Heilbut wrote to Hamburg collector Erdwin Amsinck in 1889 that the Durand-Ruel gallery, “as it does not bother with publicity, it is not well known abroad.”37 While it is true that they rarely paid for lavish advertisements in foreign art publications in the 1870s and 1880s, the gallery skillfully kept critics and newspapers informed of their activities. On establishing a gallery in New York, The Studio stated: “Mr. Durand-Ruel is well known for the spirited support he has given to artists of the so-called ‘Impressionist’ school, and to those allied with the movement, as well as to the men of Fontainebleau and the Romantics in general.”38 The Art Amateur and The Critic reported regularly on the gallery’s latest stock, its exhibitions, and new addresses. This information, presumably supplied by the gallery itself, was good advertising and suggests that the gallery cultivated art writers alongside collectors. An example of this can be seen in the lead-up to a mid-November 1897 exhibition in Denver, when the Denver Evening Post published four notices concerning the Durand-Ruel gallery’s week-long display of pictures at Brown’s Palace Hotel, an elegant 400-room hotel boasting views of the Rocky Mountains: one announced the impending arrival of twenty paintings valued at $120,000; a second noted that the shipment had been delayed by storms in the East but would be hung immediately upon arrival in parlor 240 of Brown’s Palace Hotel; a third contained a profile of “Durand-Ruel: The Frenchman who Discovered Genius in Obscure Artists”; and finally, a weekend article noted that

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Figure 3.4  Edouard Manet, Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1830–1906) at Bellevue, 1880. Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (80.6 × 60.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 (1997.391.4). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See Color Plate 7.)

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it was the first time such famous paintings had been seen as far west as Denver.39 (This claim, made by gallery representative and journalist Russell Spaulding, was false since Charles Durand-Ruel had traveled to San Francisco with a Troyon, a Corot, and a Jean-Baptiste Isabey in 1891.40) While the papers were silent on the sales made in Denver—and the exercise was not repeated—an exhibition of Durand-Ruel pictures in Pittsburgh a month earlier at the Gillespie Galleries had to be rehung after a week due to the number of sales, a fact the gallery made sure the local newspapers published.41 Although not publicity in a strict sense, the gallery also supported scholarly periodicals in a quiet, behind-the-scenes way, as Nicholas Green and others have noted.42 By encouraging discussion of artists, journals like the Franco-American L’Art dans les deux mondes, published by the gallery for eight months in 1890–91, helped to build an understanding of artists’ lives and their individual styles, and in turn their market value. In this vein, it was fortuitous that Bruno Cassirer, one of the Cassirer Gallery founders, gradually shifted his interest toward publications and was deeply involved in Pan and Kunst und Künstler, two journals that promoted modern painting and provided a vehicle for building understanding of and appreciation for Impressionism.43

Engaging Artists as Brokers and Advocates Durand-Ruel’s association with artists and independent advisors such as Sara Tyson Hallowell, Emil Heilbut, Mary Cassatt, or Max Liebermann has long raised the question of whether he offered them a commission for assisting with sales. They were pivotal figures in turning opinion in favor of the Impressionists, and most of these “influencers” had their own Impressionist collections. A rare documented commission was extended by Durand-Ruel to Heilbut, a Hamburg art critic who was among the first to promote Impressionism in Germany through a series of lectures, illustrated with three Monet paintings he had acquired from Durand-Ruel. In the 1890s, as DurandRuel sought to engage collectors in Hamburg, he wrote to Heilbut, offering him a 10 percent commission in return for introducing Hamburg collectors to the gallery.44 Recent work in the Durand-Ruel Archives by Laura Corey has confirmed that Mary Cassatt, though she worked closely with Durand-Ruel and recommended purchases to clients such as Berthe and Potter Palmer, Frank Thomson, Sarah Choate Sears, James Stillman, and Louisine Havemeyer, was not paid for this work.45 Corey argues that Cassatt wished to retain her independence and impartiality as an advisor and was dedicated to the effort of “helping fine things across the Atlantic.”46 Even though fees were not exchanged, Cassatt undoubtedly benefited from the dealer’s support and in the 1890s worked closely with him to promote her work; he organized solo exhibitions for her in Paris and New York in 1893 and 1895 that dramatically increased her recognition and visibility. Advances from Durand-Ruel for these exhibitions helped her acquire the country house of Beaufresne, southwest of Paris.47 Durand-Ruel equally enjoyed a collaborative relationship with a number of other American artists who assisted him with introductions to clients. In these cases, as with

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Cassatt, the dealer seems to have responded “in kind” rather than with commissions. One example involves the Philadelphia-trained painter Robert Wylie who advised saddle maker and hardware merchant William P. Wilstach on the purchase of prints and watercolors from the Paris gallery between 1867 and 1870. Concurrently, DurandRuel aided Wylie with his Salon submissions; in the Salon livrets for 1869 and 1870, Wylie is domiciled at the Durand-Ruel gallery. A decade later J. Foxcroft Cole and J. Alden Weir helped collectors in Boston and New York acquire works by Pissarro, Manet, and Degas from the gallery. Both artists would participate in a groundbreaking 1891 exhibition of American paintings and sculpture, held in the Durand-Ruel galleries on the rue Laffitte. It was the first dedicated exhibition of American artwork in the French capital, organized by a committee that included Ambassador Whitelaw Reid and advisors such as George Lucas, Sara Tyson Hallowell, Theodore Stanton, and Montague Marks. Over 200 works by eighty-six artists offered a comprehensive view of American painting and sculpture from Thomas Eakins to William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and Daniel French. Durand-Ruel repeated the gesture in New York, where his gallery hosted annual exhibitions of The Ten, a group formed in 1898 by Weir, Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, and others dissatisfied with the existing art academies and societies. While the gallery never represented these artists in depth, its support for their cause was a powerful endorsement. In Germany Durand-Ruel found an ally in Max Liebermann, an artist first introduced to Impressionism in the home of Felicie and Carl Bernstein, a professor of law at the University of Berlin. By the mid-1880s, the Bernsteins owned a sizable collection of works by Manet, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley acquired partly through Durand-Ruel, with the assistance of Charles Ephrussi, and shown at Wednesday evening salons that reportedly “caused a sensation.”48 Liebermann, freshly returned from Paris, developed a taste for Impressionism there and later owned over thirty paintings by Paul Cézanne, Degas, Monet, and Manet.49 He accompanied Hugo von Tschudi, Director of the Berlin National Gallery, on his first visit to the DurandRuel gallery in Paris in 1896, where Tschudi acquired Manet’s In the Winter Garden for the German museum. Liebermann’s role as a middleman for Durand-Ruel can be seen in his efforts to sell a Manet painting on loan to him from the gallery. Wishing to entice Lübeck collector Max Linde, he wrote: “At the moment I’m acting as host to a wonderful Manet, a young woman in black, a life-size, knee-length portrait in leafy surroundings. Durand-Ruel from Paris, who was here until yesterday, has entrusted me with the picture. The asking price is 8,000 francs and I’d love to find a buyer for it.”50 Durand-Ruel hoped the placement would prove serendipitous, perhaps recalling that he had first encountered the work of Manet in Alfred Stevens’s studio. Liebermann recognized that: “A well placed picture produces offspring,”51 something he might have appreciated personally when Durand-Ruel included one of Liebermann’s paintings in a group of Impressionist works exhibited at the National Gallery of Berlin in 1896.52 This assessment of the Durand-Ruel gallery’s activities in markets outside France demonstrates its persistently opportunistic, adventurous, and versatile character. Much of what Durand-Ruel did in America and Germany in the 1880s and 1890s— exhibiting artwork in prestigious hotels, lending Impressionist paintings to exhibitions and dealers in different cities, and mingling more accepted and predictable stock with

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new Impressionist works—were methods he had tried in London and Brussels in the 1870s. These tactics were beneficial in broadening the gallery’s reach in Germany and America, and facilitating access to collectors who lived hundreds of miles from New York and Paris, for whom French art and the cultural legitimacy it conveyed held a particular appeal.53 He deftly played markets off of one another, as the Anglo-German collector Harry Kessler recalled, citing Durand-Ruel’s answer to the question of how he had turned French public opinion in favor of Impressionism. The dealer explained that in America in 1886, he had—with some bluffing—demanded $1,000 for a Monet painting. Although he hardly sold any at that price, he was able to claim in France “that he had sold Monets for $1,000 in America, and that gave the French collectors courage.”54 Beyond bragging rights, being active in several countries at once offered him a buffer against local economic downturns, such as in 1893 when overbuilding of railroads and a run on the gold supply caused more than 500 American banks to collapse, a moment when Durand-Ruel shifted his energy to the German market. It was with uncanny foresight that Durand-Ruel wrote to Pissarro in 1883 of his intention to send paintings to Boston, stressing: “it is necessary to revolutionize the New World simultaneously with the Old”—a comment that could apply to the deliberate transformation of the art dealer’s business as he moved from Paris to a global stage. It is fitting then that the French government recognized Durand-Ruel’s achievements and contributions to the international art market by awarding him a Légion d’Honneur medal for services to foreign trade in 1920.55

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Gaëtan and Nonne 2015: 216–17. Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2015: 47. Cortissoz 1925: 269–70. Green 1987: 74. Dumas 1998 and Patry 2015. This chapter draws heavily on the work of Dorothee Hansen, Monique Nonne, and Anne Robbins and on archival material in the Durand-Ruel Archives, for which I am grateful to Flavie Durand-Ruel and Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel. American Register, vol. 51 (March 27, 1869): 3. Alfred Atmore Pope to Harris Whittemore, November 11, 1893, Hill-Stead Museum Archives. I thank Melanie Bourbeau of the Hill-Stead Museum for sharing this material with me. Mary Hill, diary entry for January 17, 1892, in Hancock 1991: 111, n. 114. Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2014: 184–7. Thompson 2015: 148, n. 69. See Gaëtan and Nonne 2015: 217, 226. Clients often paid the cost of these cables, see John Quinn, letterbook 4, p. 254, MssCol 2513, New York Public Library. Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2014: 24. Robbins 2015: 174 and Fletcher 2011: 148. Robbins 2015: 172 and n. 13.

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17 Hansen 2015: 154 and Thompson 2015: 136. 18 The absence of a British venue for these pictures was at Monet’s request since he hoped to organize an exhibition of the Thames series himself in London. Thompson 2018: 24, 26. A Waterloo Bridge painting sent to the American gallery in 1905 was acquired that year by Anne Thomson of Philadelphia (illus). 19 Thompson 2015: 137. 20 Dated November 23, 1886, it is not known when Durand-Ruel handed the letter to Chase. J. Eastman Chase papers, Archives American Art, microfilm reel 996. For Cole’s work as an advisor to collectors, see Hirshler 2005: 23. 21 The Sunday Herald (Boston), May 6, 1888, p.12. 22 Gaëtan and Nonne 2015: 212 and 216. 23 Brettell 2014: 20. 24 Durand-Ruel exhibited works in a bedroom of the Hôtel du Grand Miroir in Brussels in 1885, Gaëtan and Nonne 2015: 217. In 1907 a New York firm showed Parisian suits and furs at the Hotel Hollenden in Cleveland, Ohio, Plain Dealer, September 20, 1907: 5. 25 Art critic Julius Elias quoted in Hansen 2015: 163. 26 Paul Durand-Ruel to Sara Tyson Hallowell, August 20, 1894 in Weitzenhoffer 1986: 124–5. 27 The Collector, November 15, 1890: 21. 28 The Pittsburg Bulletin, November 21, 1896: 12. I am indebted to Monique Nonne for sharing Pittsburgh publications with me, first published in Nonne 2002: 108. 29 The Pittsburg Bulletin, October 23, 1897: 12. In 1900, the Carnegie acquired Pissarro’s Bridge at Rouen, another Durand-Ruel picture, from the International. 30 The Pittsburg Bulletin, December 3, 1898: 12. For the Watson and Frick Monets, see Wildenstein 1974–85: W725 and W538. 31 Robbins 2015: 179. 32 “Durand Ruel Collection,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 26, 1890, p. 8. 33 Department of European Painting Curatorial files, Art Institute of Chicago. I am grateful to Gloria Groom for sharing this material. 34 Hirshler 1998: 200. 35 Patry 2015: 18. 36 Durand-Ruel to John Quinn, Quinn papers, MssCol 2513, Book Bills 3, fol. 1, New York Public Library. Bernhard Berenson to Mary Berenson, November 13, 1894, Bernard and Mary Berenson Papers, 1880–2002, Biblioteca Berenson, Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence. I thank Carl Brandon Strehlke for sharing this reference. 37 Hansen 2015: 156. 38 The Art Amateur 17, no. 1, June 1887: 2, and The Studio 2, no. 10, April 1887: 177–8. 39 Denver Post, November 18, 1897: 2 and 5; ibid, November 19, 1897: 9; ibid, November 20, 1897: 6. 40 “Among the Artists,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 8, 1891: 6. 41 The Pittsburg Bulletin, October 23, 1897: 12. 42 Green 1987 and Zarobell 2015: 81. 43 Contributors to Pan met over breakfast at the Kaiserhof Hotel during the DurandRuel exhibition there in 1897. Hansen 2015: 164–5. 44 Hansen 2015: 156. 45 Corey 2017: 51. 46 Mary Cassatt to Frank Gair Macomber, 1909, quoted in Hirshler 1998: 177.

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47 Gaëtan and Nonne 2015: 223. 48 Bilski 1999: 198. Among the Manets Liebermann might have admired in the Bernstein’s collection was The Folkestone Boat, Boulogne (illus), which later belonged to Tschudi. 49 Janda 2011: 91–105. 50 Hansen 2015: 159–61. The Manet was likely The Promenade (Mme Gamby), c.1880, now Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. 51 Hansen 2015: 158. 52 Hansen 2015: 161. 53 Lenman 1996: 55. 54 Diary entry for November 30, 1903, Kessler 2011: 313. 55 Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2014: 273, n 341.

Bibliography Bilski 1999. Emily D. Bilski. Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture 1890–1918. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Brettell 2014. Richard Brettell. “Impressionism and Nationalism: The American Case.” In American Impressionism: A New Vision 1880–1900, edited by Katherine M. Bourguignon. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Corey 2017. Laura D. Corey. “The Many Hats of Mary Cassatt: Artist, Advisor, Broker, Tastemaker.” In Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940, edited by Lynn Catterson. Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets 2, 39–58. Boston, MA: Brill, 2017. Cortissoz 1925. Royal Cortissoz Personalities in Art. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Dumas 1998. Ann Dumas, ed. Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2014. Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel. Paul Durand-Ruel: Memoirs of the First Impressionist Art Dealer (1831–1922). Paris: Flammarion, 2014. Durand-Ruel and Durand-Ruel 2015. Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel. “Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922): A Portrait.” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015. Fletcher 2011. Pamela Fletcher. “The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the Commercial Art Gallery.” Visual Culture in Britain 12, no. 2 (July 2011): 139–52. Gaëtan and Nonne 2015. Isabelle Gaëtan and Monique Nonne. “Chronology (1869– 1905).” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry, 216–17. London: National Gallery Company, 2015. Green 1987. Nicholas Green. “Dealing in Temperaments: Economic Transformation of the Artistic Field in France during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” Art History 10, no. 1 (1987): 74. Hancock 1991. Jane Hancock, ed. Homecoming: The Art Collection of James J. Hill. St Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society, 1991. Hansen 2015. Dorothee Hansen. “Durand-Ruel and Germany.” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry, 154–61. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015.

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Hirshler 1998. Erica E. Hirshler. “Helping ‘Fine Things across the Atlantic’: Mary Cassatt and Art Collecting in the United States.” In Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, edited by Judith A. Barter, 177–200. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Hirshler 2005. Erica E. Hirshler. “Impressionism in Boston.” In Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting, edited by Erica E. Hirshler and Mary Anne Stevens. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005. Janda 2011. Annegret Janda. “Max Liebermann’s Art Collection: A Reconstruction from Letters and Documents.” In Max Liebermann and International Modernism: An Artist’s Career from Empire to Third Reich, edited by Marion Deshmukh, 91–105. New York: Berghahn, 2011. Kessler 2011. Harry Kessler. Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler. Laird M. Easton, ed. New York: Knopf, 2011. Lenman 1996. Robin Lenman “From ‘Brown Sauce’ to ‘Plein Air’: Taste and the Art Market in Germany, 1889–1910.” In Imagining Modern German Culture: 1889–1910, edited by Françoise Forster-Hahn. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996. Nonne 2002. Monique Nonne. “Les droits douaniers américains et les marchands de tableaux français au XIXe siècle.” La Revue du musée d’Orsay 14 (Spring 2002): 102–08. Patry 2015. Sylvie Patry, ed. Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting.Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015. Exhibition catalogue. Robbins 2015. Anne Robbins. “Durand-Ruel’s Conquest of London.” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry, 172–9. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015. Thompson 2015. Jennifer A. Thompson. “Durand-Ruel and America.” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry, 136–48. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015. Thompson 2018. Jennifer A. Thompson. “Between the Balcony and the Studio: Monet’s Struggle to Finish the Thames Series.” In Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process, edited by Nancy Norwood, 24–6. Rochester, NY: Rochester Institute of Technology Press, 2018. Weitzenhoffer 1986. Frances Weitzenhoffer. The Havemeyers: Impressionism Comes to America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986. Wildenstein 1974–85. Daniel Wildenstein. Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, 4 vols. Lausanne: Bibliothèque des arts, 1974–85. Zarobell 2015. John Zarobell. “Durand-Ruel and the Market for Modern Art, from 1870 to 1873.” In Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting, edited by Sylvie Patry. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015.

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Moving Mountains: Paris-Based Dealers and the Economics of Translocation David M. Challis

It is a remarkable fact that of Paul Cézanne’s thirty-seven paintings featuring Mont Sainte-Victoire, one of his most iconic motifs, only one can be found in France today. The remaining thirty-six paintings are dispersed across the globe in notable museums and private collections. The translocation of these paintings is emblematic of a twentieth-century dissemination of French art—modern art in particular—that has paradoxically been described as both a “booming export market for France” and a “catastrophic diaspora.”1 Paris-based dealers played a principal role in these transfers abroad. Recent literature and exhibitions have shown how these entrepreneurial art dealers were able to successfully cultivate substantial international client bases through the physical expansion of their operations, highly effective networking, and an increasingly sophisticated repertoire of marketing techniques. However while the significance of the underlying economic context within which this translocation occurred has been broadly recognized, its specific impact on the supply and demand dynamics of the interwar art market remains less studied. By drawing on unpublished archival correspondence, gallery records, and quantitative economic data, this chapter argues that the interwar collapse in the value of the French franc, among other economic crises, played a significant role in the timing, scale, and geographic dispersion of French modernist art. This analysis provides an alternative perspective within which the business models and strategic networks established by Paris-based dealers during the interwar period can be further contextualized and understood.

Moving Mountains The mountain ridge known as Montagne, or Mont Sainte-Victoire, dominates the skyline to the northeast of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France, where Paul Cézanne was born and spent the majority of his artistic career. The rocky elevation became a recurring motif in Cézanne’s oeuvre, appearing in thirty-seven of his oil paintings between 1870 and 1906 [Figure 4.1]. Various authors have used this series of paintings to illustrate the evolution of Cézanne’s innovative and influential modeling techniques.2

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Figure 4.1 Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1892–95. Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (BF 13). The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission. (See Color Plate 8.)

Specifically, his use of small overlapping patches of color to create convincing architectonic forms has been linked to the early-twentieth-century Cubist movement.3 However the analysis of this discrete group of paintings, for which there is an almost complete provenance history of geographical movements, also provides a useful insight into, and template for, the broad-based translocation of French modernist art that occurred during the twentieth century. At the time of Cézanne’s death in 1906, thirty-four of the Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings were located in France; three had been sold to collectors in Russia and America [Color Plate 9].4 By 1918 a further ten were sold: one to an American collector and nine to European collectors in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, and Italy. The translocation of Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings accelerated dramatically during the interwar period. However the dispersion of the paintings changed from being Eurocentric to more global in nature. By 1945, only eight of the thirty-seven paintings remained in France. Although eleven were still located in Europe, a total of fourteen had been sold to American collectors, three to British collectors, and one to a Japanese collector. Today, only one of the paintings remains in France, donated by the heirs of the French collector Auguste Pellerin to the Musée d’Orsay in 1956. The rest are located across continental Europe, America, Britain, Japan, Argentina, and Qatar.

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Widening the scope of this analysis to Cézanne’s total oeuvre of paintings, or alternatively to other discrete groups of French modernist artworks, such as Degas’s sculptures, reveals a remarkably similar profile of translocation. As such, the group of Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings can be seen as emblematic of a much broader phenomenon.5 The role of Paris-based dealers in expediting these transfers is well-documented. Several authors have detailed the centrality of Parisian dealers in the development of the critical and commercial success of French modernism outside the official systems of French patronage.6 While their vital role remained largely unrecognized for a long time, the dealer-centric model has come to be seen as a signature achievement of the broader French modernist movement in and of itself.7 Recent major exhibitions have further explored the pivotal role played by influential Paris-based dealers, such as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard, in relation to the introduction of French modernism both in France and abroad.8 Structural developments in the Parisian art market have also been cited as contributing to the demand-side factors that resulted in the booming export market for French modernist art. The interwar period witnessed a dramatic increase in the proportion of commercial art galleries offering modernist art in Paris. At the same time, increased activity at auction houses, such as the Hôtel Drouot, provided publicly visible evidence of the dynamic growth of prices and volume of sales in the modern sector.9 A new export tax on art introduced in 1919 by the French government also contributed to the accelerated growth.10 The tax was charged at between 15 percent and 25 percent on the face value of all artworks exported from France, but exempted any artwork produced by a living artist or an artist who had died within the last twenty years. This corresponded to a similar move by the American government in 1913, when artwork produced within the last twenty years was removed from the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act that taxed foreign products imported into America.11 These exemptions provided a significant financial incentive for Parisian art dealers as well as international art collectors to focus their attention on contemporary, or near-contemporary, art. However, the factors contributing to the supply side of the interwar art market, such as the economic forces motivating the liquidation of French collections, have received less attention. In the 1920s, French scholars and critics made a concerted effort to document the development of the prewar French movements and artists. To take Cézanne as an example: between 1921 and 1925 monographs dedicated to the artist were published by Ambroise Vollard, Joachim Gasquet, Georges Rivière, and Émile Bernard.12 Consistent with this sustained critical attention, the number of commercial exhibitions of Cézanne’s paintings in France returned to prewar levels very quickly in the 1920s, before increasing substantially in the 1930s.13 In light of this, one question that remains largely unanswered in the literature to date is why the original French collectors of French modernist art chose to sell their collections in such large volumes just as modernist art was overcoming its initially negative reception. Given that by far the largest collections of French modernist art were still located in France in 1920, why had so many been dispersed internationally by 1950? The fact this question remains unanswered can be largely accounted for by the absence of any serious crossdisciplinary consideration of the underlying economic context in relation to the reconstruction of the history of modern art.

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Economic Crises and Supply-Side Factors To fund its war effort and to accelerate postwar reconstruction, successive French governments implemented an aggressively expansive monetary policy between 1915 and 1926. The rampant price inflation and decline in the value of the French franc, which were a direct result of this policy initiative, led to a substantial flight of capital from France.14 At the peak of the monetary crisis in July 1926, inflation of French consumables was recorded at 350 percent per annum with the franc’s value against gold falling by 85 percent compared to its prewar level.15 In response, French nationals were compelled to monetize available assets and exchange them for foreign currencies with a more stable value than the franc. Selling of the franc for this purpose established a negative feedback loop that compounded the downward spiral in the currency and further contributed to the scale of the capital flight. The “Cartel des Gauches” coalition government provided a further incentive for wealthy French nationals to shift capital out of France when they proposed a 10 percent wealth tax in 1924.16 A proportion of these asset sales were sourced from financial assets, such as deposits, shares, and bonds that had set maturity dates or else could be readily sold on an exchange. In contrast, fixed physical assets, such as land, buildings, and businesses that clearly could not be moved from France, were more difficult to liquidate into cash in an economic downturn and were of limited interest to foreign buyers. However, portable physical assets, such as gold, jewelry, and artwork were far more attractive to foreign buyers because of their tangible, transportable, and liquid nature.17 As a result art collections became important hedges against price inflation and adverse currency movements.18 While this produced an initial increase in the domestic demand for artwork, the need to subsequently monetize these collections in order to shift capital out of France accounts for a large proportion of the increased art market supply during the interwar period.19 Paris-based art dealers were evidently not immune to dire economic circumstances. Many were forced to sell down their substantial inventories of French art in the 1920s, a situation that was further compounded by the economic disruptions brought about by the Great Depression from 1929 onwards. When Pierre Matisse, who had established himself as an art dealer during the 1920s, found himself in financial difficulties in 1932, he wrote to the American collector Albert Barnes imploring him to acquire his inventory of paintings: “I have to raise some money very badly and would be willing … to sell any of the paintings I have in the gallery for what they cost me.”20 Correspondence between Albert Barnes and the New York representative of Galerie Bignou, Georges Keller, also provides a relevant example of capital flight out of France. In a letter dated March 28, 1938, Barnes describes how he had been convinced to buy three paintings by Renoir to facilitate Bignou’s desire to exchange assets located in France for US dollars: “Last June, Bignou was greatly excited about the fall of the franc and wanted to get in hand as many American dollars as he could. It was that fact which influenced me somewhat in taking the three Renoirs at that time.”21 The prolonged monetary crisis in France was accompanied by, and interconnected with, a dramatic fall in French private wealth. Thomas Pikkety documented this decline as part of his 2014 exposition of the history of income inequality in Western industrialized economies, titled Capital in the Twenty-First Century: The Dynamics of

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Inequality, Wealth, and Growth.22 Piketty’s analysis shows that total private capital in France fell as a percentage of annual national income from 700 percent in 1910 to close to 200 percent in 1950. This drop in wealth was driven primarily by the economic disruption caused by the two World Wars and the Great Depression, which brought about substantial asset destruction, low savings rates, business failures, and stock market losses. Falling levels of private wealth deepened the economic plight of French nationals and further necessitated the monetization of available assets in order to repay creditors and to maintain standards of living. While the present chapter focuses specifically on the situation in France, Pikkety’s analysis demonstrates that the economic crises of inflation, currency devaluation, and wealth destruction were endemic across much of Western Europe. Finding examples of European art collectors who were motivated by financial distress to liquidate their art collections is not difficult. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber (1880–1959), a German collector living in Switzerland who was known to have suffered significant losses on the Paris stock market in 1929, was forced to progressively sell his substantial modern art collection (including major Cubist works) over the course of the 1930s.23 This included three of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings, which were respectively acquired by Duncan Phillips in Washington in 1925, Mr. and Mrs. Averell Harriman in New York in 1931, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1945.24

Purchasing Power and International Demand The collapse in the value of the franc also had significant consequences for art collectors from outside Europe. In essence, the increased purchasing power of currencies that had maintained their value against gold, and therefore against the franc, immunized international collectors against much of the price inflation in France. This gave them a substantial comparative advantage against French collectors, and it was during this period of elevated purchasing power that a large number of the international collections of French modernist art were assembled. Many of these private collectors were senior businessmen working in the international banking and manufacturing sectors that were ideally placed to understand and take advantage of the prevailing economic conditions in Europe.25 Color Plate 1026 shows the multiple increases in the value of the US dollar, Japanese yen, British pound, Argentinian peso, and Australian pound against the French franc between 1916 and 1940.27 Prior to the First World War the exchange rate between France and other countries participating in the international gold standard was fixed, as evidenced by the flat line on the chart between 1916 and 1919. By July 1926, however, the value of all of the currencies shown on the chart had increased by as much as 700 percent against the franc compared to their prewar values. Between 1926 and 1931, France reentered the international gold standard and the devaluation of the franc stabilized. Following 1931, as the full forces of the social and economic consequences of the Great Depression were felt, the differing geo-economic circumstances around the world led to many countries withdrawing from the international gold standard. As a result, a much greater variation in currency valuations against the franc occurred

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between 1931 and the commencement of the Second World War in 1939. Notably, the US dollar was one of the strongest performing currencies while the currencies of Japan and Argentina were the weakest. These relative currency movements against the franc, and against each other, are important factors in explaining the timing, scale, and geographic dispersion of the interwar translocation of French modernist art. The substantial purchasing power advantage experienced by international collectors from outside continental Europe can be demonstrated by an analysis of the sixty-seven paintings by Cézanne (including two featuring Mont Sainte-Victoire) acquired by Albert Barnes (1872–1951) in Philadelphia between 1912 and 1939.28 All of Barnes’s acquisitions are securely dated, and when they are graphed against the exchange rate between the French franc and the US dollar, it becomes clear that two of his peak purchasing periods coincided with periods of significant US dollar strength [Color Plate 11]. In fact, of the fifty-three Cézanne paintings purchased by Barnes during the interwar period, 79 percent were acquired in the two periods between 1920 to 1926 and 1936 to 1940, when the US dollar was strengthening substantially against the franc. The pause in collecting activity from 1926 until 1933 also indicates that Barnes became more circumspect in his collecting while the value of the US dollar was weakening against the franc. It is important to note, however, that Barnes had already formed a taste for French modernism before the collapse in the value of the franc, having made his initial acquisitions in 1912. Moreover, Barnes made eleven, or 21 percent, of his interwar Cézanne purchases between 1933 and 1936, when the value of the US dollar was weakening against the franc, showing that exchange rate movements were certainly not the only factor in the timing of his acquisitions.

Albert Barnes as Currency Opportunist Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of a substantial 1920 transaction between Barnes and a network of French dealers demonstrates the extent to which Barnes was using currency movements to optimize his collecting activities. In February 1920, a dealer syndicate comprising Paul Rosenberg, Jos Hessel, and the Durand-Ruel family acquired twentyfive paintings by Cézanne from the estate of the Dutch collector Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866–1911).29 Knowing that Barnes was actively seeking to add to his collection of Cézanne’s work, the Durand-Ruels initially offered him fifteen of the paintings for a total of 2,150,000 francs ($179,166 US dollars) on June 21, 1920.30 Barnes declined this offer, and two of the smaller paintings were sold to collectors in Paris for a total of 70,000 francs ($5,833). Barnes then made a counter-offer of $130,000 (1,560,000 francs at the current exchange rate of twelve francs to one US dollar) for the remaining thirteen paintings, which the Durand-Ruels accepted on June 29, 1920 [Figure 4.2]. In response to this cablegram, Barnes duly delivered half the payment, $65,000 (780,000 francs), to the Durand-Ruel New York office on the same day. An invoice from the Durand-Ruel Paris office, sent to Barnes ten days later on July 8, 1920, detailing the titles and individual costs of the thirteen paintings, shows that La Montagne SainteVictoire [Figure 4.1] was by far the most expensive painting in the group at 249,650

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Figure 4.2 Cablegram, Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, June 29, 1920. The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission.

francs ($20,804).31 The thirteen paintings were subsequently shipped to New York and arrived in Philadelphia on July 23, 1920. On the day Barnes took delivery of the paintings, he instructed his bank in Philadelphia, Drexel & Co, to cable transfer 780,000 francs to the Durand-Ruel Paris office as the balance owing on the total payment [Figure 4.3]. This amount equated to half the originally agreed amount of $130,000 when it was converted to 1,560,000 francs at the exchange rate of 12:1. However, as the Drexel & Co cablegram transfer shows, the actual US dollar exchange rate on this day was 13.25:1, demonstrating that the US dollar had strengthened against the franc in the period between Barnes’s first and second payments. By making the second payment to the Durand-Ruels in francs, Barnes was acting to capitalize on the increased value of the US dollar. To generate the amount of 780,000 francs at the new exchange rate of 13.25:1, Barnes was only required to pay $58,867, saving him $6,132.08 US dollars. To put this amount in context, the saving that Barnes made was equal to 81,250 francs, an amount greater than the sale price of the two landscapes that made up the original group of fifteen paintings. Conversely, the Durand-Ruel syndicate was out of pocket by the same amount. In a letter dated August 12, 1920, the Durand-Ruels challenged Barnes for opportunistically exploiting movements in the foreign exchange rate: You had made your offer in American money in order to avoid the uncertainty of the fluctuation in the exchange rates … we had hoped therefore that you would have paid the second half to our New York house in dollars as you did the first time.32

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Figure 4.3 Cablegram transfer, Albert Barnes to Galerie Durand-Ruel. The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission.

The response from Barnes was typically robust. He summarized his position in a detailed letter and refused to discuss the matter further: The enclosed “Summary of Holland Cezannes Transaction” represents my final stand that the contract has been justly and legally carried out and I shall not discuss the matter further … of course you have the privilege of turning over to your attorneys.33

Faced with such an adamant response from one of their most important clients, the Durand-Ruels chose to salvage the relationship rather than pressing their case, responding by letter: “we never had the slightest idea of putting the matter in the hands of an attorney … preferring a loss to a discussion.”34 The back-and-forth of this transaction is not only illustrative of the hard-headed business tactics that Barnes was famous for, but also reveals the added complexity that foreign exchange movements brought to the transatlantic art market in the 1920s and 1930s. The correspondence leaves no doubt that Barnes was well apprised of movements in the foreign exchange market and that he was opportunistically using fluctuations in the exchange rate to optimize his entry point for individual transactions. Understanding the extent to which Barnes’s was actively making use of exchange rate movements also further corroborates the contention that his substantial interwar increase in purchasing power played a significant role in the timing and scale of his overall collecting activity.

Dealer Business Models and the Economics of Translocation While international collectors clearly experienced a currency advantage against the weakened franc during the interwar period, Paris-based dealers were also ideally placed

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to benefit from the economic crises in Europe. The dealer-centric model underpinning the commercial and critical reception of French modernism, which had been in place since the late nineteenth century, necessarily positioned galleries at the center of what quickly became a booming interwar export market. A number of Paris-based dealers had already made considerable efforts to expand internationally in the period leading up to the First World War. Yet their physical expansion of business interests, through the establishment of international offices and loans to foreign exhibitions, was not immediately successful. Paul Durand-Ruel’s exhibition of 350 Impressionist paintings at the Grafton gallery in London in 1905 resulted in only thirteen sales.35 Roger Fry’s two Post-Impressionist exhibitions, largely supported by loans from Paris galleries, resulted in only a small number of sales.36 Similarly, the Armory Show held in New York, Boston, and Chicago in 1913, which is still hailed as a seminal moment in the introduction of modernism to America, resulted in a disappointing number of sales for the European art dealers that participated in the exhibition.37 However, the shift in economic fortunes witnessed during the interwar period dramatically accelerated the global trade in French art. In the case of America, total imports of goods and services increased by a remarkable 500 percent in the three years following the conclusion of the First World War, remaining at an elevated level during the interwar period, apart from temporary reductions during the years 1920–21 and 1929–33.38 A significant proportion of these imports were luxury goods from Europe. In May 1920, American Art News reported a 300 percent increase on the previous year for luxury items imported from Europe. These goods included “diamonds, art works, laces, silks, high grade cotton, woollen goods and olive oil.”39 More specifically, the same article reveals a 750 percent increase in the dollar value of artwork imported from Europe compared to the previous year. Paris-based dealers responded entrepreneurially to these rapidly shifting economic circumstances. Most obviously, dealers either established or expanded their presence in major international centers, which in many cases meant London or New York. However, French art dealers also established affiliated offices or independent commercial galleries in a variety of geographically diverse cities across the globe. Hermann d’Oelsnitz (1882–1941), for instance, opened a commercial gallery specializing in French artwork in Tokyo in 1922. This business thrived from selling imported artwork from France to local art collectors during the 1920s, and was responsible for hosting the successful Exhibition of French Contemporary Art that was held annually in Tokyo and Osaka between 1922 and 1927.40 D’Oelsnitz declared bankruptcy in 1931, which, unsurprisingly, was the same year the value of the Japanese yen collapsed against the French franc and other major currencies.41 Buenos Aires in Argentina also attracted a number of French dealers who either established independent galleries or acted as middlemen for larger Paris-based dealers.42 Joseph Allard was among the most active art dealers offering French artwork in Buenos Aires and was known to have a business alliance with the Paris-based Boussod, Valadon & Cie.43 Of course, economic factors were not the only reason why French dealers relocated their businesses internationally. Paul Rosenberg, one of the most active Paris-based

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dealers in the 1920s and 1930s, was forced to relocate his business activities and family to New York in 1940 to avoid persecution from the Nazi forces occupying France.44 The difficult economic conditions also resulted in a greater degree of networking amongst dealers.45 The syndicate of Paul Rosenberg, Jos Hessel, and Durand-Ruel that bought the twenty-five Cézannes from the Hoogendijk estate is just one of the many examples of strategic alliances formed during the period. The networking amongst dealers took many forms and often extended across national boundaries. This was often in response to international collectors who preferred to pay trusted local art dealers a commission for sourcing paintings from Paris dealers rather than acquiring artworks directly in France. This was certainly the case for the English collector Samuel Courtauld (1876–1947) who acquired a large proportion of his art collection through the London-based dealer Percy Turner. Among many other paintings, Turner was paid a commission for securing Seurat’s La Baignade from Felix Fénéon in 1924, Manet’s Un Bar aux Folies Bergère from the Thannhauser Gallery in 1926 and Daumier’s Sauvetage from Bernheim Jeune in 1929.46 Other Paris-based dealers formulated different strategies to prosper from the sharply increased international demand for French modernism, like Paul Guillaume (1891–1934) who formed a direct alliance with Albert Barnes. From 1925, Guillaume acted as the European agent for the Barnes Foundation, not only sourcing paintings and sculptures for Barnes, but also introducing him to new artists, such as Chaim Soutine, and contributing to the scholarship produced by the foundation.47 For their part, the owners of the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris sold a large block of their equity in the gallery in 1929 to the New York financier and art collector Chester Dale (1883–1962), who became an active director and advocate for the gallery.48 Clearly, a constellation of factors need to be considered and assessed in order to reach a full understanding of the business models and strategic networks undertaken during the interwar period. However, an analysis of the supply and demand dynamics of the interwar art market reveals the extent to which the original European clients of the Parisian galleries were no longer in a position to acquire art, and in many cases had become willing sellers. At the same time newly affluent collectors in countries outside of Europe were experiencing a substantial increase in purchasing power as a result of the collapsing value of the French franc. As such, it became an obvious strategy for the Paris-based dealers to target international collectors with artwork sourced from their original European clients. To a large extent, above and beyond the aesthetic credibility of the artwork they were selling, this explains the international success experienced by the Paris-based dealers during the interwar period.

Notes 1 2

Jensen 1994: 8. Machotka 1996: 319–24.

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

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Rishel 2009: 159–85. Also Machotka 1996: 319–24. Using the ‘Landscape motifs’ filter in Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. For the purpose of dating the movement of paintings the location of each painting remained unchanged until the catalogue raisonné confirmed a sale date to a new collector or a date was given where a new collector lent the painting to a recorded exhibition. For the 620 oil paintings attributed to Cézanne for which there is a known current location, only 14 percent are currently recorded as being located in French art collections. Another 25 percent are located in art collections within continental Europe with 61 percent located outside of continental Europe, of which, three quarters are in American collections. Note that 318 paintings are recorded as having an unknown location. Calculated using the country filter from Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. Analysis of archival inventory records from the Hébrard Foundry demonstrate the location of the original buyers of the 566 individual Degas sculptures posthumously cast by the foundry between 1918 and 1936 also shared a similar geographic profile. Only 145 or 25 percent were sold to French buyers. A total of 120 or 21 percent were sold to continental European collectors and 301 or 54 percent were sold to collectors in America, Britain, and Japan. However, many of the French buyers were actually commercial art dealers such as Berthe Weill, Hermann d’Oelsnitz, and the Bernheim-Jeune family. As such, it is reasonable to assume that many of these sculptures were also ultimately sold to international collectors. Czestochowski 2002: 271–2. FitzGerald 1995: 2–13. FitzGerald 1995: 7. Rabinow 2006; Patry 2015. Others have focused more specifically on the increasingly favorable reception of French modernism outside France, see Rishel 2009; Stavitsky 2009; Marks-Hanßen 2016. Gee 2014: 712–13. American Art News 1920: 1–8. Fisk 1910. Orfila 2011: 48–61. Significant French publications on Cézanne at the time: Gasquet 1921; Rivière 1923; Bernard 1925; Vollard 1921 and Vollard 1923. Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. This included substantial retrospectives, such as the solo exhibition of fifty-five paintings titled Rétrospective Paul Cézanne, hosted by Bernheim-Jeune in 1926. Mouré 2002: 27–49. The legal limit on monetary advances to the state and notes in circulation was increased by a multiple of four between May 1915 and December 1925. See Table 2.1 on p. 32. Eichengreen 1992: 172. Also Mouré 2002: 9. Mouré 2002: 87. McAndrew 2010: 136–40. Euwe 2017: 51. Paris-based art dealer Jacques Seligman gave the following explanation for French and German collectors being major buyers in the early 1920s: “This can be understood, if one stops to consider that it is wise of them to endeavour to exchange their depreciated currency against works of art which have a world value not affected by actual conditions.” See Seligmann 1920: 1–8. Letter, Pierre Matisse to Albert Barnes, May 7, 1932, ARABC, 1932, 349, 3 of 6, Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, Philadelphia.

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21 Letter, Albert Barnes to Georges Keller, Bignou Gallery, March 28, 1938, ARABC, 1938, 48, 2 of 6, Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, Philadelphia. 22 Piketty 2014: 119–48. Also see “Technical Appendix,” http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/ capital21c (Accessed March 1, 2018). 23 Kosinski 1991: 519–31. 24 Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. In a correspondence from Alfred Barr to Stephen Clark in 1934, Barr revealed his awareness of Reber’s financial problems when discussing the possible acquisition of Picasso’s Three Musicians, saying: “Formerly in the Reber collection, is now apparently in the possession of a bank following Reber’s collapse on the Paris bourse.” See Alfred Barr correspondence with Stephen C. Clark, July 13, 1934, A.H. Barr archives, Library, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 25 For example, Albert Barnes and Chester Dale in America; Samuel Courtauld in England and Kojiro Matsukata in Japan all worked in banking or manufacturing companies with substantial international operations. 26 The data points for the currency charts used in this article were calculated using the monthly exchange rates recorded by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America for US dollars against the French franc, British and Australian pound, Japanese yen, and Argentinian peso between 1916 and 1940. These exchange rates were then used to calculate the arbitrage free cross rate between the French franc and the yen, pound, and peso. Using January 1916 as the base month the multiple increases in the value of the various currencies against the franc during each month was then calculated. Note that the physical exchange of gold under the international gold standard did, on occasions, give rise to arbitrage margins occurring between various currencies. These margins are not reflected in the charts. FRASER®, Federal Reserve Archives, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/scribd/?toc_id=334470&filepath=/docs/ publications/bms/1914-1941/BMS14-41_complete.pdf&start_page=403#scribdopen (Accessed August 15, 2017). 27 Note that in addition to these currencies, many of the other 50 industrialized countries participating in the international gold standard also experienced a similar purchasing power increase against the franc. 28 Barnes’s acquisitions of Cézanne oil paintings have been chosen because of the complete provenance details provided in Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. 29 Rewald 1989: 268–72. 30 Cable, Paul Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, June 21, 1920, AR.ABC.1920.32, 6 of 14, Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, P.A. 31 Rewald 1989: 271. 32 Letter, Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, August 12, 1920, AR.ABC.1920.32, 13 of 14, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia. 33 Letter, Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, August 2, 1920, AR.ABC.1920.32, 12 of 14, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia. 34 Letter, Paul Durand-Ruel to Albert Barnes, August 13, 1920, AR.ABC.1920.32, 13 of 14, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia. 35 Patry 2015: 189–93. 36 Cooper 1954: 46–59.

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37 Brown 1988: 221. Total sales amounted to $44,148.75 US dollars (approximately 220,700 francs), p. 120. 38 National Bureau of Economic Research, Total Imports for United States [M07028USM144NNBR], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M07028USM144NNBR, January 26, 2018. 39 American Art News 1920: 1–10. 40 Gabroit 2010: 308. 41 Challis 2018: 9–12. 42 Baldasarre 2018: 8–10. 43 Baldasarre 2018: 9. 44 FitzGerald 1995: 262–8. 45 FitzGerald 1995: 194–6. 46 House 1994: 221–4. 47 Rudenstine 2012: 18–19 and 61–4. Also Letter Paul Guillaume to Albert Barnes, AR.ABC.1925.321, 6 of 24, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia. 48 FitzGerald 1995: 195; Orfila 2011: 48–61. See also the Bignou chapter in the present book.

Bibliography American Art News 1920. “Big Jump in Art Exports.” American Art News 18, no. 29 (May 8, 1920). Baldasarre 2018. Maria Isabel Baldasarre. “On the Beginning of Collecting and Art Museums in Argentina.” Anais do Museu Paulista: History and Material Culture 14, no. 1 (January/June, 2006). Bernard 1925. Émile Bernard. Sur Paul Cézanne. Paris: R.G. Michel, 1925. Brown 1988. Milton Brown. The Story of the Armory Show. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Challis 2018. David Challis. “Rodin’s Sculpture in Japan and the Economics of Translocation.” Journal for Art Market Studies 2, no. 2 (2018): 9–12. Cooper 1954. Douglas Cooper and Anthony Blunt. The Courtauld Collection: A Catalogue and Introduction. London: Athlone Press, 1954. Czestochowski 2002. Joseph S. Czestochowski and Anne Pingeot. Degas Sculptures: Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes. New York and Memphis, TN: Torch Press and International Arts, 2002. Eichengreen 1992. Barry Eichengreen. Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939. NBER Series on Long-Term Factors in Economic Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Euwe 2017. Jeroen Euwe and Kim Oosterlinck. “Art Price Economics in the Netherlands during World War II.” Journal for Art Market Studies 1, no. 1 (2017): 51. Feilchenfeldt & Warman online. Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash. “The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné.” http://www. cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/index.php (Accessed May 6, 2018). Fisk 1910. George Fisk. “The Payne-Aldrich Tariff.” Political Science Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1910).

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FitzGerald 1995. Michael FitzGerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth Century Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. Gaborit 2010. François Gaborit. “Hermann d’Oelsnitz, Merchant of Art in Japan for the Musée Rodin in the 1920s.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Historie de l’Art Français (January 2010): 308. Gasquet 1921. Joachim Gasquet. Cézanne. Paris: Les Editions Bernheim-Jeune, 1921. Gee 2014. Malcolm Gee. “Contemporary Art in Boom and Crisis: France and Germany 1918–1933.” The Challenge of the Object/Die Herausforderung des Objekts: 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art Congress Proceedings. Nuremberg: German National Museum, 2014. An extended version of this paper recently uploaded to Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/34745810/ Contemporary_Art_in_Boom_and_Crisis_France_and_Germany_1918-1933 (Accessed December 15, 2017). House 1994. John House. Impressionism for England: Samuel Courtauld as Patron and Collector. London: Courtauld Institute Galleries, 1994. Jensen 1994. Robert Jensen. Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Kosinski 1991. Dorothy Kosinski. “G. F. Reber: Collector of Cubism.” The Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1061 (August 1991): 519–32. Machota 1996. Pavel Machotka and Paul Cézanne. Cézanne: Landscape into Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Marks-Hanßen 2016. Beate Marks-Hanßen. Japan’s Love for Impressionism: From Monet to Renoir. Munich, London, and New York: Prestel, 2016. McAndrew 2010. Clare McAndrew. Fine Art and High Finance: Expert Advice on the Economics of Ownership. New York: Bloomberg Press, 2010. Mouré 2002. Kenneth Mouré. The Gold Standard Illusion: France, the Bank of France, and the International Gold Standard, 1914–1939. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Orfila 2011. Jorgelina Orfila. “Art Collecting in America during the Interwar Period: The Chester Dale Collection of Modern French Art.” Archives of American Art Journal 50, no. 1 of 2 (Spring 2011): 48–61. Patry 2015. Sylvie Patry, ed. Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market. London: The National Gallery, 2015. Exhibition catalogue. Piketty 2014. Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer. Capital in the Twenty-First Century: The Dynamics of Inequality, Wealth, and Growth. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Rainbow 2006. Rebcca A. Rainbow, ed. Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. New Haven, CT and New York: Yale University, 2006. Rewald 1989. John Rewald, with Frances Weitzenhoffer. Cézanne and America: Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics 1891–1921. A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Rishel 2009. Joseph J. Rishel and Katherine Sachs, eds. Cézanne and Beyond. Philadelphia, PA; New Haven: Philadelphia Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2009. Exhibition catalogue. Rivière 1923. Georges Rivière. Le Maître Paul Cézanne. Paris: Librairie Floury, 1923. Rudenstine 2012. Neil Rudenstine. The House of Barnes: The Man, The Collection, The Controversy. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2012. Seligmann 1920. Jacques Seligmann. “Seligmann’s Words of Cheer.” American Art News 19, no. 7 (November 1920): 1.

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Stavitsky 2009. Gail Stavitsky and Katherine Rothkopf, eds. Cézanne and American Modernism. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum/Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art/New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. Exhibition catalogue. Vollard 1921. Ambroise Vollard. Paul Cézanne. Munich: Kurt Wolfe Verlag, 1921. Vollard 1923. Ambroise Vollard. Paul Cézanne: His Life and Art. Translated by Harold van Doren. New York: Nicholas Brown, 1923.

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5

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s International Partnerships, 1907–1937 Vérane Tasseau

Translated by Celia Abele

In a 1961 interview with Francis Crémieux, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884–1979) stated: “And remember, foreign relations were always the basis of my activity, the organization of exhibitions abroad. In fact, in our revenue, exports outweigh sales in France, by far.”1 The majority of these international transactions, he added, were facilitated by other art dealers. One of the pillars of the strategy that Kahnweiler systematized was to rely on his peers outside France. Instead of opening branches, he worked closely with other galleries. These art dealers—in Germany, the United States, England, and Scandinavia—likely represented the largest contingent of the gallery’s buyers. These collaborations allowed Kahnweiler to consign, exchange, and exhibit artworks in foreign galleries, increase the circle of collectors who valued his artists, and widen his reputation—as well as that of his artists—beyond Paris. This network of lasting partnerships with his colleagues, sometimes even rivals, allowed him to relaunch his business in the aftermath of the First World War despite the sale of his sequestered stock, and then to survive the economic crisis of 1929. While this approach was what allowed the Kahnweiler Gallery to promote its artists more widely and to assure them greater commercial success, the details of these private operations are still difficult to piece together today since most of the records are incomplete, destroyed, or inaccessible. This chapter will not seek to be exhaustive (such an enterprise would be futile); rather, it will sketch out Kahnweiler’s principal partnerships up to the eve of the Second World War.2 The international network developed by Kahnweiler was not an innovation in and of itself—it had precedents in Durand-Ruel and Goupil—but he was a trailblazer for modern art and unique insofar as the promotion of Cubism was concerned [Figure 5.1]. Through friendly encounters or purely commercial opportunities, Kahnweiler expanded his influence with the help of a relatively tight core of dealers. Before the First World War, he developed his network first in Germany, his home country—around Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne

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Figure 5.1 Photo by Pablo Picasso. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in Picasso’s studio at 11 boulevard de Clichy, Paris, Fall 1910. Positive from a glass plate negative, 12 × 9 cm. Musée national Picasso, Paris; Don Succession Picasso, 1992 (APPH17382). Photo © RMNGrand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris)/image RMN-GP/© Succession Picasso 2020.

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Galerie and others—but also in the United States, signing a contract with the Washington Square Gallery run by Robert Coady and Michael Brenner. Then, in the years following the financial disaster caused by the seizure of his stock during the war, Kahnweiler attempted to survive by collaborating with a large number of dealers. Assisted by his brother Gustav, who had since become Alfred Flechtheim’s associate in Frankfurt, he rebuilt his network not just in Germany, but also in Sweden, England, and even France. Nothing predestined the young German for a career as an art dealer, yet the name Kahnweiler is forever associated with the discovery of Cubism. Born in Mannheim into a bourgeois family, he grew up in Stuttgart where he had the benefit of a good education and quickly developed a passion for music and the visual arts. Despite his predisposition for culture, he had no choice but to follow the path of his uncles into finance. Kahnweiler’s relatives wanted to send him to Johannesburg to run the head office of the company, but at the beginning of 1907 he managed to convince them to finance the opening of an art gallery in Paris instead. They gave him one year and 25,000 francs to show what he could do. On February 22, 1907, Kahnweiler opened a gallery in the neighborhood of the Madeleine, in a small space at 28 rue Vignon. He made his first purchases at the Salon des Indépendants and met the artists Derain, Matisse, and soon also Picasso and Braque, whose works he quickly acquired and with whom he developed trusting relationships. Though the young dealer was interested in Fauvism at first, in the summer of 1907 he had an epiphany about Cubism, then still emerging, when he followed his compatriot, the collector and private dealer Wilhelm Uhde, to Picasso’s studio at the Bateau-Lavoir to see the artist’s latest work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Though it was against prevailing tastes, Kahnweiler bet on the contemporary Cubist aesthetic and committed to it. As a primary dealer, Kahnweiler set out to be a go-between for the young artists he believed in and to further the new Cubist aesthetic. He developed a new commercial strategy of systematically signing exclusive contracts with his artists: Derain in 1908, Braque and Picasso at the end of 1912, and in 1913, Léger, Gris, and Vlaminck. These monopolistic arrangements fostered loyal relationships with his painters and guaranteed their financial security, while giving him carte blanche to promote them in France as well as abroad. From 1908, after the commercial failure of the Braque exhibition3 and the public ridicule prompted by the Cubist works shown at the Salons, Kahnweiler decided to create demand through a strategy of scarcity. He stopped all presentations of his artists in shows in Paris but began to place them in exhibitions in England and Germany, hence creating a buzz around these young avant-garde Parisian painters who were rarely seen in Paris but were being discussed in the international press. In order to achieve this, the dealer enlisted the help of colleagues abroad who had their own local networks. He began by participating in several large-scale shows for avant-garde art, sending works to exhibitions that would go down in history,4 such as “Manet and the Post-Impressionists” at the Grafton Galleries of London. He placed three paintings by Derain and five by Vlamick there, although he didn’t manage to get any Cubists into the exhibition—they were too avant-garde for the English public.

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That said, Kahnweiler did not grant any loans to Josep Dalmau’s 1912 “Exposició d’art cubista” in Barcelona: the exhibition included works by the “Salon Cubists” (such as Gleizes, Lhote, Metzinger, etc.) of whom he did not approve, so Picasso and Braque were not represented.5 It was to Germany that Kahnweiler turned next, and thanks to his efforts, before the First World War the art he championed appears to have appealed mostly to German art collectors. Between 1910 and 1914 he sent paintings to contemporary art salons in Germany6 and developed fruitful business relationships with Heinrich and Justin Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie and Hans Goltz’s Galerie Neue Kunst in Munich, Otto Feldmann’s Kunstsalon in Cologne and his Neue Galerie in Berlin,7 as well as with the collector Alfred Flechtheim, who opened a gallery in Düsseldorf eight months before the beginning of the war with Kahnweiler’s encouragement. Kahnweiler’s personal and professional relationship with Flechtheim (1878– 1937)—who owned galleries in Dusseldorf, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Cologne in the interwar period—was the most continuous and became the most significant in terms of imposing Cubism in Germany [Figure 5.2]. It lasted until Flechtheim’s death in 1937, three years after he emigrated to England, but because the majority of his gallery records were destroyed by the Nazis, the relationship is difficult to reconstruct. Important research was carried out for an exhibition dedicated to Flechtheim at the Dusseldorf Kunstmuseum in 1987, and since then much more information has been uncovered, but many gaps remain.8 Born into a bourgeois family of grain merchants in Dusseldorf, Alfred Flechtheim ran the company with his uncle from 1902 (after his father’s death), and traveled in Switzerland, France, England, and Russia to study agriculture and the food industry. From his first trip to Paris in 1905–06 onwards, he established solid relationships with the French avant-garde that would soon prove decisive, meeting the likes of Marie Laurencin, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jules Pascin, and Wilhelm Udhe; it was through the intermediary of the latter that he met Pablo Picasso. Pierre Assouline, Kahnweiler’s biographer, places the year of Flechtheim’s first visit to Kahnweiler’s gallery as early as 1909,9 but Ralph Jentsch more correctly puts it in 1910.10 Of all the acquaintances he made in Paris during this period, Flechtheim would later say that his meeting with Kahnweiler was “the most fruitful” and that he owed him “what I have now become, a propagandist of French contemporary art in Germany.”11 As well as becoming one of Kahnweiler’s most important clients before the First World War, Flechtheim acted as his unofficial agent in Germany. From 1909 in Dusseldorf, the latter became treasurer of the Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler (Independent League of West German Art Lovers and Artists), a group that aimed to promote avant-garde art by organizing annual exhibitions.12 This association of artists, museum directors, collectors, and dealers included Paul Cassirer; Félix Fénéon; Alfred Hagelstange, director of the WallrafRichartz-Museum; and Karl Ernst Osthaus, founder of the Folkwang Museum, among others. While still running the family business, Flechtheim played a major role in the momentous 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne,13 which brought together all the European contemporary avant-garde movements, from Post-Impressionism

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Figure 5.2  Page from the exhibition catalogue In Memoriam Juan Gris (Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, February 1930) showing Kahnweiler standing at left and Flechtheim seated at right.

(van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne) to Cubism, as well as Fauvism and Expressionism (Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter). Among the 650 paintings shown, room 8 was entirely  devoted to Picasso. It contained sixteen works from 1901 to 1911, twelve of which were sent by Kahnweiler and Flechtheim with the support of Uhde.14 The Picasso display legitimized Cubism by highlighting Picasso’s latest stylistic evolution up to 1911. Emboldened by this success after the liquidation of his family company

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Flechtheim opened his own gallery in December 1913 in Dusseldorf with the support of the dealer Paul Cassirer. In the same period, Kahnweiler pulled off a coup when he established a business relationship with the Moderne Galerie owned by Heinrich Thannhauser (1859–1934) in Munich. Thannhauser organized the first Picasso retrospective in Germany, which took place in February 1913, only two months after Kahnweiler and Picasso signed their contract. Kahnweiler had already lent three paintings by Braque, three by Derain, three by Vlaminck, and another three by Picasso to the “Neue Künstlervereiningung” exhibition at the Moderne Galerie in September 1910, but that was on a much smaller scale. During a stay in Paris around 1911 Justin Thannhauser (1892–1976), Heinrich’s young son, not only started lifelong work relationships with Kahnweiler and Uhde, but developed an enduring passion for Picasso’s work. The “Ausstellung Pablo Picasso” of 1913 contained seventy-six paintings from 1901 to 1912 and thirty-eight works on paper,15 principally from German private collections. Twenty-nine paintings came from Kahnweiler’s gallery, and thirteen were lent by Flechtheim. The vast majority of works—98 out of 114—were for sale. Among the works sent by Kahnweiler were Femme à la guitare, Ma jolie, 1911 (n°69, MoMA, DR 430), La Bouteille de Rhum, 1911 (n°61, The Met, DR 414), and Le Poète, 1912 (n°76, Kunstmuseum Basel, DR 499).16 Not a single work came from private French collections and the introduction to the catalogue, written by Justin Thannhauser, highlighted the absence of Picasso from French exhibitions by suggesting that it symbolized the authenticity of the artist. Kahnweiler’s strategy was paying off: Cubism, invisible in France, was better received abroad and was exciting curiosity and even yearning in Paris. Still, nearly a dozen of the paintings exhibited in Thannhauser’s exhibition went unsold—as can be seen from Kahnweiler’s stock list made at the time of the seizure in December 1914.17 Kahnweiler did not organize a similar exhibition with Thannhauser for the other artists in his gallery, perhaps because Justin’s taste placed Picasso on a pedestal, but mainly because there wasn’t time: the war was putting an end to all Franco-German cooperation. During the first half of 1914, Kahnweiler extended his network to the United States as well, where avant-garde artistic circles had been interested in Picasso since 1911, the year of his first personal exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291. Kahnweiler contributed to the 1913 Armory Show—the first large-scale exhibition of modern art in the United States—by lending four Picassos: Les Arbres (Philadelphia Museum of Art),18 Portrait de Madame Soler (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich),19 Tête d’homme, and Femme au pot de moutarde (Gemeentemuseum, The Hague).20 He also loaned four bronzes by Manolo to the New York show,21 as well as three paintings each by Derain, Vlaminck, and Braque to the three venues of the Armory.22 As Assouline has revealed,23 in this favorable climate Kahnweiler signed a one-year contract on February 1, 1914, with Michael Brenner (1885–1969) and Robert Coady (1881–1921), owners of the Washington Square Gallery in New York. The contract stipulated that paintings and drawings by Braque, Gris, Léger, and Picasso would be consigned to them, with payments due every three months for any sales, and that a Gris exhibition would be organized in October 1914, as well as a Picasso exhibition in December of the same year. In exchange, the New York dealers committed to purchasing 2,500 francs’ worth of works outright, and to paying for all shipping and insurance fees.

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Due to the lack of first-hand accounts, the circumstances of Kahnweiler’s encounter with the New York dealers are not well known. Brenner, originally a sculptor, and Coady, a painter, had met each other in Paris where they often spent time between 1905 and 1912. Brenner had studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and then at the Académie Julian. They gravitated toward the artistic circle of Americans in Paris around Gertrude Stein, and probably met Kahnweiler through her or their fellow artists. In the spring of 1914, they opened the Washington Square Gallery in New York together. Coady looked after the gallery, while Brenner acted as an agent in Paris. Again the war intervened, breaking up this still nascent commercial partnership, though all the evidence indicates that the transatlantic business was prospering up to the summer of 1914. The initial contract was renewed: it was extended in mid-March 1914 to May 1, 1916, and the amount of works purchased was doubled; then, a month later, a supplementary clause extended this arrangement to all the gallery’s artists, “by way of a minimum additional purchase price of 6,000 francs.”24 In her article on Coady,25 Judith Zilczer notes that the first exhibition at the Washington Square Gallery, in the summer of 1914, was devoted to Picasso. Brenner’s patchy records do not make it possible to identify the transactions with Kahnweiler for Cubist works, nor those for Derain or Vlaminick, but the increased sums corresponding to purchases of works in the supplementary contract clauses between February and April seem to indicate that the first works had been delivered and sold. The records of the American collector John Quinn (1870–1924)26 include dealings with the Washington Square Gallery from April 1914, and receipts for acquisitions of works by artists under exclusive contract with Kahnweiler. Certain purchases by Quinn from the Washington Square Gallery have an Ambroise Vollard provenance, but a receipt dated April 30, 1914, proves that he acquired Picasso and Derain prints, as well as three copies of limited editions produced by the Kahnweiler gallery for twenty francs each: L’enchanteur pourissant by Apollinaire, including an engraving by Derain (published in 1909), as well as Max Jacob’s Saint-Mortel (1911) and Le Siège de Jerusalem (1914), both illustrated by Picasso. Kahnweiler’s shipping of illustrated books—less costly to package and insure than paintings—proves that a collaboration between the galleries existed but not that paintings or drawings were sent from Paris. Another receipt sent to Quinn on March 30, 1915, does however mention the purchase of two drawings by Picasso. So far, my research has made it possible to identify four works on paper by Picasso27 in Quinn’s collection that could have come from Kahnweiler, although with a limited degree of certainty. Only the watercolor Le Verre au Chalumeaux from 1911 (DR 407) definitely came through Kahnweiler, although the link from Coady–Brenner to Quinn cannot be confirmed. Before 1914 the Kahnweiler gallery did not photograph artworks on paper, as this was an expensive process reserved exclusively for paintings, making their identification all the more difficult. The contract with the Washington Square Gallery was honored, since in 1914, when Marius de Zayas was looking for artworks for the second Picasso exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery, Kahnweiler categorically refused to lend anything on the grounds that he already had an exclusive representative in New York. On the eve of the war, Brenner wanted even more works and pleaded with Kahnweiler to let him

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take some paintings to America for safekeeping,28 but the German dealer, not seeing the danger, refused his offer and took no particular precautions before going away on holiday in August 1914. The consequences were tragic: the First World War brought about the seizure of his stock by the French state as enemy property in December 1914, destroying seven years of work.29 Kahnweiler, a fervent pacifist, refused to take part in the conflict between France and Germany and went into exile for nearly six years in Switzerland. The loss of his gallery and his artists was compounded by the financial catastrophe of the four auctions of his stock at the Hôtel Drouot (1921–23), from which he would bravely struggle to recover.30 In Kahnweiler’s career there is a before and after the sequestration sales, but collaboration with other dealers, especially with Flechtheim, remained essential, if not vital, as he tried to get by during the interwar years. Rather than following a given strategy, his priority after the war was to survive, reconnect with his artists, and reestablish himself in the French capital. Kahnweiler decided to resettle in Paris in February 1920 as soon as he obtained the authorization to return to France.31 He visited studios, bought works by Derain and Vlaminck, signed a new contract with Braque in May, and waited for Gris to free himself from a contract with Léonce Rosenberg at the end of the year to take him on again. But he had lost Picasso, whose primary dealer had been Paul Rosenberg since the summer of 1918. In September 1920 he opened a new gallery, the Galerie Simon, with the financial backing of his friend André Simon. Despite valiant efforts, Kahnweiler was unable to prevent the sale of his stock of over 1,200 works, but he did not lose hope. As the French state did not allow him to bid on his own stock, an international syndicate of friends and relatives that he created made acquisitions as their means allowed. This syndicate—named “Grassat”—brought together seven people, namely his friend the Swiss collector Hermann Rupf, his brother Gustav, his brother-in-law Hans Forchheimer, his daughter-in-law Louise Godon (later known as Louise Leiris), his peer Flechtheim, and himself. Its purpose was to buy back as many works as possible to maintain their market value and to bring the gallery back to life.32 The prices realized in the first Kahnweiler sequestration sale (June 13–14, 1921), lower than those at Uhde’s sale organized by the same people two weeks earlier, were not as bad as Kahnweiler had feared. The syndicate managed to purchase a relatively large number of works by Braque, Derain, Gris, and Léger for a total of nearly 25,000 francs, a quarter of which Flechtheim provided.33 The still lower sale prices at the second auction (November 17–18, 1921) allowed them to purchase a substantial number of works for 27,000 francs, though still no Picassos. If the syndicate skipped the third auction (July 4, 1922), Grassat increased the number of its acquisitions in the fourth and final auction (May 7–8, 1923), where paintings and drawings were practically being given away for free, getting back a large number of Picassos, Vlamincks, and Derains. The members of the syndicate then divided the works among themselves although some may have been owned jointly by Kahnweiler, his brother Gustav, and Flechtheim. The latter provided a considerable amount of capital but neither he nor Gustav appear to have made the journey to Paris, or why else would Kahnweiler still have been sending regular reports to Gustav? While the auctions were happening, Kahnweiler had pursued other lines of attack. He wrote to John Quinn at the end of 1921 to announce that he was preparing a show

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of Derain and Vlaminck at Joseph Brummer’s New York gallery.34 That same year, he offered a Derain exhibition to the Svensk-Franska gallery in Stockholm. After some negotiations over the prices, on which Kahnweiler remained inflexible, twenty-three works were sent to Sweden in July 1922. In a letter dated from the end of September (after the exhibition), its director Gösta Olson lamented that nothing had sold.35 Nonetheless, this was the beginning of a long collaboration, principally for the sale of lithographs in Sweden by artists from the Galerie Simon. The war had equally disastrous consequences for Flechtheim: he abandoned his fledgling first gallery while serving as a volunteer in the German army, and had to sell his inventory at auction in 1917.36 But he bounced back more quickly than Kahnweiler. After the war, the art of defeated Germany was not popular, a phenomenon reinforced by the great instability of the mark; French art, on the other hand, was much sought after across the Rhine. Flechtheim was able to reopen a gallery in Dusseldorf in 1919 and opened a branch that same year in Berlin (then becoming the art capital of Germany), followed by additional premises in Frankfurt in 1921 and Cologne in 1922. Gustav Kahnweiler joined him around 1920 and took over the running of the Frankfurt gallery, renamed “Flechtheim & Kahnweiler.” As the relationship between Kahnweiler and Flechtheim resumed postwar, their roles were reversed and the latter was now more in view. Through 1921 Flechtheim was indeed in regular contact with Léonce Rosenberg, the new promoter of Cubism in Paris and Kahnweiler’s archrival: not only had he managed to be called in as an expert for the sequestration sales, but he had also appropriated Kahnweiler’s stable of Cubists during the war. He thought he would be able to impose Cubism on the market and in the art world, but the opposite happened: the Kahnweiler auctions depreciated the value of his own collection. Léonce may have had a good eye, but unlike his brother Paul Rosenberg, he wasn’t known for his business acumen. Flechtheim and Léonce Rosenberg maintained a cordial professional relationship: they worked together, exchanging photos of artworks and mutually advertising their respective journals, Der Querschnitt and Le Bulletin de l’effort moderne. Did Flechtheim’s propensity for fraternizing with Kahnweiler’s worst enemy stem from a desire to defend Cubism at a time when few championed it? Was it purely motivated by the need to buy and sell at any cost? Or was he trying to soften up Léonce to help Kahnweiler recover his stock? Still more surprising is the fact that in 1922 Flechtheim and Gustav Kahnweiler contacted Paul Rosenberg to ask whether he would agree to send the Picasso exhibition, held at Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie and organized with Rosenberg’s support, to their Berlin gallery.37 Flechtheim, and therefore also D-H Kahnweiler behind the scenes, likely hoped to hold a successful Picasso exhibition in Berlin in an attempt to convince the painter to rejoin their gallery.38 The extant records are not sufficient to confirm that this was a deliberate strategy on their part, though they indisputably wanted to regain their preeminent position in the market, which meant taking it back from the Rosenberg brothers who usurped it in the first place. In any event, the precarious contemporary-art market, the dire devaluation of the German mark in the 1920s, and the Great Depression starting in 1929 forced dealers to get along and collaborate.

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While trying to forget about Drouot and the lifeless market for Cubist artworks, Kahnweiler also turned to his colleagues in Paris. Some of the works that had been seized from his gallery resurfaced on the market after the sequestration sales, through private transactions or auctions, and their prices increased over time.39 From 1925 to 1926, when the Galerie Jeanne Bucher opened, he sold or swapped drawings by Picasso, Braque, and Gris with Bucher. More surprisingly, he contacted Paul Rosenberg directly, to propose or request Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, offering him a Cézanne in 1924 and a Sisley in 1926, for instance.40 Since the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not unusual to see primary dealers who championed modern art also acting as agents on the secondary market, which was more profitable. This enabled them to support living artists. Correspondence between Flechtheim and Paul Rosenberg reveals that in 1926–27 they joined forces in a syndicate formed together with Paul and Bruno Cassirer as well as Paul Graupe—a sign that Franco-German relationships had resumed.41 The letters do not allow us to identify the president of this syndicate, but their frequency is an indication of consistent commercial relationships. Flechtheim offered Impressionist paintings from private German collections to Rosenberg—mainly works by Degas, Manet, and Cézanne—to be sold on the French market. Rosenberg, Picasso’s art dealer since 1918, but also Braque’s since 1922 and Léger’s since 1927, now had more clout on the Parisian market than Kahnweiler, who was still trying to recover from his losses. Kahnweiler is not mentioned in these exchanges, but considering Gustav’s role as an intermediary between his brother and Flechtheim it would be surprising if he was not involved to some extent [Figure 5.3]. At the beginning of the 1930s, the German galleries that championed modern art had to adjust to the rise of Fascism, which banned “degenerate” modern art and ostracized Jewish artists, dealers, and collectors. After he closed his branches in Cologne and Frankfurt in 1925 due to the economic downturn, in 1933 Flechtheim had to abandon the Berlin gallery and cede the Dusseldorf premises to his associate Alex Vömel. Being both Jewish and a promotor of the avant-garde, Flechtheim’s membership with the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts) was rescinded. As it had become compulsory in September 1933, this meant, in effect, that he was professionally banned. Gustav Kahnweiler left for England, where he reconnected with some wealthy cousins, the Neumanns. Flechtheim first tried to establish himself in France but settled in Switzerland. In order to safeguard his paintings, he had, little by little, sent his stock away as loans and consignments in Switzerland. He set up shop in Basel and tried to work from premises lent to him by the publisher and art dealer Christoph Bernoulli, but without success. Gustav Kahnweiler and Fred H. Mayor, the owner of the Mayor Gallery in London, then arranged for Flechtheim to come to England. Flechtheim was able to repatriate some of his artworks with the help of Vömel in Germany—a certain number of Cubist works but mainly those of Georges Grosz, which he left on consignment at the Mayor Gallery. The latter gallery had also been through several phases, and in 1933 found new impetus by handing over its artistic direction to Douglas Cooper.42 Kahnweiler, who had lost the German market once again, had enjoyed debating artistic questions with Cooper since 1931, and naturally turned his attention to

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Figure 5.3  Cover of the exhibition catalogue Manolo, Galerie Simon, Paris; Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Düsseldorf; Galerie Flechtheim & Kahnweiler, Frankfurt/Main, 1929.

London. Flechtheim thus became Kahnweiler’s agent again in the promotion of Cubism, this time in London. Already by the end of 1933 a large number of works by Picasso, Gris, Manolo, and some of Galerie Simon’s new artists—such as José de Togores and above all André Masson—were left on consignment with the Mayor Gallery, but the majority remained unsold and were returned to Kahnweiler between February and October 1937.43

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In Masson’s case, however, Kahnweiler had signed an agreement with Georges Wildenstein in 1933 to share the monthly payments made to the artist, but he kept a tight rein on Wildenstein as Masson was allowed to talk only to Kahnweiler. Correspondence between Kahnweiler and Masson shows that Wildenstein had some potential buyers and that they needed to get some works on deposit at the Mayor Gallery back to Paris.44 It is interesting to see that in 1933 Kahnweiler had business dealings with Wildenstein, originally an associate of Paul Rosenberg and Picasso’s representative in the United States in the 1920s (although Rosenberg and Wildenstein quarreled for personal reasons in the summer of 1930, bringing the collaboration to an end).45 Georges was looking after the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, while his father Nathan had opened a branch in New York in 1925. Kahnweiler probably hoped to use this agreement with the Wildensteins to penetrate the American market once again. When Flechtheim died in 1937, correspondence between his executors and the gallery Jacques Seligmann & Co in New York mentioned a painting by Picasso, L’Arlequin (1923, Z.V.135, Ludwig Museum, Cologne) owned in co-shares.46 One-quarter belonged to Flechtheim, one-quarter to Gustav Kahnweiler, and the two remaining quarters to two New York galleries—the Reinhardt Galleries and Seligmann & Co—while D-H Kahnweiler owned a share of any future profit. This type of joint acquisition, where several art dealers shared both the cost price of an artwork and any profits from its sale, became common practice in the 1930s, when dealer collaboration became necessary due to the worldwide economic depression and increasing political tensions. In October 1934, under the leadership of Justin Thannhauser—who was eager to send his works out of Nazi Germany and to find clients in a part of the world where the effects of the Great Depression were not as severe47—a major Picasso exhibition was organized in the Galleria Federico Müller in Buenos Aires with the participation of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paul Rosenberg, and Georges Wildenstein. Among the seventy-six works exhibited, dating from 1900 to 1933, Thannhauser contributed an important number of paintings and drawings mainly from the Blue and Rose Periods, including Le Moulin de la galette, 1900 (Guggenheim) and Le Meneur de cheval, 1906 (MoMA), entrusted to him by the German collector Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.48 Paul Rosenberg mainly sent neoclassical works, like Baigneur et baigneuses, 1921 (Z.IV, 208), and Kahnweiler a few Cubist works. According to the catalogue preface, this collaboration between the four dealers originated in Picasso’s endorsement of the exhibition in a “young and progressive” Latin American country, and his request that all the stylistic periods of his work be represented. Their collaboration can be explained, above all, by the fact that Picasso’s dealers vied for the artist’s representation at a time when his aura had grown considerably, in the wake of his large 1932 retrospective at Galeries Georges Petit. Throughout his career, Kahnweiler relied upon his colleagues, from his archrivals to his staunchest allies. Although there was undeniably a Kahnweiler “strategy” before the First World War that consisted of promoting the artists with whom he had exclusive contracts by means of loans to satellite galleries abroad, the interwar period opened the way for all sorts of arrangements with other dealers on a more equal footing (such as purchases in co-shares, divided profits, consignments, loans, sales, and exchanges), and even with competitors. Cooperation was no longer just a means for promoting modern art far afield, but a matter of survival.

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The Galerie Kahnweiler, which became the Galerie Simon in 1920, then the Galerie Louise Leiris in 1941, never collapsed. It survived two wars, though it had to wait until 1947 to recover its former glory when Picasso officially returned to Cubism’s first art dealer. Even after this date, Kahnweiler continued to sell large amounts of artworks to foreign colleagues, mainly in New York, which had by then become the new capital of the art market. There he partnered up with Curt Valentin (a former employee of Flechtheim’s in Berlin in the 1920s and early 1930s), who had left for the United States in 1937 to set up the Buchholz Gallery. After Valentin’s death in 1954, Kahnweiler chose the Eleanor and Daniel Saidenberg gallery as the exclusive representative of Picasso in New York. In addition, the Galerie Louise Leiris operated in the Swiss market through the Rosengart gallery in Lucerne. (The latter, set up by Justin Thannhauser in 1921, was taken over in 1928 by his cousin, Siegfried Rosengart, then by his daughter, Angela Rosengart—it was thus a long-standing relationship.) Finally, Kahnweiler maintained his partnership with Olson in Sweden between 1946 and 1965, selling works by Picasso, but also works by Braque, Laurens, Gris, and Léger to the Svensk-Franska gallery in Stockholm. Faithful to his original artistic leanings, the man who, in his youth, dreamed of being an orchestra conductor—but who was destined by his family for a career in finance— succeeded in championing the seemingly lost cause of Cubism against all odds. He tirelessly promoted French modern art through an international network of partnerships and maintained his position in the art market throughout the twentieth century.

Notes 1 2

Crémieux 1988: 102. Kahnweiler’s successive galleries were Galerie Kahnweiler, 28 rue Vignon, 1907–14; Galerie Simon, 29 bis rue d’Astorg, 1920–41; Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, 29 bis rue d’Astorg, 1941–57, then 47 rue de Monceau, 1957–today. 3 “Exposition Georges Braque,” Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris, November 9–28, 1908. 4 Joyeux-Prunel 2016. 5 Dalmau probably got the Léger and Gris pieces directly from the artists. Miquel Utrillo, in La Publicidad, March 23, 1912, announced that Josep Dalmau was going to Paris to prepare the Cubist exhibition. Dalmau did go to Paris that spring (March– April), then again in November 1912. It’s likely that he hoped to secure loans from Kahnweiler, and hoped Max Jacob would write the catalogue preface; neither of these projects worked out. See Lubar 1990: 309–23; Vidal 1996; Rousseau 2001: 327–37. 6 Gordon 1974. 7 See Force 2020. 8 Flacke-Knoch 1987; Dascher 2011; Bambi 2015. And the site alfredflechtheim.com 9 Assouline 1990: 197. 10 Jentsch 2008: 146. 11 Zervos 1927: 1. 12 http://alfredflechtheim.com/en/artists/sonderbund/ 13 Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbunds Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Cologne, May 25–September 30, 1912.

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14 For the identification of the works, see Schaefer 2012: 564–5 and 121–8, and Michael Fitzgerald’s essay, “Picasso in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.” 15 Bilski 2008: 27. 16 Among the works sent by Kahnweiler, it has been possible to identify a certain number, all for sale: [n°7 L’Aveugle, 1903, DBR IX, 31]; n°35 Paysage, 1907, DR 59; n°36 Tête de femme, 1909, DR 264 (sent by Kahnweiler or Flechtheim); n°37 Femme nue sur un lit, 1907, DR 77 (sent by Kahnweiler or Flechtheim); n°45 La Corbeille de faïence, 1909, DR 320; n°46 Tête de femme, 1908, DR 136 (sent by Kahnweiler or Wilhelm Uhde); [n°47 Buste de femme, 1908, DR 136]; n°53 Verre et tasse, 1911, DR 378; [n°54 Tête de femme, 1909, DR 325]; n°55 L’Eventail, 1909, DR 315; n°59 L’Huilier, 1911, DR 370; n°60 Vase de fleurs, 1911, DR 377; n°61 La Bouteille de Rhum, 1911, DR 414; n°62 Le Saucisson, 1912 DR 474; n°65 Le Pont-Neuf, 1911, DR 401 (sent by Kahnweiler, Uhde, or E. Suermondt); n°68 La Grenade, 1912, DR 432; [n°69 Femme à la guitare (Ma Jolie), 1911, DR 430]; [n°70 Guitare et verre, 1912, DR 487]; n°75 Le Compotier, 1912, DR 475 (sent by Kahnweiler or Flechtheim); n°76 Le Poète, 1912, DR 499.Among the works sent credited as “the A. Flechtheim Collection”: n°15 Au Lapin agile, 1904, DBR XII.23; n°17 Chevaux au bain, 1906, DBR XIV.16; n°44 Tête de femme, 1908, DR 105; n°63 L’Avenue Frochot, 1911, DR 443; N°64 Mandoliniste, 1911, DR 425; [n°85 Nus, 1904, sale Flechtheim collection, Paul Cassirer, Berlin and Hugo Helbing, Munich, May 6, 1917, lot: 206]; [n°95 Saltimbanque et jeune acrobate, 1905, DBR XII.28] and lastly n°52 Femme aux poires (Fernande), 1909, DR 290, for sale. 17 N°35 corresponds to lot 78 of the fourth sale of the seized Kahnweiler works, May 7–8, 1923; n° 59 to lot 177 of the second Kahnweiler sale November 17–18, 1921; n°60 to lot 172 of the second Kahnweiler sale; n°61 to lot 189 of the second Kahnweiler sale; n°62 to lot 89 of the first Kahnweiler sale, June 13–14, 1921; n°68 to lot 170 of the second Kahnweiler sale; n°69 to lot 361 of the fourth Kahnweiler sale; n°70 to lot 206 of the second Kahnweiler sale. 18 New York no. 347; Chicago no. 290; Boston no. 147. 19 New York no. 348; Chicago no. 291; Boston no. 148. 20 New York no. 350; Chicago no. 293; Boston no. 150. Walt Kuhn records, Archives of American Art. 21 New York nos. 621–4. 22 Derain’s Le Pot bleu (NY 342, Chicago 93; Boston 37); La Forêt (NY 343; Chicago 94); La Fenêtre sur le parc (NY 344; Chicago 95; Boston 38). Vlaminck’s Estuaire de la Seine (NY 190; Chicago 436; Boston 237); Les Figues (NY 191; Chicago 437; Boston 238); Rueil (NY 1067; Chicago 435). Braque’s Le Violon (NY 205; Chicago 28; Boston 10); Anvers (NY 206; Chicago 29; Boston 11); and La Forêt (NY 207; Chicago 30; Boston 12). 23 Assouline 1990: 208. 24 Contract reproduced in Peters 1994: 47. 25 Zilczer 1975: 79. 26 John Quinn Papers, New York Public Library, New York. 27 Tête de femme, 1906, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Buste d’homme aux bras croisés, 1909, Daix-Rosselet; Verre aux chalumeaux, 1911, Daix-Rosselet 407 et L’Arlesienne, 1912, Daix-Rosselet 496. 28 Crémieux 1988: 69. 29 For the history of the sales of seized art, see Tasseau 2017: 26–40. 30 Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 13–14, 1921, November 17–18, 1921; July 4, 1922; May 7–8, 1923. 31 Kahnweiler spent brief periods of time in Paris several times before February 1920 to prepare his return.

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32 The origin of the name Grassat is still unknown. My hypothesis is that it may be linked to Grassamen, “grass seed,” in German. 33 Re. purchases of the syndicate in the four Kahnweiler sales, see Flacke-Knoch 1987: 167–73. 34 In the end they were two separate one-man shows: “Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Derain,” Joseph Brummer Galleries, New York, January 26–February 21, 1922; and “Exhibition of Paintings by Maurice de Vlaminck,” Joseph Brummer Galleries, New York, March 5–25, 1922. 35 Letter from Gösta Olson to D-H Kahnweiler, September 26, 1922, Galerie SvenskFranska archives Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 36 Galerie Flechtheim: Moderne Gemälde, Versteigerungsraümen, Berlin, June 5, 1917. 37 Paul Rosenberg Archives, Elaine Rosenberg, New York, Correspondence 1922. 38 On the relationship between Picasso and Kahnweiler, see Tasseau 2015: online. 39 Tasseau 2016. 40 Paul Rosenberg Archives, Elaine Rosenberg, New York, Correspondence 1924, 1926. 41 Paul Rosenberg Archives, Elaine Rosenberg, New York, Correspondence 1926–1927. 42 Fred H. Mayor opened a gallery in 1925–26, and then from 1927, he worked as London agent for Paul Guillaume and Brandon Davis. The gallery was forced to close in 1930 due to financial duress and in the wake of Davis’s suicide. In 1933, Mayor opened a new gallery in London with Douglas Cooper as its artistic director, active until 1938. 43 Interview by the author with James Major, June 2018. 44 See Levaillant 2009: 47–77. 45 Letter from Léonce Rosenberg to Francis Picabia, August 6, 1930: “Wildenstein, my brother Paul’s associate, dumped him six weeks ago and took back his share.” Fonds Léonce Rosenberg, musée national d’Art moderne—Centre Georges Pompidou. 46 Archives of American Art, Washington D.C., Jacques Seligmann Papers, General Correspondence, Alfred Flechtheim, Gustav Kahnweiler. 47 Herzog 2006: 24. 48 Le Meneur de cheval and Le Moulin de la galette were part of a group of works entrusted to Thannhauser by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy—“the great Berlin collector” mentioned in the preface.

Bibliography Assouline 1990. Pierre Assouline. An Artful Life: A Biography of D.H. Kahnweiler, 1884–1979. Translated by Charles Ruas. New York: G. Weidenfeld, 1990. Bambi 2015. Andrea Bambi, Axel Drecoll and Andrea Baresel-Brand, eds. Alfred Flechtheim: Raubkunst und Restitution. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Bilski 2008. Emily D. Bilski. The Moderne Galerie of Heinrich Thannhauser. Munich: Minerva, 2008. Crémieux 1988. Francis Crémieux. Entretiens: Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Mes galeries et mes peintres. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. Reprinted 1988. Dascher 2011. Ottfried Dascher, ed. Alfred Flechtheim, Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger. Zurich: Nimbus Kunst und Bücher, 2011. Flacke-Knoch 1987. Monika Flacke-Knoch and Stephan von Wiese. “Der Lebensfilm von Alfred Flechtheim.” In Alfred Flechtheim, Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger, edited by Ottfried Dascher, 167–73. Münster: Westfälisches Landesmuseum, 1987. Exhibition catalogue.

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Force 2020. Christel H. Force. “Aux origines de la rencontre entre Cubisme et ‘art nègre’: Otto Feldmann, promoteur de Picasso en Allemagne avant 1914.” In Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, edited by Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, 74–108. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Gordon 1974. Donald E. Gordon. Modern Art Exhibitions 1900–1916. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1974. Herzog 2006. Günther Herzog. “Thannhauser Händler, Sammler, Stifter.” In Sediment, Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Kunsthandels, Heft 11. Cologne: Zentralarchiv des Internationalen Kunsthandels ZADIK, 2006. Jentsch 2008. Ralph Jentsch. Alfred Flechtheim und George Grosz: zwei deutsche Schicksale. Bonn: Weilde Verlag, 2008. Joyeux-Prunel 2016. Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel. “La construction internationale de l’aura de Picasso avant 1914, expositions différenciées et processus mimétiques.” Presented at Revoir Picasso colloquium, Musée Picasso, Paris, March 2016. http://revoirpicasso. fr/circulations/la-construction-internationale-de-laura-de-picasso-avant-1914expositions-differenciees-et-processus-mimetiques-%E2%80%A2-b-joyeux-prunel/ Levaillant 2009. Françoise Levaillant. “Conversation sur les valeurs. La correspondance entre Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler et André Masson de 1933 à 1939.” In Etude de la forme dialogique des écrits d’artistes: les correspondances, edited by Camille Fosse and Lise Lerichomme, 47–77. Marseille: Le mot et le reste, 2012. Lubar 1990. Robert S. Lubar. “Cubism, Classicism and Ideology: The 1912 Exposicio d’Art Cubista in Barcelona and French Cubist Criticism.” In On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism, 1910–1930, edited by Elisabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy, 309–23. London: Tate Gallery, 1990. Exhibition catalogue. Peters 1994. Hans Albert Peters. Die Sammlung Kahnweiler, Von Gris, Braque, Léger und Klee bis Picasso. Munich and New York: Prestel, 1994. Exhibition catalogue. Rousseau 2001. Pascal Rousseau. “La Galerie Dalmau. L’introduction de l’abstraction en Catalogne et l’avant-garde parisienne durant la Première Guerre mondiale.” In Paris– Barcelone: de Gaudi à Miró, edited by Brigitte Léal and Maria-Teresa Ocañia, 327–37. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2001. Exhibition catalogue. Schaefer 2012, Barbara Schaefer, ed. 1912. Mission Moderne: Die Jahrhundertschau des Sonderbundes. Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2012. Exhibition catalogue. Tasseau 2015. Vérane Tasseau. “Picasso et les ventes Kahnweiler.” Presented at Revoir Picasso colloquium, Musée Picasso, Paris, March 2015. http://revoirpicasso.fr/ circulations/ Tasseau 2016. Vérane Tasseau. “Les Ventes de séquestre de la galerie Kahnweiler et leur réseau d’acheteurs: l’exemple d’André Breton et Paul Éluard.” Ojo Le Journal 34 (September 2016). https://www.picasso.fr/ojo-les-archives-septembre-2016-n-34. Tasseau 2017. Vérane Tasseau. “Les ventes de séquestre du marchand Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1921–1923.” In “Juifs et marché de l’art parisien en contexte de guerre: XXe siècle,” edited by Yves Chevrefils Desbiolles and Emmanuelle Polack. Archives juives, Revue d’histoire des Juifs de France 50 (March 2017): 26–40. Vidal 1996. Mercè Vidal. L’Exposició d’Art Cubista de les Galeries Dalmau. Barcelona: Universitat de Bracelona, Facultat de Belles Arts, 1996. Zervos 1927. Christian Zervos. “Nos Enquêtes: Entretien avec Alfred Flechtheim.” Feuilles volantes, in Cahiers d’Art 10 (1927): 1. Zilczer 1975. Judith K. Zilczer. “Robert J. Coady, Forgotten Spokesman for Avant-Garde Culture in America.” American Art Review 2 (November–December 1975): 77–89.

6

Promoting Modernism in the 1920s: The Art Journals of Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, and Alfred Flechtheim Ambre Gauthier

Against a background of economic and social upheaval in Europe during the interwar period, Parisian art dealers tried to strengthen the modern art market. A new dealer profile solidified, that of promoters intent on imposing their artists on the international stage in a more deliberate and strategic manner than their predecessors. This new generation of traders was determined to advance their artists through ubiquitous presence and publications. The three dealers this chapter will focus on are Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), Léonce Rosenberg (1878–1947), and Paul Guillaume (1891–1934). Their careers epitomize the 1920s and 1930s, in that they advocated passionately and effectively on behalf of Parisian modernism, as well as so-called “primitivism,” and were determined to disregard national boundaries. Extant records, albeit scarce, show the strength of their vision and what it entailed in terms of networking (with artists, peers, and clients), interpersonal communication (through cable, telephone, travel), record keeping (stock photographs), promotion, and information sharing (exhibitions, catalogues, and other publications). Most notably, all three published art journals as part of this effort, being well aware of the power of periodicals to inform the public, develop aesthetic theorization, and distribute images on a worldwide scale. Produced within the context of trade and intended for a specific cultural milieu, the gallery journal was designed to meet both its owner’s specific needs and those of its prospective readers. It was assigned a multifold mission: to be an extension of the gallery’s commercial activities (by promoting its stock and exhibitions), assert its credibility and obtain international recognition, and provide the reader with the required guidance and reassurance. The three gallery journals discussed here played a major role in driving the internationalization of the market, expanding from an early, essentially Eurocentric focus to a broader transatlantic scope.

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Paul Guillaume’s Les Arts à Paris1 (1918–1935): French Art in Merion, Pennsylvania Paul Guillaume played a major role in the international reach of the Parisian market during the interwar years. Originally employed in a garage, he is said to have discovered African sculpture upon seeing a few objects displayed in the window of a shop in Montmartre, which triggered a lifelong passion. By 1911–12, he dealt privately in African art,2 then opened a gallery in February 1914 at 6 rue de Miromesnil. The poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire introduced him to artists and art dealers early on, and he quickly became a fixture of the Parisian art world. Guillaume organized major exhibitions such as Sculptures nègres in 1917 (featuring his private collection), and the Premiere Exposition d’Art Nègre et d’Art Oceanien in 1919,3 before establishing his new gallery at 59 rue La Boétie in 1921. From March 1918 through June 1935 Guillaume published twenty-one issues of his journal Les Arts à Paris to promote his inventory of and exhibitions on modern and African arts.4 Apollinaire, himself editor of his own Les Soirées de Paris (1912–14),5 initially helped define the editorial strategy of the new publication, in addition to publishing articles under pseudonyms such as Louis Troème. With his help, Guillaume strived to meet commercial as well as aesthetic/theoretical imperatives by publishing exhibition reviews, thematic essays, and photographic reproductions of his art collection. After Apollinaire’s death in November 1918, Guillaume wrote most of the essays himself, using pseudonyms such as Le cavalier bleu, Colonel El Bonardi, or Colin d’Arbois—these imaginary critics produced predictably glowing reviews of his exhibitions and accounts of his openings. To increase the journal’s visibility, most issues appeared on the occasion of an opening or other special event. As a lender to the pioneering 1914 exhibition of African sculpture presented at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291, and those subsequently shown at Marius de Zayas’ Modern Gallery, Guillaume was the only source of tribal art exhibited and sold in New York through the 1920s. He was also one of the first suppliers of contemporary French painting in America. His most important client was Philadelphia collector Albert C. Barnes, who often traveled to Paris between 1911 and 19296 in search of tribal and modern arts. During these trips, Barnes met various luminaries of the Parisian art world, such as the American expatriates Leo and Gertrude Stein (reputed collectors of contemporary art who held a weekly salon), as well as the dealers Ambroise Vollard and Paul Durand-Ruel. Barnes also met Paul Guillaume, who became the collector’s designated art advisor from 1923. For about a decade henceforth, Guillaume played a major role in shaping the Barnes Foundation’s collection in Merion, following its opening in 1922.7 Through Guillaume, Barnes acquired paintings by the likes of Giorgio de Chirico, André Derain, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Picabia, and Chaïm Soutine, in addition to African and Oceanic art. The first painting Barnes bought from Guillaume was Soutine’s The Pastry Chef (1919),8 followed by many other Soutines. The collector later explained:

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The main reason I bought so many of [Soutine’s] paintings, was that they were a surprise, if not a shock, and I wanted to find out how he got that way. Besides, I felt he was making creative use of certain traits of the work of Bosch, Tintoretto, Van Gogh, Daumier and Cézanne and was getting new effects with color.9

The result of their joint efforts was an impressive body of contemporary art—as ambitious as daring for 1920s America. Moreover, Guillaume and Barnes devised new modes of display, mixing medias and movements with a pedagogical goal in mind. The artistic partnership between Barnes and Guillaume is clearly discernible in Les Arts à Paris, and the journal shows that it was mutually beneficial. Using Barnes as a springboard, Guillaume used both his gallery and his journal to advertise the excellence of his stock and the good taste of an eminent collector (with deep pockets) who recognized the superiority of French modernism. In February 1923 he presented an exhibition of the Barnes Foundation’s recent acquisitions, including major paintings by Chirico, Matisse, Modigliani, and Soutine.10 Concurrently, issue number 7 (special edition) of Les Arts à Paris, published in January 1923, served as both an announcement for the exhibition and an advertisement for the gallery. It included two major articles titled “Doctor Barnes” and “The Barnes Foundation,” with reproductions of paintings from Guillaume and Barnes’s collections. In it, Guillaume eloquently described the Barnes Foundation’s ambitious and admirable mission as a work of beauty, from its conception, at once idealistic and concrete, by a man served by the gifts of intelligence and by the graces of fortune, to the rare joy of achieving its realization. This effort in the name of humanity’s greater good, and for the glory of France, will bloom on the American soil. The genial Dr. Barnes is endowed with a prodigious faculty of judgment. … Dr. Barnes, the young artists of France applaud you—they hail you and say thank you.11

To show his gratitude, Barnes appointed the dealer Foreign Secretary to the Foundation in January 1923. While Guillaume’s imprimatur could still be felt, the journal became a vector for Barnes’s theories, extending their influence beyond Merion. Issue number 8 in turn featured an essay written by Barnes titled “The Barnes Foundation, an educational experience.”12 Issues 9 to 14 likewise contained various essays by Barnes and Guillaume touching on the pedagogical activities and displays at the Foundation, as well as one by Thomas Munro (who co-authored a book on African art with Guillaume13) on the appreciation of primitive sculpture. Between 1923 and 1926 Guillaume traveled regularly to Merion to give talks at the Barnes Foundation, promoting French modern art and the so-called “primitive” arts to prospective collectors, thereby increasing the prestige and reach of his gallery, which Barnes called “the temple.”14 Their substantial extant correspondence in Barnes’s records testifies to the constant dialogue between the two men, regarding new acquisitions and aesthetic considerations.

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Léonce Rosenberg’s Le Bulletin de l’Effort moderne (1924–1927): Defending Cubism in the 1920s In 1910, Léonce Rosenberg (1879–1947) set up as an antiquarian at 19 rue de la Baume in Paris, and called the space Galerie Haute Époque. Toward the end of the First World War, in March 1918, he renamed it L’Effort moderne and changed his focus to Cubism and Neoplasticism. Taking over from the now-defunct Galerie Kahnweiler (28 rue Vignon), which had been the temple of Cubism before the war, Léonce took on the cubist cause. He usurped the title from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, then exiled from France, whose stock was sequestered in 1914 and subsequently sold by the French state due to his German origins.15 By the mid-1920s, Léonce had served as expert at, and had profited from, the four Kahnweiler sales (which included cubist works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso), and his brother, Paul Rosenberg, had become Picasso’s new dealer in 1918—neither were friends of Kahnweiler’s. In 1921, reflecting on his failed attempt to salvage his gallery stock, Kahnweiler wrote: “The Rosenbergs: oh yes, they are bastards. … To think that Léonce is now making grotesque maneuvers … Yes, had it not been for them, I am convinced that it [the salvaging of his stock] could have been arranged.”16 This context notwithstanding, Léonce progressively succeeded in winning over the artists formerly represented by Kahnweiler (among others) and began to promote their art with much dedication, albeit with an unreliable management style. By 1916, Léonce wrote to Picasso: “Together, we will be invincible. You will be the creator, I will be the action!”17 For a few brief years after the war, the Galerie L’Effort moderne became one of the primary representatives of Cubism and organized exhibitions of works by Braque, Gris, Auguste Herbin, Henri Laurens, Léger, Jean Metzinger, Piet Mondrian, Amédée Ozenfant, Francis Picabia, and Picasso. Between 1921 and 1923 two major group exhibitions were shown at the gallery: Masters of Cubism and Architects of De Stijl. Rosenberg also planned exhibitions outside of Paris, including the first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work in Great Britain, at the Leicester Galleries in London in January 1921. However, by the end of 1923 all the cubist painters under contract with Léonce had left the gallery: Picasso chose his brother Paul in 1918; Diego Rivera left Léonce in 1918, Braque and Gris in 1921, etc.18 Far from giving up, in 1924 Léonce launched the Bulletin de l’Effort moderne, which was meant to increase the international outreach of Cubism by promoting the works of Picasso, Gris, and Léger. The short-lived but prolific journal, which counted forty issues from January 1924 to December 1927, was widely distributed in Europe by subscriptions and through art galleries, and helped him weave a network of art critics, collectors, and peers in the trade. If the number of issues varied from year to year due to Léonce’s irregular finances, some things were consistent: The critics Maurice Raynal (1884–1954) and Pierre Reverdy (1889–1960) were frequent contributors; and all the cover designs, by Georges Valmier, adhered to Léonce’s mission to promote Parisian modernism in general, and defend Cubism in particular. The journal was primarily

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focused on the gallery’s artists and exhibitions, and editorial content comprised influential essays such as “Cubisme” (1925) by Albert Gleizes,19 and “Cubisme et Tradition” (1925) by Rosenberg himself.20 In “Cubisme et Tradition,” originally published in 1920 by Editions L’Effort moderne, the dealer defended Cubism by situating it between tradition and modernity: For many, [Cubism] embodies an anarchic art form because, in appearance, it goes against conceptions of artistic representation that were universally accepted since the Renaissance. However, Cubism creates order by using a new organizational template, creating a type of unity through a new hierarchy of values.21

Rosenberg’s attempt to defend Cubism was futile, however. By then, artists had evolved toward a more classical, figurative type of representation—the retour à l’ordre (return to order) that dominated the interwar period.

Alfred Flechtheim’s Der Querschnitt (1921–1936): The German Connection The influential German art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), who owned galleries in Dusseldorf, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Vienna in the interwar period, published the journal Der Querschnitt from January 1921.22 Der Querschnitt, which means “the cross section,” promoted the transnational interests and activities of the ubiquitous Flechtheim, who was similarly an avid promotor of African art and Cubism, with many ties in Paris. It advertised his artists and exhibitions, but more broadly captured the zeitgeist, covering a wide range of topics including contemporary society, art, literature, and sports. It featured articles by the likes of Paul Poiret, Florent Fels, and Walter Benjamin in July 1926; Fernand Léger in January 1928; André Gide in March 1928 and February 1932; Ambroise Vollard in March 1930; Jean Cocteau in Septembre 1930; Gustave Coquiot and Aldous Huxley in August 1931; and F. T. Marinetti and René Clair in January 1934, to name a few. Flechtheim shared an enthusiasm for Cubism only matched by Kahnweiler first, then Léonce Rosenberg, and presented individual exhibitions of Juan Gris in Berlin (1923 and 1930) and Düsseldorf (1925)—the only ones held outside Paris during the artist’s lifetime—and Fernand Léger (1928), as well as group shows. Gris’s book Notes on My Paintings was published in Der Querschnitt in 1923, coinciding with his show at the Berlin branch that September. Many Gris paintings passed through Flechtheim’s galleries in the 1930s and thus found their way into German collections. Léonce Rosenberg and Paul Guillaume were enthusiastic readers of the German magazine; they collaborated on several issues and mentioned it in their own journals. Interestingly, Guillaume publicized Der Querschnitt in Les Arts à Paris in 1923 thus: “Der Querschnitt appears regularly and is indisputably helpful to anyone who wants to keep abreast of the plastic evolution in this country,” by which he meant France.23

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Flechtheim’s promotion of Cubism and African art was seminal: he sourced both in Paris and advocated for both in Germany and beyond. His journal attests to his collaboration with French dealers and the wide circulation of information: In a 1924 issue of Der Querschnitt, Flechtheim reproduced a Congo mask from Guillaume’s collection;24 and for his part, Guillaume plugged an essay written by Barnes, titled “Die Negerkunst und Amerika” (African Art and America) in 1925.25 African and Oceanic art also played an important role in Flechtheim’s other publication, Omnibus (1931–32).26 Léonce Rosenberg established a professional relationship with Flechtheim in the 1920s. Their extant correspondence from 1920 to 1928 illustrates their complex relationship.27 A letter written by Flechtheim on January 3, 1921,28 shows that he bought artworks from Rosenberg’s stock and collection, and exemplifies their business rapport. Another letter, dated October 9, 1927, shows that Flechtheim was particularly interested in buying paintings by de Chirico, for instance.29 Flechtheim also obtained photographic reproductions of artworks from Rosenberg’s stock to include in Der Querschnitt, which he published alongside essays on the occasion of special exhibitions in Paris; he also procured essays by Rosenberg, such as “Cubisme et Tradition.” Flechtheim advertised Rosenberg’s events and featured Guillaume’s main client, Barnes; conversely the French dealers advertised Flechtheim’s activities, evidencing interactions between the Parisian, German, and American art circles. Existing business relations between dealers were thus consolidated through their art journals, which in turn roped in collectors and critics, fostering interconnecting, transnational networks that impacted the history of collecting. Gallery journals helped propagate avant-garde theories, distribute art reproductions, and publicize exhibitions; they provided reliable and dynamic bridges of communication between artists, dealers, critics, and collectors. Rather than publishing art journals merely to publicize their gallery’s commercial activities, Rosenberg, Guillaume, and Flechtheim saw themselves as enlightened promoters of the avant-garde. They sought to increase their artists’ visibility and relevance on the international art scene, and wanted to project an image of themselves as connoisseurs, impresarios, and collectors. This was part of a strategy to counter the bad press surrounding the trade—something the publisher of Cahiers d’art,30 Christian Zervos (who operated the Galerie du Dragon from 1929 with his wife Yvonne, then Galerie Cahiers d’Art from 1934), had in mind when he published the supplement Les Feuilles volantes. In 1927, the latter featured unprecedented interviews with Paul Guillaume,31 Léonce Rosenberg,32 and Alfred Flechtheim,33 among other dealers, to illustrate the dynamic European network of new dealers who were propagating contemporary French art at home and abroad.

Notes 1

Les Arts à Paris, actualités critiques et littéraire des arts et de la curiosité. Paris: s.n., 1918–35. 21 issues. Like the other art magazines published at the same time at the Imprimerie de l’Union, the print run for each issue was between 300 and 500 copies. The costs of production easily explain the low number of copies printed for each issue. Cf. Imprimerie Union archives, Paris (see Desbiolles 1993: 267; Pilgran 1999: 37–46).

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23 24 25 26 27

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See Biro 2018: 125–6. Premiere Exposition d’Art Negre et d’Art Oceanien organisée par M. Paul Guillaume à la galerie Devambez, Paris, 10 au 29 mai 1919. Paris: Galerie Devambez, 1919. The list of the exhibited artworks included many pieces from the Paul Guillaume collection and the André Level collection. Giraudon 2016. See also Giraudon 1993. Les Soirées de Paris, Paris: s.n., 1912–14. 27 issues. Albert C. Barnes—Paul Guillaume correspondence, 1922–32; Albert C. Barnes archives, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. Barnes 1929. Chaïm Soutine, The Pastry Chef or Baker Boy, 1919, oil on canvas, BF442, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. The painting is reproduced in Les Arts à Paris, n°12, May 1926, 12–14. Albert C. Barnes, c. 1950. Exhibition of the recent acquisitions of the Barnes Foundation, Galerie Paul Guillaume, February 1923. Guillaume 1923: 1–2. Barnes 1923: 5–8. Paul Guillaume and Thomas Munro, Primitive Negro Sculpture, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926. Barnes 1924: 11–12. See also Opportunity, May 1924, 140. Sales of sequestered German property, works of the Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler collection, Hôtel des ventes Drouot, Paris, June 13, 1921; November 17, 1921; July 4, 1922; May 7–8, 1923.Assouline 1988: 232. Letter from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler to André Derain, October 27, 1921, Louise Leiris Gallery records, Paris. Letter from Léonce Rosenberg to Pablo Picasso, March 24, 1916, Pablo Picasso archives, Pablo Picasso Museum, Paris. Léonce Rosenberg’s contracts, Léonce Rosenberg archives, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris, LROS 1–49, 1912–47. Gleizes 1926–27. Rosenberg 1924. “Pour beaucoup, celui-ci représente un art anarchique parce que,dans son aspect, il bouleverse les conceptions qu’on se faisait partout, depuis la Renaissance, de la représentation artistique. Mais, par sa doctrine, il ramène à l’ordre, établissant, par une hiérarchie des valeurs, la discipline grâce à laquelle il pourra organiser en vue de la création d’une unité nouvelle.” Der Querschnitt: mitteilungen der galerie Flechtheim. Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt: Galerie Flechtheim, 1921–36. Initially Verlag der Galerie Flechtheim, and from 1923 Querschnitt-Verlag. See Facsimile, Der Querschnitt, 1921–1936, edited by Wilmout Haacke & Alexander von Baeyer. Frankfurt-Berlin-Wien: Ullstein Verlag, 1977 (See Von Wiese 1987). Les Arts à Paris, n°8, 1923, 2. Der Querschnitt, n°2–3, Summer 1924, 136–7: “Maske. Französische Congo. Sammlung Paul Guillaume, Paris.” Barnes 1925: 1–8. Omnibus, Almanach auf das jahr. Berlin, Düsseldorf: Verlag der Galerie Flechtheim, 1931–32. 2 issues. Léonce Rosenberg archives, correspondence with Alfred Flechtheim, LROS 23, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris.

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28 Letter from Alfred Flectheim to Léonce Rosenberg, January 1, 1927, Léonce Rosenberg archives, correspondence with Alfred Flechtheim, LROS 23, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris. 29 Letter from Alfred Flectheim to Léonce Rosenberg, October 9, 1927, Léonce Rosenberg archives, correspondence with Alfred Flechtheim, LROS 23, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris. 30 Cahiers d’art. Paris: ED. Cahiers d’art, 1926–60. 35 volumes. 31 Zervos 1927A. 32 Zervos 1927B. 33 Zervos 1927C.

Bibliography Assouline 1988. Pierre Assouline. L’homme de l’art: Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1884–1979. Paris: Balland, 1988. Barnes 1923. Albert C. Barnes. “The Barnes Foundation, an Educational Experience.” Les Arts à Paris, no. 8 (October 1, 1923): 5–8. Barnes 1924. Albert C. Barnes. “The Temple.” Les Arts à Paris, no. 10 (November 1, 1924): 11–12. Barnes 1925. Albert C. Barnes. “Die Negerkunst und Amerika.” Der Querschnitt 5, no. 1 (1925): 1–8. Barnes 1929. Albert C. Barnes and John Dewey. Art and Education. Merion, PA: Barnes Foundation Press, 1929. Biro 2018. Yaëlle Biro. Fabriquer le regard—Marchands, réseaux et objets d’art africains à l’aube du XXe siècle. Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2018. Desbiolles 1993. Yves Chevrefils Desbiolles. Les Revues d’art à Paris, 1905–1940. Paris: Ent’revues, 1993. Desbiolles 2011. Yves Chevrefils Desbiolles and Rossella Froissart Pezone, eds. Les Revues d’art: Formes, stratégies et réseaux au XXe siècle. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Giraudon 1993. Colette Giraudon. Les Arts à Paris chez Paul Guillaume, 1918–1935. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée de l’Orangerie, 1993. Exhibition catalogue. Giraudon 2016. Colette Giraudon. Paul Guillaume et les peintres du XXe siècle: De l’art nègre à l’avant-garde. Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2016. Gleizes 1926–27. Albert Gleizes. “Cubisme.” Bulletin de l’effort moderne, nos. 22–32 (1926–27). Guillaume 1919. Première Exposition d’Art Nègre et d’Art Océanien, organisée par M. Paul Guillaume. Paris: Galerie Devambez, 1919. Exhibition catalogue. Guillaume 1923. Paul Guillaume. “Prologue.” Les Arts à Paris, no. 7 (1923): 1–2. Guillaume 1926. Paul Guillaume and Thomas Munro. Primitive Negro Sculpture. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926. Pilgran 1999. Markus Pilgran, Uwe Fleckner and Thomas W. Gaehtgens. Prenez garde à la peinture! Kunstkritik in Frankreich, 1900–1945. Berlin: Akademie, 1999. Rosenberg 1924. Rosenberg, Léonce. “Cubisme et tradition,” Bulletin de l’effort moderne, no. 5 (1924): 5–8.

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Von Wiese 1987. Stephan von Wiese and Hans Albert Peters. Alfred Flechtheim: Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger, 1937—Europa vor dem 2. Weltkrieg. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum, 1987. Exhibition catalogue. Zervos 1927A. Christian Zervos. “Nos Enquêtes: Entretien avec Paul Guillaume.” Feuilles volantes, in Cahiers d’art 2, no. 1 (1927): 1–3. Zervos 1927B. Christian Zervos. “Nos Enquêtes: Entretien avec Léonce Rosenberg.” Feuilles volantes, in Cahiers d’art 2, no. 6 (1927): 1–3. Zervos 1927C. Christian Zervos. “Nos Enquêtes: Entretien avec Alfred Flechtheim.” Feuilles volantes, in Cahiers d’art 2, no. 10 (1927): 1–3.

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Paul Guillaume, Marius de Zayas, and African Arts: A Transatlantic Partnership, 1914–1923 Yaëlle Biro

During the first decades of the twentieth century, the circulation of African arts in the West relied on preexisting networks established for the commerce of ethnographic objects. Simultaneously, however, the development of an art market for African artifacts followed the path of the propagation of modernism: first within Europe then, after 1913, to the United States. As a result of the extensive transatlantic commercial exchanges that followed, a handful of art dealers came to be responsible for largely shaping the African-art canon as we know it. This chapter will focus on a key commercial partnership and friendship that was critical to the formation of a new art-oriented discourse on African objects during the 1910s: that between Parisian art dealer Paul Guillaume (1891–1934) and New York-based gallery owner Marius de Zayas (1880–1961). Based on extensive archival research, this chapter will establish Guillaume and de Zayas’s role in organizing several exhibitions of African objects between 1914 and 1918, among the first shows to ever present sculptures from Africa as art. Furthermore, we will argue that this partnership stimulated the conception of two seminal illustrated volumes on African arts at a time when such publications were quasi-nonexistent. Focusing on de Zayas’s and Guillaume’s common interest in African arts, this chapter will highlight the collaborators’ central position in defining a field of collecting and connoisseurship for the arts of Africa—one closely intertwined with the development of a market for modern art in Europe and America.

A Taxonomic Shift Shelves filled to the brim with objects from Cameroon [Figure 7.1]: a cumulative display of collecting power arranged by the firm Umlauff in Hamburg, Germany, known for its successful business as ethnographica and curiosities vendor. By contrast, a single Fang reliquary element from Gabon, photographed for the art gallery of Joseph Brummer in Paris [Figure 7.2]: carefully lit, positioned by itself on a pedestal, the image embraces the newly developed trope of photography of works of art. Both these photographs

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Figure 7.1  Firm J.F.G. Umlauff, Hambourg, 1913. Kamerun Sammlung, plate I. University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives, Director’s Office—George B. Gordon—Heinrich Umlauff (image n° 239154). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Museum Archives.

date from 1913, but in many ways their contrasting inherent messages epitomize the profound transformation that took place in the reception of African arts in the West during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As these two photographs illustrate so powerfully, individual objects emerged from the chaos of ethnographic collecting—a practice that went hand in hand with the creation of ethnographic museums during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, initiated and motivated by colonial enterprise. This “making of art”1 was neither natural nor linear, but rather the result of the collective actions of a small group of individuals. It followed the process of “artification,” as formulated by French anthropologists Nathalie Heinich and Roberta Shapiro, which includes a series of clearly identifiable steps such as the development of a new vocabulary, the use of press and photography, as well as new modes of display. Applied to African objects, these actions fundamentally

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Figure 7.2  Photographer unknown, c. 1913. Reliquary element forming a head, Fang style, Gabon, nineteenth century. © The Joseph and Ernest Brummer Records. Series IV, Subseries IV.B. The Cloisters Library and Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

contributed to changing their status within the framework of a Western concept of artistic appreciation. As anthropologist James Clifford stated: Art is not universal but is a changing Western cultural category. The fact that rather abruptly, in the space of a few decades, a large class of non-Western artifacts came to be seen as art is a taxonomic shift that requires critical historical discussion, not celebration.2

When studying the reception of African arts in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is essential to remember that it came to have very little to do with the African continent itself and the context from which these objects originally emerged. Even more, this aesthetic appreciation developed in parallel to a denigration

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of the works’ makers. While it shaped an entire field of art history and impacted the course of modern art, the reception of African arts in the West and its “artification” is dependent on a complex political framework embedded in the colonial enterprise.

Guillaume and de Zayas: Actors of the Art Market in Paris and New York Spanning the duration of the First World War, from 1914 until 1918, the short transatlantic partnership between Paul Guillaume and Marius de Zayas can be considered a generative moment in the definition of the canon of African arts as we know it today. Both developed commercial strategies for African objects that paralleled those for works by European modernists. While their aesthetic appreciation of African objects within the context of the development of the European avant-garde is at the core of their respective activities as dealers, their backgrounds differ greatly. Guillaume’s modest beginnings as a clerk in a car dealership in Paris c. 1911, his speedy ascent as a successful dealer, his early and transformative friendship with art critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and his connections with key African-art dealer Joseph Brummer—and later on, notable American collector Albert C. Barnes—have been told many times and will not be repeated here.3 It is however important to point out what distinguishes him from other dealers of African arts from this era: while most came to consider African works through the lens of European modernism, Guillaume’s career evolved in the opposite direction, starting with the arts from Africa which then led him to modern art. African arts as the motor of Guillaume’s career are central to his identity as an art dealer. A lesser known figure in the field of African art historiography, Marius de Zayas was born in Mexico and arrived in New York in 1907. Trained as an artist and known for his caricatures, he had quickly become part of photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s circle and by 1911 had become the unofficial “chief curator”4 of Stieglitz’s Little Gallery of the Photo Secession, also known as 291. De Zayas perceived early on the growing interest for African sculptures among the European artistic avant-garde, and as a response, was instrumental in bringing examples to artists in New York. He expressed interest in doing so as early as 1911; in a letter to Stieglitz dated April 21, 1911, he stated: “I remarked more than ever the influence of the African negro art among this revolutionists [sic]. Some of the sculptors have merely copy it, without taking the trouble to translate it into French … I am convinced once more of the necessity of having a show in the S. of the negro art.”5 Until 1913 and the famous “Armory Show” in New York, Stieglitz’s 291 gallery, a theoretical school more than a commercial gallery, was the only place where the new directions taken by the European avant-garde could be seen by the small group of interested parties.6 As a direct result of the “Armory Show,” and in a movement that paired together African arts and art of the European avant-garde, works from Africa were pushed to the forefront of the New York contemporary-art scene due to their newly acknowledged role as primary catalyst for avant-garde creativity. The modernist displays at work in these galleries, the juxtapositions of African arts with works by

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Henri Rousseau, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brancusi, set the premises for the modes of presentation of African arts in New York during the years that followed.

Profiting from Colonial Networks The African works arriving in France at the turn of the twentieth century followed primarily colonial channels: they were acquired from either administrators or commercial ships traveling back and forth to the colonies. Before Guillaume, works from Africa seemed to arrive in commercial galleries, such as that of Joseph Brummer, rather haphazardly (bought from ethnographica vendors, at auction, from a traveler, etc.7), whereas Guillaume actively engaged with the colonial networks. As early as 1912, Guillaume founded the “Société d’art et d’archéologie nègre” in an effort to promote the artistic nature of African statuary, and evidently to increase his visibility to potential suppliers and collectors. Through this Société, his goal was also to engage with colonial administrators. In his 1912 article announcing its founding, he stated: The Society could not be better inspired than by reaching out to the agents of Native Affairs. It knows it is speaking to the elite of colonial society with so many enlightened minds, fine scholars and artists … It hopes to be able to count on their collaboration. Their ideas, their opinions, will receive the most profoundly sympathetic reception.8

He is thus the first art dealer known to openly appeal to the colonial administration through advertisements and articles in specialized journals. After all, he had certainly learned from his experience as a clerk with the car dealership on avenue de la GrandeArmée, where he had the opportunity to observe the regular arrival of objects from Africa in rubber cargos. In a 1912 advertisement published in a colonial journal, he reached out explicitly to colonial officers, asking “Do you have Negro fetiches,” and seeking intermediaries on the ground who would be able to bring him sculptures. The source countries in which Guillaume was interested correspond to the French colonies from where most works sold in Paris came, and are still considered the core of the African-arts canon: Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Congo, Soudan (present-day Mali), and Madagascar. In this transfer from the African continent to Guillaume’s dealership, the objects were separated from their original context, reinterpreted as part of the discourse tied to modern art. Because they came from the colonies, a land that was French at the time, these works were de facto perceived as belonging to France as well: they could be made our own. Although the project of the Société didn’t live long, Guillaume’s business developed swiftly, certainly helped by the press campaign in his favor orchestrated by Apollinaire.9 Guillaume was able to take full advantage of the growing interest for African arts among the amateur community in Paris, and in February 1914 he opened his own gallery at 6 rue de Miromesnil. An advertisement, published in Apollinaire’s journal Les Soirées de Paris, informs that he was then selling “Modern Paintings”

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and “Negro Sculptures” permanently featured in his gallery. The emergence of New York as a new platform for modern art in the aftermath of the groundbreaking 1913 “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” better known as the “Armory Show,” revealed the possibility of dynamic transatlantic art commerce. In the fall of 1913, the US Senate abolished import taxes on contemporary art, opening up new possibilities for French dealers hungry for adventure. Art historian Colette Giraudon suggested that, in direct response to this law, and precisely in order to develop his activity among American collectors and dealers, Guillaume opened his own gallery in Paris to get better visibility.10 Thus, in 1914, just when he met Marius de Zayas, Guillaume was ready to seize his chance and expand his business across the Atlantic. The outbreak of the First World War during the summer of 1914 provoked the temporary displacement of the art market’s epicenter from Paris to New York; the numerous galleries that opened in New York that same year all intended to acquaint their audience with the newest trends in art, including African arts. This geographical shift across the Atlantic was accompanied by a conceptual shift for the African works that were removed one step further from the African continent. More than ever, the objects came to be seen purely through the lens of modernism in the context of making an American modernity. There it was no longer the European colonial context, but rather America’s history of slavery, racial segregation, and the African American presence that imbued African works with yet another layer of meaning.

Encounter at the “Root of Modern Art” In his 1947 memoir on the birth of American modernism, How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York, published posthumously in 1996, de Zayas described his 1914 encounter with Paul Guillaume: Through Picabia I met Apollinaire and Max Jacob, and through Apollinaire I met Paul Guillaume, then a modest but ambitions art dealer and collector, or rather importer, of Negro art. How he imported it will always remain a mystery, but the objects he had were always genuine. When the First World War was declared and desolation reigned about artists and dealers, Paul Guillaume was only too glad to let me have all the African sculpture I could put in a trunk and bring to New York. That was his first contribution to exhibitions of modern art in New York; many others followed—if not with the same intention of making propaganda pure and simple, with the hope of opening a market for them, which was just as legitimate.11

In this paragraph, de Zayas touches upon every key element characterizing the reception of African arts in America and the nature of his interactions with Guillaume: the central role of European connections; the aura of mystery that surrounded Guillaume’s African sources; a constant concern about the quality of the works triggered by a lack of knowledge and comparative examples; the symbiotic relationship between modern and African arts; and finally the emergence of New York as an important market place for these arts.

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The exhibition de Zayas mentions in this statement is the famous “Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art,” which opened at 291 from November 3 until December 8, 1914. This seminal event, which included eighteen African sculptures from Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Gabon sent by Guillaume, was the first exhibition entirely dedicated to showing African objects as works of art. It also marks the first of many collaborations between de Zayas and Guillaume. Indeed, de Zayas found in the person of Paul Guillaume a business partner and a friend. Their correspondence around the time of the organization of “Statuary in Wood” reflects their familiarity, as when Guillaume wrote: When are you coming back from Paris? I never heard from your brother. I often see Savinio. I heard that Apollinaire is in Nice! I saw yesterday the young Thérèse who was very troubled by your sudden departure. She had developed towards you, I heard, very tender and flattering feelings, and it wasn’t without bitterness that she saw her dear illusions vanish.12

In the first months of 1915, they discussed a series of projects, from the possibility of creating an art journal,13 to collaborating in an African-art exhibition in London.14 As the war dragged on, these two projects were postponed and later abandoned. One can only suppose that the magazines created shortly afterwards by de Zayas on the one hand (291), and by Guillaume on the other hand (Les Arts à Paris), were the consequences of these stimulating conversations. Furthermore, Guillaume’s energy and commercial abilities possibly encouraged de Zayas to open his own gallery as a commercial branch of Stieglitz’s 291, “in which the works of art would not only be propaganda tools, but would also be for sale, in order to help those [artists] who need them.” Thus, on October 7, 1915, the Modern Gallery opened its doors at 500 Fifth Avenue.

Exhibitions as Propaganda From the opening of the Modern Gallery to its closing in April 1918, Paul Guillaume was one of its main suppliers of African objects and modern paintings. Over the course of these two-and-a-half years of activity, de Zayas organized no less than eight exhibitions: two exclusively devoted to African works, five included various selections of African works paired with modern artists (either collective or individual), and one organized on the occasion of the publication of de Zayas’s book African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art. Archives also make apparent that de Zayas permanently kept a stock of African objects and presented them continuously in one of the two rooms of his gallery.15 Guillaume’s mailing slips for modern and African works shipped to New York inform us that the dates of Guillaume’s shipments rarely correspond to the dates of exhibitions organized by de Zayas. The latter did not necessarily wait for a new shipment to organize an exhibition, but was using the works he had in stock. The flyers published on the occasion of the exhibitions are revealing: de Zayas doesn’t differentiate the leaflets he prints for an exhibition of works by Picasso or for

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African arts. The formats are exactly the same, implying similarity. He uses the term “sculpture,” valorizing the works’ plasticity. Instead of a list of the works’ titles, he lists the country of origin of the work, replacing the unrecorded names of the artists with their possible geographic origin. The press clippings relaying news of the exhibitions echo the parallelism emphasized by de Zayas between African art and modern art. One particularly telling article was published in 1917 in The World Magazine with the explicit title “Weird Art from Darkest Africa: Does It Explain Cubism?” Interestingly, one finds here the same tension that was already present in the 291 exhibition “Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art,” from its title to its display. While the works from Africa are seen as foundational to the development of modernism, their makers are denied their due place in the realm of modernity. The correspondence between Guillaume and de Zayas shows the many ways in which they contributed to shaping the field: from the genre of works being sold and those being emphasized, to their concerns and discussions regarding African works’ authenticity or antiquity. Shortly after beginning their collaboration, de Zayas ensured the exclusivity of the African sculptures offered by Guillaume for sale in the United States. On January 16, 1916, Guillaume answered him: In your letter of the 23rd, you seem to ask me if you can count on me for a constant supply of Negro woods; at least that’s what I understood. On this subject I have assured and abundant prospects and I promise you to continue to give you the preference, in reciprocity of your kindness for me of which I remain very touched.16

They had great hopes for the sale of African works in the United States, and Guillaume referred to it several times, as when he wrote: I believe that for America the market is for classical works of great price. There we sell. I have just rented a gallery on avenue d’Antin and I now want to only take care of works that are selling quickly and well. We’re wasting time going against our times. I am at your disposal to serve you in all your businesses with or without making profit … But I believe that modern paintings will never enrich us. Negro works are something else because they are antiques. I think that there, there is a lot to do.17

Guillaume regularly mentioned the great antiquity of the pieces, as on January 16, 1916, regarding two objects: “Probably of the 16th century the work 85 and the 17th century the piece 86. My setting of these dates is speculative.”18 The work number 85 was further described as follows: “It is a Dzembe deity of Gabon, extremely rare; you will certainly agree because you have never seen anything like it. The material is better than the photo alone suggests, the realization of the two arms and hands is a masterpiece of sculptural composition, the whole effect is very pretty. Its price is frs 3000 (three thousand).”19 This type of arbitrary dating is characteristic of Guillaume’s appreciation of African works20 and is closely linked to the concepts of antiquity and authenticity that are often discussed in these letters.21 We can sense de Zayas’s constant concern regarding the quality and authenticity of African works, as he shared with

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Guillaume his fears on this matter. Guillaume repeatedly asserts the authenticity and quality of the works he sends to New York. For example, Guillaume reassured de Zayas on December 16, 1916: “I will follow your advice regarding sending Negro woods of the first caliber. I do not doubt that the center of artistic activity that New York is becoming will soon realize the importance of this art.”22 The questions of antiquity and authenticity are central to collecting practices and the process of transformation of African objects into perceived “art.” They go hand in hand with a need for legitimacy tied to their in-between status as art objects in the making. Affirming the antiquity of the works assures their authenticity. Given that the works from Africa do not bear artist signatures, it is their status as antiquity that becomes a form of identity. Ironically, this cannot be done without further obliterating the actual origin of the work: by claiming that the arts of Africa date back to distant times, contemporary Africans are further denied contemporaneity, and are relegated to the status of a people without history, inscribed in a timeless and primitive past. According to the works’ numbering system on Guillaume’s invoices, the Parisian dealer sent at least 164 African and Oceanic objects to de Zayas between 1915 and the end of 1917. Among these, it is difficult to establish those that de Zayas sold, bought for himself, or returned to Guillaume, but it is clear that all three scenarios coexisted. Of these 164 works, only about 40 can be clearly identified. Unillustrated catalogues, invoices with lists of works, documentary photographs taken for the Modern Gallery’s archives, press clippings, and photographic albums are the sources that allow us to grasp the genres of objects circulating in New York at this time. Unfortunately, most of the documents available to us provide only brief descriptions, scarcely sufficient to point to the geographical origins, or to precisely identify the works themselves. For example, the content of the “Exhibition of African Negro Sculpture,” from November 26 to December 31, 1916, can only be identified thanks to the brochure printed by de Zayas for the exhibition, where the descriptions of the four works are succinct (Statuette– Soudan; Fetish–Congo; Bird–Ivory Coast, etc.). The fact that each object is attributed a place of origin suggests access to some information about the objects, possibly through Guillaume’s colonial supply channels, or readily available knowledge about African arts in the 1910s.

Publications as Manifestos Between 1916 and 1918 de Zayas and Guillaume separately released three successive publications focusing on African arts. It is revelatory to consider the conception of these books and photographic albums—among the first ones in the field—in light of the dealers’ exchanges and interactions. De Zayas’s October 1916 book African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art23 is tied to two major events in the two preceding years: the exhibition “Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art” he co-organized at Stieglitz’s gallery in 1914, and the publication in 1915 of the theoretical work by the German art critic Carl Einstein, Negerplastik.24 The seminal

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status of the 1914 exhibition and its impact on de Zayas’s career find an echo in his 1916 book. Indeed, the latter follows the two-part structure of the exhibition title and reproduces some of the exact same works displayed at 291. The book consisted in thirty-two plates, preceded by a long introductory text by de Zayas. The illustrations de Zayas included in his book were reproduced in small vignettes, and were mainly documentary photographs he had been taking since 1914 while visiting collections with no initial intention of publishing them. The text still gets him very bad press today because his approach to the arts of Africa is tinged with racist theories in which he describes Africans as led solely by emotion, and suggests their physical inability to represent reality, in order to explain the development of stylized forms and nonnaturalistic modes of representation. As for the impact Carl Einstein’s referential text Negerplastik could have had on de Zayas’s book, it can be seen in their parallel formats in two distinct parts— text and images separate, with the images being a visual support for the text, but without direct reference to them. Given the popularity of Einstein’s essay following its publication in 1915, and its wide circulation in avant-garde circles, it seems likely that de Zayas had the opportunity to see it and draw inspiration from it. De Zayas’s work differs from Negerplastik by providing details about the collections these works came from and their supposed geographical origins, while the 111 works reproduced by Einstein appear without any captions. Even though de Zayas’s descriptions only rarely correspond to the actual origins of the works, they nevertheless provide us with information about the state of knowledge at that time, as well as tell us about the taste of the period (and the longevity of this prevailing taste). He instigates the idea of provenance and pedigree in an attempt to replace the unrecorded artists’ names and the uncertain geographic attributions. These different elements further reflect his interaction with Guillaume. Guillaume quickly became aware of the growing interest in the kind of illustrated publication released by de Zayas. In November 1916, he wrote to de Zayas: “I have not yet received the copy of the little book you told me about, which interests me greatly,” and a month later, he asked: “Could you send your brother or me a few copies of African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art … several people have asked me for it.”25 Inspired by this precedent, Guillaume immediately initiated the publication of his own album, Sculptures nègres, in collaboration with Apollinaire. Published in April 1917, it consisted of twenty-four photographs, each representing a single work reproduced in full-page, introduced by a foreword by Apollinaire and an explanatory essay by Guillaume.26 The great majority of the works illustrated belonged to Paul Guillaume, which underlines the commercial and promotional motivation behind the publication. The texts provided a basis for approaching African and Oceanic arts in the following decades. In his foreword, Apollinaire emphasized the growing interest in these arts and regretted the lack of information about them. He advocated for a “methodological analysis of the styles,” while acknowledging the difficulty to carry out such a task due to the scarcity of accessible information. According to Apollinaire, this absence forced the viewer to judge this art in a purely aesthetic manner. He ended by praising the “bold taste” of modern artists that led to the appreciation of these works. Guillaume’s

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essay, in response to Apollinaire’s preface, sketched out the bases for a “methodological analysis of styles.” While the general formats of Guillaume’s and de Zayas’s books are similar (text followed by a separate section of illustrations), unlike de Zayas’s book, Sculptures nègres included quality photographs accompanied by short texts. A close comparative analysis of the two publications reveals that the works chosen by Guillaume and Apollinaire for their album are stylistically very close to those published by de Zayas the previous year. The two photographs of joleni Bamana figures reproduced in both publications,27 photographed at exactly the same angle, placed on similar pedestals, lit in a similar fashion, are quite striking. Better still, it is astonishing to see the same d’mba reproduced in both publications, even using the exact same photograph [Figures 7.3 and 7.4].28 Through these publications and visual exchanges through photography, a mode of representing African works is being developed and popularized. The choices of objects and their photography participated in the creation of the African-art canon and initiated a standardized mode of representation for objects to be accepted within the realm of art. The final response by de Zayas in this intellectual exchange is the photographic album he published in 1918 in collaboration with American artist Charles Sheeler, African Negro Wood Sculpture.29 This lavish album was composed of a short introduction by de Zayas,30 followed by twenty full-page photographs taken by Sheeler. The photographs, works of art in and of themselves, contributed to the elevation of the African works’ status. However, they could also be seen as another form of appropriation, the African objects becoming props for a photographic experiment and pure subjects of visual exploration. This aesthetically pleasing publication was the swan song of de Zayas and Guillaume’s partnership: all the works reproduced still came from Guillaume, but its publication marked the end of their collaboration. Indeed, while Guillaume’s commercial endeavors were met with more and more success in France, he became impatient at the lack of progress made on the American market by de Zayas. A deep respect, however, bound him to the New York gallerist, and he regularly expressed his willingness to keep collaborating, declaring to be ready to engage in all of de Zayas’s projects, even without the prospect of profit. The correspondence between the two men, which unfortunately only lets us hear Guillaume’s voice, reveals their intrinsic difference: Guillaume is a savvy dealer discussing sale strategies while de Zayas, despite his original intentions, seems better suited to the promotion of new ideas than to commerce. Moreover, America’s economic situation was undermined by the war in Europe. Failing to increase his clientele, de Zayas was forced to close his gallery in 1918. Guillaume made many attempts to clarify their accounts, but was confronted with the silence or vagueness of de Zayas. Despite his good will, Guillaume, having failed to obtain from de Zayas any clear information concerning the situation of a number of works still in New York, was forced to resort to legal channels.31 De Zayas, far from being dishonest, merely lacked rigor in the administration of his finances. Such misunderstandings put an end to the two men’s commercial collaboration but did not spoil their friendship.32

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Figure 7.3  African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art (published by the Modern Gallery, New York, 1916) in which plate 1, “’Nimba’ Idol of Maternity, French Guinea” is reproduced, also reproduced in Sculptures Nègres, see figure 7.4.

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Figure 7.4  Sculptures Nègres. Chez Paul Guillaume, 1917, plate IX, Idole de la Maternité, Rivières du Sud (Guinée), also reproduced in African Negro Art, see figure 7.3.

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African Art History without Africa While their business collaboration officially ended, de Zayas extended his involvement with Guillaume and his collection until 1923 through a couple of additional exhibitions. In the summer of 1918, de Zayas contributed twenty-five works from Guillaume to a little-known exhibition organized by the Negro Library Association.33 This event can be seen as prefiguring the reclaiming of African arts as ancestral legacy by African American intellectuals that would become prominent by the mid-1920s through the actions and writings of individuals such as the philosopher Alain Locke.34 This also found an echo in Guillaume’s own engagement with the “Harlem Renaissance” through his collaboration with Albert Barnes during the 1920s.35 The promotion of African art as a tool to reclaim one’s ancestral legacy is specific to its reception in the United States, and reminds us of the profound difference between the political contexts of that reception in Europe and in America. In 1923, as a final testament to their lasting collaboration, and highlighting one more time the connection between European modernism and African sculpture, Guillaume agreed to de Zayas using a number of works he still had in stock in New York for the latter’s exhibition at the Whitney Studio, “Recent Paintings by Pablo Picasso and Negro Sculpture.” With at least eleven African works borrowed from Guillaume and a sample of Picasso’s cubist works lent by the Paul Rosenberg gallery, de Zayas curated one of his most successful exhibitions that visually expressed the formal ties he had always seen between cubist works and African sculpture.36 Over the course of a decade, through a dynamic transatlantic partnership, the two men actively contributed to shifting the perception of African objects as art, and no longer as ethnographica or curiosities. In order to acknowledge their place in the realm of beauty, they promoted and propagated a new vocabulary and mode of display, and shaped, sometimes arbitrarily, the classification of these works by assigning dates and geographical origins. Because the concept of beauty is valued as a core notion of Western art history, it is easy to lose sight of the highly political context of this process, profoundly intertwined with the colonial setting and imperial subtext. Indeed, the networks African works followed were those of other commercial goods and natural resources extracted from the African continent, such as rubber, with the dire consequences that were exposed as early as 1905 and that are well known today.37 Regarding the sculptures, their extraction meant the loss of knowledge about their makers and the original context of their creation. They could only be rendered familiar to a Western audience through their assimilation, either with antiquities or with avantgarde works, because they were seen as belonging to the empire in the first place, and no longer to the individuals who made them. That loaded context composed the framework in which de Zayas and Guillaume constructed a new discourse on African objects, and consequently, played a major role in the development of twentiethcentury art history.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Heinich 2012. Clifford 1988: 196. See Giraudon 1993; Clarke 2015; Biro 2018: 185–9. Shannon 1999: 24. de Zayas 1996: 164. “S.” certainly stands for “Secession.” See among others Greenough 2000. See Biro 2018: 115–31. Guillaume 1912: np. The original reads: « [L]a Société ne pouvait être mieux inspirée qu’en se signalant à Messieurs les agents des Affaires indigènes. Elle sait qu’elle s’adresse à l’élite de la société coloniale qui compte tant d’esprits éclairés, de fins lettrés et d’artistes. […] Elle espère pouvoir compter sur leur collaboration. Leurs idées, leurs avis, recevront l’accueil le plus profondément sympathique. » Press Clippings, Archives Paul Guillaume, Musée de l’Orangerie Library and Archive Center, Paris. 9 Apollinaire cites Guillaume's name no less than three times in his article “Les arts exotiques et l’ethnographie.” Paris-Journal, September 10, 1912: “Paul Guillaume, dont le nom est à retenir pour qui veut être au courant des annales de la curiosité …” On the friendship between Apollinaire and Guillaume, see Bouret 1970. 10 Giraudon 1993: 24. 11 de Zayas 1996: 55. 12 Letter from Guillaume to de Zayas, September 27, 1914. The original reads: “Quand revenez-vous à Paris ? Je n’ai jamais eu de nouvelles de votre frère. Je vois Savinio fréquemment. Il parait qu’Apollinaire est à Nice ! J’ai vu hier la jeune Thérèse très décontenancée par votre brusque départ. Elle avait fini parait-il par éprouver des sentiments très tendres flatteurs pour vous et n’a pas vu sans amertume s’envoler ces chères illusions.” Francis M. Naumann research collection for De Zayas 1996, Whitney Museum of American Art Research Archives, Manuscript Collection, New York (hereafter cited as Whitney Museum Archives). 13 Letter from Guillaume to de Zayas, March 15, 1915: “Nous ne songerons qu’après la fin de la guerre à notre Revue. Mais d’ici là vous pouvez compter sur le plus chaleureux accueil à votre ‘291’ que j’exposerai si vous voulez à ma galerie et que même je pourrai m’occuper de caser à quelques endroits sérieux pour le faire connaître à Paris.” Whitney Museum Archives. 14 Letter from Guillaume to de Zayas, handwritten note in the margin, March 25, 1915: “Je compte faire de suite après la guerre une exposition nègre à Londres. Vous me direz s’il vous plaît d’y participer.” Whitney Museum Archives. 15 Press clippings and accounting books from the De Zayas Archives, Seville. 16 Letter Guillaume to de Zayas, January 16, 1916, Whitney Museum Archives. 17 Letter from Guillaume to de Zayas, August 25, 1917, Whitney Museum Archives. 18 Letter Guillaume to de Zayas, January 16, 1916, Whitney Museum Archives. 19 Ibid. 20 He used this strategy continually throughout his career, such as in Guillaume 1926. 21 For example, see letters from January 16, or January 21, 1916. Whitney Museum Archives. 22 Letter from Guillaume to de Zayas, December 16, 1916. Whitney Museum Archives. 23 de Zayas 2016. 24 Einstein 1915.

116 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Pioneers of the Global Art Market Letter Guillaume to de Zayas, March 15, 1915. Whitney Museum Archives. Apollinaire 1917. De Zayas 1916: pl. 16; Apollinaire 1917: pl. XX. De Zayas 1916: pl. 1; Apollinaire 1917: pl. IX. Sheeler 1918. De Zayas’s short introduction states: “The Negro artist has been to us a revelator and an innovator. Negro sculpture has been the stepping stone for a fecund evolution in our art.” Letter from the French consulate in New York addressed to de Zayas, October 23, 1918. Whitney Museum Archives. According to Marius de Zayas’s son, Rodrigo de Zayas, his father kept a profound friendship and great respect for Guillaume, about whom he would reminisce with pleasure until the end of his life. Personal Communication, Seville, June 2008. The Negro Library Association 1918. For example, see Locke 1924. On this topic, see Clarke 2015. See Biro 2018: 259–61. On the avant-garde’s awareness of colonial brutalities, in particular in the Belgian Congo tied to rubber exploitation, see Leighten 1990.

Bibliography Apollinaire 1917. Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Guillaume. Sculptures nègres: 24 photographies précédées d’un avertissement de Guillaume Apollinaire et d’un exposé de Paul Guillaume. Paris: Paul Guillaume, 1917. Biro 2018. Yaëlle Biro. Fabriquer le regard: Marchands, réseaux et objets d’art africains à l’aube du XXe siècle. Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2018. Bouret 1970. Jean Bouret. “Une amitié esthétique au début du siècle: Apollinaire et Paul Guillaume (1911–1918) d’après une correspondance inédite.” La Gazette des beaux-arts 6, no. 76 (December 1970): 373–99. Clarke 2015. Christa Ed Clarke. African Art in the Barnes Foundation: The Triumph of L’Art nègre and the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015. Clifford 1988. James Clifford. “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern.” In The Predicament of Culture, edited by James Clifford: 189–214. London: Harvard University Press, 1988. De Zayas 1996. Marius de Zayas and Francis M. Naumann. How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. De Zayas 2016. Marius de Zayas. African Negro Art: Its Influence on Modern Art. New York: The Modern Gallery, 2016. Einstein 1912. Carl Einstein. Negerplastik. Leipzig: Verlag der weißen Bücher, 1915. Giraudon 1993. Colette Giraudon. Paul Guillaume et les peintres du XXe siècle: de l’art nègre à l’avant-garde. Paris: Bibliothèque des arts, 1993. Greenough 2000. Sarah Greenough, ed. Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Washington DC: National Gallery of Art/Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2000. Exhibition catalogue. Guillaume 1912. Paul Guillaume. “Un curieux mouvement artistique.” Les Annales coloniales, July 14, 1912.

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Guillaume 1926. Paul Guillaume and Thomas Munro. Primitive Negro Sculpture: With Illustrations from the Collection of the Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1926. Heinich 2012. Nathalie Heinich and Roberta Shapiro, eds. De l’artification: Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art. Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2012. Leighten 1990. Patricia Leighten. “The White Peril and l’Art nègre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism.” Art Bulletin 72, no. 4 (December 1990): 609–30. Locke 1924. Alain LeRoy Locke. “A Note on African Art.” Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life 2 (May 1924): 134–8. Schomburg 1918. Arthur A. Schomburg, ed. First Annual Exhibition of Books, Manuscripts, Paintings, Engravings, Sculptures, Et cetera. The Negro Library Association. New York: Poole Press Association, 1918. Exhibition catalogue. Shannon 1999. Helen M. Shannon. “From ‘African Savages’ to ‘Ancestral Legacy’: Race and Cultural Nationalism in the American Modernist Reception of African Art.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1999. Sheeler 1918. Charles Sheeler and Marius de Zayas. African Negro Wood Sculpture Photographed by Charles Sheeler with a Preface by Marius de Zayas. New York: Modern Gallery, 1918.

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The Thannhauser Galleries: Forming International Alliances in an Era of Change Valerie Nikola Ender

The Thannhauser galleries are best known for their promotion of modern art, especially French artists, in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Over the course of three decades in Munich and Berlin, as well as Lucerne, Heinrich Thannhauser (1859–1934) and his son Justin (1892–1976) managed to change the media’s perception of modern art and shape its recognition by the public as a valid form of expression. Justin then left Nazi Germany and reprised his efforts in Paris and New York, enabling the gallery to survive two world wars. The recipe for their remarkable survival and good repute was to recognize and support progressive emerging artists, organize blockbuster exhibitions, and place major artworks in important museums and private collections—no small accomplishment, especially while weathering economic and political upheavals. A key factor in their success was the solid network of art dealers and collectors they built from the very beginning, at home and abroad. Most significant for the Thannhauser galleries were early connections to other avantgarde dealers like Paul Cassirer in Germany (who promoted French Impressionism),1 as well Parisian art world luminaries such as Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl, Daniel HenryKahnweiler, Ambroise Vollard, and later Paul Rosenberg, to name a few. During the Munich and Berlin years, these Parisian connections were essential to provide loans and supply stock for the Thannhauser galleries, and later, when Justin emigrated to Paris, he was able to rely on this existing network. Another crucial connection existed with the Galeria Müller in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through Federico C. Müller, Thannhauser was able to enlarge the gallery’s radius in the 1930s, while it steered through difficult times in Germany. Finally, when Thannhauser emigrated to New York, the network he and his father had built up for decades helped again. Former colleagues like Curt Valentin and Paul Rosenberg had emigrated to New York as well. Thannhauser’s connections with US museums also enabled him to store artworks from his collection and stock there for safekeeping, or send them on traveling exhibitions during the war [Figure 8.1].2

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Figure 8.1  Justin K. Thannhauser in 1957 before Picasso’s Fernande with a Black Mantilla (1905/6) which he bought from the Feilchenfeldt family in 1956. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission.

Kahnweiler and the Paris Connection The Moderne Galerie was founded in November 1909 by Heinrich Thannhauser at Theatiner Straße 7, in the center of Munich (1909–28). The spacious gallery premises enabled the self-made art dealer to showcase large high-quality exhibitions, the organization of which required the collaboration of major collectors, fellow art dealers, museum officials, and other connoisseurs. His opening exhibition presented more than 200 works by contemporary German artists like Fritz Erler, Max Liebermann, Hans Pellar, Leo Putz, Fritz von Uhde, and Hugo Habermann. The highlight of the show, however, was a collection of fifty-five French Impressionist works that Heinrich

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Thannhauser had assembled with the help of the German-born Rudolf Meyer-Riefstahl, a Paris-based art expert who was very well connected on the Parisian art scene. This exhibition of works by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley was the most comprehensive show by French Impressionists ever seen in Munich.2 As early as 1910, Heinrich Thannhauser deliberately reached out to his German and French colleagues. That year he formed a powerful consortium with Paul Cassirer, Paul Durand-Ruel, and the Bernheim-Jeune brothers, and acquired thirty-five Manets from the collection of the French margarine tycoon Auguste Pellerin. Following the sale, Thannhauser exhibited all thirty-five Manets in Munich, among them the famous Bar aux Folies-Bergères and Déjeuner à l’Atelier. Both were sold; the first one to the Berlin collector Eduard Arnold (today the Courtauld Institute), and the second one to Hugo von Tschudi, who acquired it for the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.3 From 1911, Justin got more and more involved in his father’s business, and proceeded to strengthen such bonds even further. The nineteen-year-old headed for Paris, where he mingled with a circle of German-speaking artists and dealers at the Café du Dôme in Montparnasse. Through the German-born dealers Wilhelm Uhde and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, he met Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse.4 Kahnweiler was Picasso’s dealer (contractually from December 1912 and informally before) and had exclusive contracts with Georges Braque, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck at the time. Years later, Justin would recall his friendship with Kahnweiler and their ensuing business relations as seminal for the Thannhauser galleries. Both benefited greatly from their ensuing collaboration. Kahnweiler, who opened his Paris gallery in 1907,5 started to proactively develop his strategy of an eastward network around the time of Justin’s visit. Like the Thannhausers, Kahnweiler was eager to support innovative young artists and promote controversial forms of expression. To better support his artists through exhibitions and sales abroad, he started lending artworks to important exhibitions around the world, among them the Grafton Galleries in London, the Rheinischer Kunstsalon in Cologne, the 1912 Sonderbundausstellung in Cologne, and the 1913 Armory Show in New York.6 It was thus no coincidence that he also sent three works by Picasso and four works by Braque to Munich to complete Thannhauser’s second show of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) in 1910 at the Moderne Galerie.7 The NKVM was founded in 1909 by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Alfred Kubin, Alexander Kanoldt, and Adolf Erbslöh.8 Their first exhibition at the Moderne Galerie, in 1909, followed the opening show of the gallery. The media and the public were appalled by the group’s abstract and expressive tendencies,9 but Thannhauser persisted, even though the response to the second NKVM show, including Kahnweiler’s loans of Picassos and Braques, was equally negative. The art reviewer Maximilian Karl Rohe described the artists as “unheilbar irrsinnig” (incurable lunatics).10 Yet their cooperation continued unperturbed, with the first exhibition of The Blue Rider at Thannhauser’s in December 1911 to January 1912. Kahnweiler sent three Derains, one Braque, four Picassos, one Vlaminck, three volumes of Guillaume Apollinaire’s L’Enchanteur pourrissant, and one volume of Max Jacob’s Saint Matorel to the Munich

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gallery.11 These loans were presented next to artworks that would later become icons of modern art—such as Franz Marc’s Yellow Cow and Robert Delauney’s La Ville—but at the time, as Justin later remembered, the public reacted with anger and threats.12 Kandinsky recalled that some requested the closing of such an “anarchist exhibition.”13 Nevertheless, after its closing in Munich, the exhibition went on tour throughout Germany and eventually served as the opening show of Herwarth Walden’s gallery Der Sturm in Berlin.14 The Thannhausers and Kahnweiler collaborated on an additional pioneering show at the Munich gallery, assembling the most ambitious Picasso retrospective yet. The Moderne Galerie’s Picasso exhibition, which opened in February 1913, comprised 114 catalogue numbers illustrating Picasso’s meteoric evolution from 1901 to 1912. It included twenty-nine paintings and some etchings lent by Kahnweiler, as well as a large number of loans by German collectors such as Alfred Flechtheim (thirteen), Franz Kluxen, Hugo Perls, and Edwin Suermondt, among others.15 Eighty-one of the 114 works were for sale; among them, La Repasseuse of 1904 (Guggenheim Museum), which Thannhauser would buy for his own collection in the late 1930s;16 and The Blind Man’s Meal, 1903 (Metropolitan Museum New York), which Thannhauser had acquired from Vollard in December 1912 and sold to the writer Hertha König in February 1913. Violon, verre, pipe et ancre was sold to the collector Vincenc Kramar.17 The Picasso exhibition subsequently traveled to Cologne.18 It is quite remarkable that Kahnweiler did not organize the Picasso retrospective at his own gallery, nor even in Paris, but in Munich. His ostpolitik consisted of showing his artists outside of France, preferably in Germany, where he successfully created and maintained a customer base.19 According to Justin Thannhauser, Picasso himself retrospectively cited the 1913 Munich exhibition as the starting point of his worldwide fame.20 In any event, it marked the beginning of close business relations and enduring personal friendships between Picasso and the Thannhausers. It also tightened Thannhauser and Kahnweiler’s joint promotion of Parisian modernism in Germany, which had a tremendous impact on the development and reception of modern art in Germany.21 Unfortunately, extant gallery records do not document this fruitful collaboration between 1910 and 1913, as they only cover the years following the First World War, from 1919 to 1971.22 The available stock books and business correspondence, however, are evidence of Kahnweiler’s continued cooperation with the Thannhauser galleries post war. Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon was a regular client during the 1920s, and the friendship continued over decades. Several entries in the guestbook of Thannhauser’s New York townhouse are evidence of Kahnweiler’s repeated visits from the 1940s to the 1960s.23

Steering through Economic Upheavals—Relocating and New Beginnings The outbreak of the First World War suspended such transnational strategies for the promotion of modern art. Justin Thannhauser was called up for service and sent to the front. Gallery activities slowed down. After the war, the German art market recovered very slowly. For economic reasons, the Thannhausers decided to open a branch in

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Lucerne, Switzerland (1919–37). This was the ideal location not only to cultivate Swiss customers, but also to reach out to American and British collectors. Moreover, it was much easier to cooperate with French colleagues from Switzerland at the time, France and Germany being at loggerheads. Together with his cousin Siegfried Rosengart (1894–1985), Justin Thannhauser handled business in Lucerne while Heinrich managed the Munich gallery.24 However, due to Heinrich’s failing health, his son took over most of the business operations from 1921. Justin returned to Munich and Siegfried Rosengart became manager of the Lucerne gallery. One of the most notable Munich exhibitions of that period was the second Picasso show, in 1922. Justin revived his contacts in Paris and organized the show together with Picasso’s new Paris dealer, Paul Rosenberg (Kahnweiler having lived in exile in Switzerland during the war), assembling twenty-seven oil paintings and eighteen works on paper.25 In 1927, Heinrich and Justin Thannhauser decided to open a Moderne Galerie branch in Berlin (1927–1937), which in the meantime had supplanted Munich as the art capital of Germany. The Thannhausers established their business on Bellevuestraße 13, in the Tiergarten area—the most popular gallery district at the time [Figure 8.2]. Again, the spacious premises allowed for museum-quality exhibitions. Their Monet

Figure 8.2 Entrance of Galerie Thannhauser at Bellevuestraße 13, Berlin, 1927, with paintings by Degas and van Gogh on display. The modern entrance with its curved glass panel was designed by the Berlin architects Hans and Wassili Luckhardt and Alfons Anker. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission.

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memorial show in 1928 included loans from the French state collections, from Georges Wildenstein, and other private and public collections. The gallery also presented major retrospectives of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse, in 1928 and 1930 respectively.26 During those years, Justin solidified his rapport with fellow avant-garde dealers such as Valentin, Flechtheim (himself a dealer now), and Cassirer in Berlin, as well as Kahnweiler and Rosenberg in Paris.27 The frequent visits of, and mutual exchanges with, Flechtheim are well documented in the Berlin client cards of the Thannhauser gallery archive.28 However, while the Berlin gallery thrived, the situation at the Munich gallery deteriorated. Faced with growing antisemitism and animosity against modern art, the Thannhauser headquarters closed in November 1928. That same year, Siegfried Rosengart took over the business in Lucerne and renamed it after himself. While Heinrich Thannhauser gradually retired after his son’s move to Berlin, Paul Römer, who had worked for the gallery since 1909, became more involved. In 1919 he had become managing director; in 1936 he would become a shareholder, and in 1937 he would liquidate the company. For now, he followed Justin Thannhauser to Berlin.29

Networking Farther Away—Picasso in Buenos Aires With the rise of the National Socialists to power in Germany in 1933, Justin Thannhauser began to take measures to ensure his family’s safety and his business’s economic viability. When his sons, Michel and Heinz, were excluded from the French secondary school in Berlin, he sent them to private schools in England.30 Justin rented an apartment in Paris, and little by little started to transfer artworks and other belongings to the French capital. As the working conditions for Jews got more difficult under Hitler’s regime, Thannhauser concentrated on his transnational business relations and on strengthening his network farther abroad. In 1934, he intensified his connections to the German-born Argentinian art dealer Federico C. Müller in Buenos Aires.31 The Galeria Müller is known for having been a safe trading platform for imperiled artworks that were hard to sell in Europe during the 1930s.32 Through Müller, who grew up in Paris, Madrid, and London, and specialized in modern art as well,33 Thannhauser sold Vincent van Gogh’s Le moulin de la galette, c. 1887 (F 348),34 and Paul Gauguin’s Vahine no te miti, 1892,35 to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires in 1934. Müller himself bought Picasso’s 1918 drawing Arlequin from Thannhauser in 1935.36 Holding exhibitions in his Berlin gallery was rather difficult—given the hostile conditions in which Jewish art dealers had to operate in Germany by 1934—but Justin Thannhauser was still eager to organize important shows and looked to Müller for premises. Since business had gone smoothly in Buenos Aires before, Thannhauser presumably expected more sales opportunities. He first contributed to a Degas show at Müller’s gallery in Buenos Aires in September 1934.37 The following month he embarked on a broader project together with his French colleagues Rosenberg, Kahnweiler, and the Wildensteins, namely a major Picasso exhibition including seventy-six artworks at Müller’s gallery—the first Picasso show in Argentina [Figure 8.3].38 All the art dealers

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Figure 8.3 Installation photograph of the Picasso exhibition at Galeria Müller, Calle Florida 935, Buenos Aires, October 1934. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission.

involved lent artworks, and loans from museums worldwide completed the show.39 Several paintings were for sale. Among the artworks Justin sent to Argentina were five Picassos included at the request of their owner, Berlin collector Paul von MendelssohnBartholdy, a longtime client of the Moderne Galerie.40 He had purchased Picasso’s Moulin de la Galette from Thannhauser in 1910, and now hoped to find a solvent buyer in the Buenos Aires exhibition, where it had pride of place.41 In the exhibition catalogue, Müller elaborately thanked Thannhauser and the Parisian dealers for their support, as well as “un gran coleccionista berlinés” (a great Berlin collector)42—presumably MendelssohnBartholdy. Although the exhibition was not a financial success for Thannhauser (or Mendelssohn-Bartholdy), it opened up new horizons and afforded a larger international presence.43 After the exhibition, Thannhauser’s and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s loans were shipped to Rosengart in Lucerne instead of Berlin. This was a strategic decision to ensure the safekeeping of his stock by scattering it in different locations.44

Leaving Germany for Good—Paris and New York Justin Thannhauser’s father Heinrich secretly left Munich and emigrated to Switzerland in 1934. He died in 1935 in Lucerne.45 In May 1937, after paying a hefty German Reichsfluchtsteuer (exit tax), Justin, his wife Käte, and son Michel emigrated

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to Paris. As Thannhauser stated years later, Paris was not meant to be their final destination, but merely a stepping stone on their way to New York.46 With this in mind, Justin and Käte traveled to the United States from October to November 1936 and from March to April 1937. It was clear that obtaining US visas would take a very long time—time they probably would not have, at least not in Germany. They saw no other alternative than to emigrate to Paris first, and wait for further developments there.47 Their older son, Heinz, had started studying art history at Cambridge University, England, in 1934, then transferred to Harvard University with a Sachs fellowship in 1938.48 The Thannhausers settled into a fourteen-room hôtel particulier at 35 Rue de Miromesnil,49 which crosses Rue la Boétie, where Paul Rosenberg and the Wildensteins ran their galleries. Also close was Rue de la Baume where one could find the gallery of Léonce Rosenberg, as well as Rue d’Astorg where Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon was located.50 In the Eighth Arrondissement between the Tuileries, the Louvre, the luxurious Place Vendôme, the Elysée palace, and the Champs-Élysées, moreover, were the galleries of Jacques Seligmann, Arnold Seligmann, the Duveen Brothers, Edouard Jonas, and René Gimpel.51 Even though he anticipated it was temporary, Thannhauser set out to establish his business anew. As mentioned earlier, Thannhauser had started shipping his belongings and part of the gallery stock to Paris in 1933. Several vans then transported additional household belongings and stock in 1936 and 1937.52 Although the German NationalSocialist regime managed to hold back parts of Thannhauser’s personal property and inventory, Thannhauser managed to organize the shipment of large portions of his gallery stock to Paris, probably via Lucerne, between 1937 and 1939.53 Even after the family’s move in April 1937, Thannhauser received regular shipments of his stock—almost monthly until June 1939. Among them, albums of prints by French and German artists he supported, and numerous oils, drawings, and gouaches such as Picasso’s Portrait de Madame Soler (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich), and Le Moulin de la Galette (Guggenheim Museum, New York),54 or Manet’s Portrait de Georges Clemenceau (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth).55 Justin Thannhauser was thus able to conduct business as soon as he settled in the French capital. He opened his courtage d’art at 35 Rue de Miromesnil by May 25, 1937, at the latest,56 and promoted his new gallery with an exquisite brochure (illustrating the rear side of his three-story building and its distinguished backyard), as well as a new business card.57 Thannhauser immediately made a deliberate effort to integrate his new milieu by joining the Syndicat des Éditeurs d’Art et Négociants en Tableaux Modernes, the French society of professional modern-art dealers. With a letter dated October 14, 1937, he was officially admitted as a member.58 A 1937 photograph shows Justin Thannhauser sitting at a dinner of the Syndicat, among his colleagues Gaston and Josse Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Pétridès, Pierre Loeb, Léonce and Paul Rosenberg, and André Schoeller [Figure 8.4].59 According to his stock books, Thannhauser did not purchase much during the Paris years.60 It seems he acted very cautiously—understandably given the economic and political circumstances. However, in 1938 he acquired directly from Picasso, who was practically his neighbor, the artist’s Still Life: Flowers in a Vase of 1906 and Woman with Yellow Hair of 1931 (both Guggenheim Museum, New York).61 He also acquired three

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Figure 8.4  Dinner of the Syndicat des Éditeurs d’Art et Négociants en Tableaux Modernes, Paris, 1938. From left to right: [Gaston?] Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Pétridès, Justin Thannhauser, Pierre Loeb, Léonce Rosenberg, André Schoeller, Mme Pierre Loeb, Josse Bernheim-Jeune, Mme Guillaume Leray, Paul Rosenberg, etc. Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung (ZADIK), Cologne. Reprinted with permission.

van Gogh drawings, and two letters from van Gogh to the painter John Peter Russell, from Russell’s daughter Jeanne Jouve.62 In a joint venture with Alex Ball and Daniel Wildenstein, he bought van Gogh’s Potatoe Diggers of 1899 (F701) (Detroit Institute of Arts) and Gauguin’s Street Scene in Tahiti of 1891 (Toledo Museum of Art) from Martha Nathan-Dreyfus in December 1938 for CHF 40,920.63 The Gauguin was sold for $25,000 to the Toledo Museum of Art a few months later.64 van Gogh’s Potatoe Diggers found a new owner with the American collector Robert Hudson Tannahill for $34,000 in 1941.65 His gift of a Degas drawing to the Musée du Louvre was another attempt to strengthen his connections to the Parisian art world. In a letter from April 24, 1939, the Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale thanked Thannhauser for his generosity.66 Thannhauser continued to stage exhibitions, but on a much smaller scale than in Munich and Berlin.67 His primary concern during those years appears to have been to keep his collection and stock safe by sending off loans to important exhibitions worldwide, and storing large sections of his collection abroad. In May 1938, he sent a group of Degas bronzes to the Leicester galleries in London.68 One month later, he shipped no less than ninety artworks to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, including forty-one bronzes by Degas, more than twenty oils by other modern

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French masters, numerous works on paper, and two Louis XIV Gobelin tapestries.69 Together with Stedelijk director David Cornelis Röell, he arranged for some works to be exhibited while others were kept in storage.70 Between early spring and summer 1939, the artworks that were not on view were shipped to New York and stored in warehouses.71 Additional artworks from Thannhauser’s collection were shipped to South America in Spring 1939 and went on tour with the exhibition La Pintura Francesca de David a nuestros dias, which was organized by René Huyghe, painting curator at the Louvre.72 Thannhauser also provided loans for the traveling exhibition “French and British Contemporary Art,” which toured Australia from August 1939.73 Also, in the summer of 1939, Thannhauser confirmed to museum director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., his participation in the Picasso retrospective “Picasso: Forty Years of His Art” at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago from November 1939 until March 1940.74 When the Second World War broke out in September of 1939, luckily Justin and his family were in Switzerland for the summer holidays. They did not return to France but worked feverishly on their emigration to the United States.75 Their traveling visas for France, Spain, and Portugal finally in hand, in October 1940 they embarked on a risky car trip across several borders, from Switzerland to Portugal.76 In Lisbon, they finally boarded a ship to New York in December, where they landed in January 1941.77 The situation in New York looked promising. Thanks to Thannhauser’s foresight over the years, he was able to find his footing relatively quickly. The artworks he had lent to traveling exhibitions throughout the world in the 1930s found their way to New York warehouses safely.78 New York was about to become the new center of the international art market as a result of the influx of European artists and dealers fleeing war and persecution.79 Thannhauser would benefit from the increase in modern art’s value during the postwar years,80 not to mention his long-standing transnational network. Colleagues and collectors with whom he had made business since long before the war had also fled to the United States, or were already on the spot.81 The Thannhausers first settled at 165 East 62nd Street. Together with his older son Heinz, an art historian, Justin planned to rebuild the business in Manhattan. Things turned out differently: Thannhauser dropped the idea of opening a gallery when Heinz died at twenty-five in 1944 while serving in the US Air Force. Instead, he sold a large portion of his inventory and collection through auction at Parke-Bernet in 1945.82 Moreover, he learned after the war that his Paris home was looted by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in 1942.83 Likewise, the Berlin storage unit where he had left artworks and belongings behind was looted, then bombed.84 Thannhauser didn’t give up, and in 1946 the remaining family moved to 12 East 67th Street. The townhouse on the Upper East Side would serve as a family home, a refuge for friends in exile, a private gallery, and a meeting point for New York’s art scene from the 1940s to the 1960s. The Thannhausers’ guestbook is a testimony to their successful assimilation into the New York world of art and entertainment throughout those years.85 Moreover, Thannhauser now was located again in the vicinity of his Paris colleagues Paul Rosenberg and Georges Wildenstein, who had also fled to the United States. He also found familiar faces in art dealers Germain Seligman (of Jacques

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Seligmann & Cie), Josef Stransky, and Marie Harriman, with whom he had cooperated since long before the war. He successfully established himself as a private art dealer in New York (where 1,415 artworks passed through his hands86). Thannhauser used his New York colleague’s premises to organize exhibitions in his name;87 sometimes they cooperated. Together with his former Berlin colleague Curt Valentin, he organized a Degas show at Galerie Buchholz in 1945.88 He also met new acquaintances, such as Peggy Guggenheim. Records show that Thannhauser commissioned a Picasso which went to her gallery, Art of This Century, around 1945.89 He then suffered the additional losses of his other son, Michel, who committed suicide at thirty-one in 1952, as well as of his wife Käte, who passed away in 1960.90 Justin Thannhauser remarried the German-born Hilde Breitwisch in 1962. In 1963, after long considerations with Peter Lawson-Johnston, president of the Guggenheim foundation, and Thomas M. Messer, director of the Guggenheim, as well as friend and neighbor to the Thannhauser family, Justin Thannhauser decided to donate the core of his collection to the Guggenheim Museum.91 During an interview with the New York Times regarding his gift, he observed: “My family, after five hundred years of living in Germany, is now extinguished. That is why I am doing what I am doing with my collection.”92 Justin and Hilde Thannhauser retired and moved to Bern, Switzerland, in 1971. During their years in Switzerland they donated further artworks to the Guggenheim, as well as to the Kunstmuseum in Bern. Justin K. Thannhauser died at the age of eightyfour on December 26, 1976, in Gstaad.93 Over three decades, Heinrich and Justin Thannhauser were able to form alliances with other important players of the European and transatlantic art market in times of serious political and economic upheaval. These networks were absolutely necessary to compete within this circle of colleagues: They allowed for economic success by providing stock through constant trade and by cooperating in joint ventures if required. Moreover, they enabled for museum-quality exhibitions by comprising prominent loans. The strategy of networking finally helped to establish and to maintain the Moderne Galerie as a prominent and enduring locus for modern art in Germany, and later as a private gallery in Paris and in New York.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

The connections to Cassirer already existed by 1908 when Heinrich Thannhauser still worked with partner Franz Josef Brakl. In 1908 Brakl and Thannhauser took over van Gogh’s first solo exhibition in Germany from Paul Cassirer, who himself had it from Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (Stolwijk 2017: 39f). A very good introduction to the Thannhausers galleries can be found in Bilsky 2008 and in Herzog 2006. Herzog 2006: 14. Drutt 2001: 3. Bilski 2008: 28. Monod-Fontaine 1986: 95. Monod-Fontaine 1986: 103f; 113.

130 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Pioneers of the Global Art Market “II. Ausstellung. Turnus, 1910–1911,” see Mallen 2017: 10. Lankheit 1960: 46. Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 10.9.1910, cited after Bilski 2008: 24. Monod-Fontaine 1986: 113. Hahnloser 1978: 25. Hahnloser 1978: 25. Bilski 2008: 25. Mallen 2017: 13. Drutt 2001: 9. Mallen 2017: 14. Herzog 2006: 15. See also Force 2020. Bilski 2008: 28. Bilski makes reference to the Picasso biographer John Richardson who describes Kahnweiler’s strategy of ostpolitik in detail. Archive Justin K. Thannhauser, Notes, 1972. Daniel Catton Rich papers, M0014, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York. Archive Justin K. Thannhauser, Notes, 1972. Daniel Catton Rich papers, M0014, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Archives, New York; Herzog 2006: 15f. The Thannhauser gallery archives cover the years 1919 to 1971 (with gaps) and contain stock books, notebooks, client cards, and business correspondence, among other things. They are open to the public at ZADIK, Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung e.V. in Cologne, Germany. They came to ZADIK in 2006 via the estate of the Silva Casa Foundation, which was posthumously established by Justin Thannhauser’s second wife, Hilde Thannhauser. Hereafter cited as Thannhauser-Archiv. Gästebuch New York, signature Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, A077_VII_001, Thannhauser-Archiv. Kahnweiler wrote an expertise for a Picasso drawing for Justin in the 1950s (Materialsammlung Picasso 1, expertise Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1.29.1952, A077_VIII_009, Thannhauser-Archiv). Bilski 2008: 31f. Herzog 2006: 18. Herzog 2006: 20. Fontanella 2017: 24. Kundenkartei Berlin, F, 1927–1937, A077_XIX_016, Alfred Flechtheim, Thannhauser-Archiv. Fontanella 2017: 23. Nevertheless Rosengart and Thannhauser continued business together until the late 1940s. The Thannhauser catalogues list the Lucerne gallery as a branch until the 1930s and all of the gallerists, Justin Thannhauser, Paul Römer, and Siegfried Rosengart kept mutual/shared client cards (Fontanella 2017: 23). Entschädigungsakte Heinz Thannhauser. Reg-Nr. 377 222, D1-D3, LABO, as well as Entschädigungsakte Michel Thannhauser. Reg.-Nr. 377 223, B5, LABO. Herzog 2006: 23f. Schoeps 2010: 369. Palomar 1962: 126. Lagerbuch II, entry no. 1189, A077_XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. Lagerbuch II, entry no. 1617, A077_XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. Lagerbuch II, entry no. 1458, A077_XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. Fontanella 2017: 25. Welsh-Ovcharov 2012: 79. Federico C. Müller (Galeria Müller), Picasso exhibition catalogue, Buenos Aires, 1934.

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40 Schoeps 2010: 369. 41 Welsh-Ovcharov 2012: 70f. 42 Federico C. Müller (Galeria Müller), Picasso exhibition catalogue, Buenos Aires, 1934; and Fontanella 2017: 25. 43 Fontanella 2017: 25. 44 Drutt 2001: 16. 45 Bilski 2008: 36. 46 Entschädigungsakte Justin K. Thannhauser, Reg. Nr. 170 544, D12-D14, LABO. 47 Entschädigungsakte Justin K. Thannhauser, Reg. Nr. 170 544, D12-D14, LABO. 48 Fontanella 2017: 25. 49 Herzog 2006: 24. 50 Fontanella 2017: 27. 51 Golenia et al. 2016: 144. 52 Entschädigungsakte Justin K. Thannhauser, Reg. Nr. 170 544, D44-D50, LABO, as well as the Thannhauser Lagerbuch I and II, Thannhauser-Archiv. 53 Lagerbuch I, A077_XIX_001, as well as Lagerbuch II A077_XIX_002, ThannhauserArchiv. 54 Lagerbuch II, entry no. 1651 and 1652, A077_XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. 55 Lagerbuch II, entry no. 1354, A077_XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. 56 Geschäftskorrespondenz Europa, Registre du Commerce Paris, N° 53613 du registre chronologique, Justin Thannhauser, A077_IV_001, Thannhauser-Archiv. 57 Photos Rue de Miromesnil, A077_X_007, Thannhauser-Archiv. 58 Geschäftskorrespondenz Europa, Letter Syndicat des Editeurs d’Art & Négociants en Tableaux Modernes, 10.14.1937, A077_IV_001, Thannhauser-Archiv. 59 Geschäftskorrespondenz Europa, “Diner amical du Syndicat des Editeurs d’Art et Négociants en Tableaux Modernes,” A077_IV_001, Thannhauser-Archiv. 60 Lagerbuch I, A077_XIX_001, as well as Lagerbuch II A077_XIX_002, ThannhauserArchiv; and Stolwijk 2017: 52f. 61 Drutt 2001: 16. 62 Herzog 2006: 24. 63 Kleines Notizbuch Paris, page 40, A077_XIX_04_20, Thannhauser-Archiv. As well as Anton 2010: 95f. Martha Nathan-Dreyfus had to liquidate her belongings to finance her emigration from Germany. 64 Anton 2010: 96. 65 Koldehoff 2017: 252. 66 Geschäftskorrespondenz Europa, Ministère de l’Education Nationale to Justin Thannhauser, 4.24.1939. A077_IV_001, Thannhauser-Archiv. 67 Fontanella 2017: 27. 68 Lagerbuch II, A077_XIX_002, entries no. 1388, 1395, 1398, 1643, 1408, 1409, Thannhauser-Archiv. 69 Ender 2015: 112. As well as Lagerbuch I, A077_XIX_001 and Lagerbuch II A077_ XIX_002, Thannhauser-Archiv. 70 Justin Thannhauser to the management of the Gemeente-Museum Amsterdam, 5.23.1938., Stadsarchief Amsterdam 30041, Stedelijk Museum 2120. 71 Fontanella 2017: 29. 72 Fontanella 2017: 28. 73 Endicott Barnett 1990: 53. 74 Fontanella 2017: 29f. 75 Ender 2015: 112.

132 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Pioneers of the Global Art Market Entschädigungsantrag Justin K. Thannhauser. Reg. Nr. 170 544, D44-D50, LABO. Herzog 2006: 25f. Ender 2015: 112. Petropoulos 2017: 555. Herzog 2006: 26. Gästebuch New York, A077_VII_001, Thannhauser. Herzog 2006: 26. Gästebuch New York, A077_VII_001, Thannhauser. As well as Herzog 2006: 26. Ender 2015: 112. The official government statement was that the storage unit had been totally bombed out and that Thannhauser’s artworks got destroyed in the fire. There is circumstantial evidence that the National-Socialist regime cleared the unit long before the bombing and sold Thannhauser’s belongings (Otto Weise to the WGA Berlin, 8.8.1952, WGA 8-3748/51, BADV). Fontanella 2017: 32. Lagerkartei New York, A077_XIX_012, Thannhauser-Archiv. Of those works, more than half of the later transactions were commissioned works (Stolwijk 2017: 53). Interview with Elaine Rosenberg, 10.21.2015. Fontanella 2017: 32. Fontanella 2017: 32. Herzog 2006: 27. Herzog 2006: 28. Justin Thannhauser quoted in Richard F. Shepard, “Collector’s Gift Reflects His Life,” New York Times, October 25, 1963. Fontanella 2017: 32.

Bibliography Anton 2010. Michael Anton. Internationales Kulturgüterprivat- und Zivilverfahrensrecht. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Endicott Barnett 1990. Vivian Endicott Barnett. “The Thannhauser Collection.” In From van Gogh to Picasso, From Kandinsky to Pollock: Masterpieces of Modern Art, edited by Thomas Krens, Germano Celant and Lisa Dennison, 51–119. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1990. Exhibition catalogue. Bilski 2008. Emily D. Bilski. Die “Moderne Galerie” von Heinrich Thannhauser. Munich: Jüdisches Museum München, 2008. Exhibition catalogue. Drutt 2001. Matthew Drutt. “A Showcase for Modern Art: The Thannhauser Collection.” In The Thannhauser Collection of the Guggenheim Museum, edited by Matthew Drutt, 1–25. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001. Ender 2015. Valerie Ender. “Safe Keeping.” Le Journal de l’Université d’été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky, no. 2, “Les sources au travail : Les spoliations d’oeuvres d’art par les nazis, 1933–2015.” Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2015. Enderlein 2011. Angelika Enderlein. “Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen.” In Gute Geschäfte: Kunsthandel in Berlin 1933–1945, edited by Christine Fischer-Defoy et al., 120–1. Berlin: Aktives Museum Faschismus und Widerstand in Berlin, 2011. Fontanella 2017. Megan Fontanella. “Das Vermächtnis der Familie Thannhauser.” In Die Galerie Thannhauser: Van Gogh wird zur Marke, edited by Stefan Koldehoff and Chris Stolwijk, 33–7. Brüssels, Amsterdam, Stuttgart: Belser, 2017.

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Force 2020. Christel H. Force. “Aux origines de la rencontre entre Cubisme et ‘art nègre’: Otto Feldmann, promoteur de Picasso en Allemagne avant 1914.” In Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, vol. II: Berlin, edited by Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, 74–108. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Golenia 2016. Patrick Golenia, Kristina Kratz-Kessemeier and Isabelle Le Masne de Chermont. Paul Graupe (1881–1953): Ein Berliner Kunsthändler zwischen Republik, Nationalsozialismus und Exil. Cologne: Böhlau, 2016. Hahnloser 1978. Hans R. Hahnloser. “Ansprache bei einer Feier zu Ehren des Ehepaars Justin Thannhauser.” In Sammlung Justin Thannhauser, edited by Jurgen Glaesemer, 19–28. Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern, 1978. Herzog 2006. Günter Herzog. “Thannhauser—Händler, Sammler, Stifter.” In Sediment: Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Kunsthandels, edited by Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels ZADIK, 11–32. Nürnberg: ZADIK, 2006. Koldehoff 2017. Stefan Koldehoff. “Die Grabenden. Katalogverzeichnis.“ In Die Galerie Thannhauser—Van Gogh wird zur Marke, edited by Stefan Koldehoff and Chris Stolwijk, 252. Brüssels, Amsterdam, Stuttgart: Belser 2017. Lankheit 1960. Klaus Lankheit. Franz Marc im Urteil seiner Zeit. Cologne: DuMont, 1960. Mallen 2017. Enrique Mallen. “Reaching for Success: Picasso’s Rise in the Market—The First Two Decades.” Arts 6, no. 2 (on “Pablo Picasso Studies”), 2017: 4. https://doi. org/10.3390/arts6020004 Monod-Fontaine 1986. Isabelle Monod-Fontaine. “Chronologie und Dokumente.” In Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: Kunsthändler Verleger Schriftsteller, edited by Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, 93–168. Translated from French. Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1986. Palomar 1962. Francisco Palomar. Los primeros salones de arte en Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1962. Petropoulos 2017. Jonathan Petropoulos. “Art Dealer Networks in the Third Reich and in the Postwar period.” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 3 (2017): 546–65. Schoeps 2010. Julius H. Schoeps. Das Erbe der Mendelssohns: Biographie einer Familie. Frankfurt: Main Fischer, 2010. Stolwijk 2017. Chris Stolwijk. “Geschäfte mit ‘Van Gogh’ in einer Zeit des Umbruchs: Der Beitrag der Galerie Thannhauser.” In Die Galerie Thannhauser: Van Gogh wird zur Marke, edited by Stefan Koldehoff and Chris Stolwijk, 38–55. Brüssels, Amsterdam, Stuttgart: Belser, 2017. Welsh-Ovcharov 2012. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov. “Vincent Van Gogh und die Leidenschaft für die Moderne: Die Kunsthändler Heinrich und Justin K. Thannhauser.” In Aufbruch in die Moderne: Sammler, Mäzene und Kunsthändler in Berlin 18801933, edited by Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Julius H. Schoeps and Ines Sonder, 66–87. Cologne: DuMont, 2012.

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“A Viking Sailing over the Savage Sea, Far, Far to the North”: Walther Halvorsen Christel H. Force

The Norwegian painter Walther Halvorsen (1887–1972) experienced the most transformative period of his life as a student in Paris in the years leading up to the Great War. He moved to the French capital as an artist-cum-critic, but circumstances turned him into an exhibition organizer and art dealer. His profound admiration for French modernism led to fervent advocacy in Kristiania (now Oslo)1 during the war, then a noteworthy career as an agent for Paris galleries and a marchand en chambre who opened new markets in Scandinavia and beyond.2 He was instrumental in the dissemination of France’s avant-garde in the interwar period, exploring new frontiers north, east, and west, yet his role as an agent for his better-known peers and as a primary dealer—including for Henri Matisse—has not been acknowledged thus far.3 His story shows how political and economic contexts cause market opportunities to shift, and how international relations within the art world echo those of the world at large.

Paris Connections When Halvorsen arrived in Paris in the winter of 1909, he entered a community of fabled artists, collectors and dealers who shaped his understanding of the French art world. He had studied at the National Arts and Crafts School of Kristiania in 1907–08, and spent the summer of 1908 at the artist colony in Lillehammer. He wrote art reviews for various newspapers such as Aftenposten, Tidens Tegn, Dagbladet, and Verdens Gang, and became the Paris correspondent for the last in December 1909. That winter, having arrived in Paris, Halvorsen enrolled at the Académie Matisse, then housed in the old Couvent du Sacré Coeur at 33, boulevard des Invalides. Henri Matisse, as head figure of the Fauves, famously drew artists from a wide range of countries such as Germany, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, and the United States.4 Halvorsen’s countrymen at the Académie Matisse included Jean Heiberg, Per Krogh, Axel Revold, Einar Sandberg, and Henrik Sørensen— the last three friends from Lillehammer. He painted and assiduously visited museums, as well as art galleries and private collections which have since become legendary. Title adapted from Halvorsen quoting Picasso as recounted below; see note 21.

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Fifty years later, in a series of articles, Halvorsen vividly recalled how the experiences of 1910–14 left an indelible mark.5 He frequented not only the spacious gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel—whom he called “the first really significant art dealer”6—on rue Lafitte, but also his private collection at rue de Rome, featuring exemplary paintings by the Impressionists he represented. Works by Paul Cézanne could be found in the cramped gallery next door, where Ambroise Vollard kept a remarkable inventory upstairs. On boulevard de la Madeleine was the new Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, where Halvorsen saw a Matisse retrospective in 1910. Nearby on rue Royale was the gallery of Eugène Druet, a reputed art photographer. Halvorsen was well acquainted with the French collector Auguste Pellerin (1853– 1929), who was Norwegian consul general in Paris from 1906 until his death. Having made his fortune through the manufacture of margarine in France, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Pellerin had a particularly good rapport with the latter country. Halvorsen witnessed the renewal of his collection, in 1910, when Pellerin sold thirty-five works by Edouard Manet to an international consortium of dealers, including Durand-Ruel, Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Cassirer, and Heinrich Thannhauser. The collector was a client of Vollard’s and started to focus on Cézanne exclusively from 1910. Halvorsen was a frequent visitor at Pellerin’s house in Neuilly, and saw Vollard regularly until the latter’s death. Halvorsen later recalled the precise date—March 1, 1910—when he first met DanielHenry Kahnweiler at his gallery on rue Vignon, and his utter confusion upon first seeing Picasso’s Cubist works. Of the German dealer, he later recalled that “his artistic insight and foresight were exceptional, and no other art dealer in Paris shared it, even Vollard.”7 Vollard had been Picasso’s dealer for about a decade, and in fact held the first Picasso retrospective and had his Cubist portrait painted in 1910, but the dealer was hesitant about Cubism. Conversely, Kahnweiler fully embraced what turned out to be the most portentous modernist movement of the century. The Norwegian artist recounted that it was not until 1913, while confronted with Picassos and Braques at Kahnweiler’s shortly after having been engrossed in Cézanne’s works at Pellerin’s, that he truly comprehended the significance of Cubism. He had not yet made the personal acquaintance of any of Kahnweiler’s artists then, although he soon would. Halvorsen also knew the siblings Michael, Leo, and Gertrude Stein who were remarkable American collectors living in Montparnasse. Leo and Gertrude Stein held an open salon at rue de Fleurus, where Halvorsen saw his first Blue- and Rose-Period works by Pablo Picasso. Michael and his wife Sarah owned a stunning collection of Matisses which Halvorsen admired on rue Madame nearby. Sarah had been a student at the Académie Matisse in 1908–09, and Halvorsen called on her in the master’s company. In 1914, nineteen of Sarah and Michael Stein’s Matisses on loan to the Kunstsalon Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin would be held in Germany due to the war.8 Once the United States joined the conflict, in April 1917, the Steins panicked at the prospect of their paintings being seized as enemy property and around December they sold eleven to the Danish wine merchant and banker Christian Tetzen-Lund (1852–1936)9 and eight to the Norwegian ship-owner Tryggve Sagen (1891–1952).10 In January 1918 Halvorsen protested that the Steins bypassed him even though he had been the one to

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inform them of these amateurs’ interest; moreover the Steins sold their Matisses for a disastrously low price.11 It may not have succeeded, but this was merely one example of Halvorsen’s wartime attempts to broker the sale of artworks to Scandinavian collectors. His other endeavors to sell paintings—sourced from artists and dealers in Paris—to his compatriots were much more successful and progressively recast his stance from disinterested champion of modernism to savvy dealer in the shifting economy of the war and interwar years.

The 1916 Exhibition A little over four years after his arrival in Paris, at the outbreak of the First World War, the painter was mobilized. On July 20, 1914, he left Paris for Antwerp where he boarded a ship bound for Kristiania. Decades later, Halvorsen recalled this heartwrenching departure quite vividly, and how determined he was to return promptly: Convinced as I was that French visual arts, as they were developing in those years, would have an enormous impact on the development of art in all countries, not least in Norway, [they] appeared to me as precious assets that had to be defended and protected by all civilized countries.12

He soon got dismal news from Paris: Kahnweiler’s artists had no source of income, as the dealer was exiled and his gallery closed; nor did the relatives of Georges Braque, André Derain, Fernand Léger, Roger de la Fresnaye, and Jacques Villon, who had been deployed on the Allied side. Art galleries were deserted; nothing sold. While in Kristiania, Halvorsen mentioned their predicament to his friend, the artist Erik Werenskiold (who had spent some years in Paris in the 1880s), and the latter suggested that Halvorsen might buy an artwork on his behalf in Paris, if it helped. This conversation turned out to mark a turn in Halvorsen’s life, who soon morphed from painter to patron. While the Norwegian navy and army were mobilized, Norway declared itself neutral on August 4, 1914, and a strong “neutrality guard” was formed, however by the spring of 1915 Halvorsen had been discharged and was back in the French capital, determined to help however he could.13 He corresponded with Werenskiold, Heiberg, and Sørensen, who each entrusted Halvorsen with a modest acquisition budget. That summer, Halvorsen called on Matisse, who lamented that artists and their relatives were in dire straits, and that Alice Derain, in particular, was destitute. Halvorsen informed Matisse of his friends’ offer to buy art, and they immediately walked to Derain’s studio. Matisse picked three small landscapes, but realizing that they were not signed, he inscribed each on the back: “I certify that this painting is by André Derain, currently at war,” and signed “Henri Matisse.”14 The three canvases were purchased by Werenskiold, Heiberg, and Sørensen, and sent to Kristiania that fall. Sørensen later wrote an article in the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet recalling this episode:

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It is amazing to think that these three pictures by Derain opened the channel for the rich stream of French art that found its way here, and later spread further and further to Sweden, Denmark, America.15

These purchases indeed opened an important chapter in the history of collecting, the disruption of prewar patronage having created an opening into which stepped Scandinavian, English, and American collectors. Soon after, Derain sent a call for help from the front. Halvorsen recalled seeing two large paintings in the artist’s studio, and informed his friends that they were for sale. Werenskiold bought Le Chien de l’artiste in October 191516 (Musée d’Art Moderne, Troyes), and Heiberg bought Portrait de femme around the same time (which he sold to the National Gallery of Oslo in 1973). These sales were so significant that, owing to Kahnweiler’s exile and despite the fact that Paul Guillaume organized a Derain show in 1916, Halvorsen de facto became Derain’s primary dealer from 1916 until 1923, when Guillaume took over.17 More acquisitions followed. Two paintings by La Fresnaye—a large landscape with a village, and a smaller landscape—were acquired by Werenskiold next.18 Halvorsen described these sales as nothing less than a miracle, because not a single painting had sold in Paris since the start of the war. But his Norwegian friends could only do so much. Then a brilliant idea emerged in casual conversation at the café terrace of La Rotonde on a sunny day in April 1916. La Rotonde was a stone’s throw from Halvorsen’s apartment at 117 rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and a regular meeting place for Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, the poet and critic André Salmon, etc. That morning, Halvorsen was toying with the idea of an exhibition in Kristiania and fending off Salmon’s skepticism—war was raging after all—when suddenly, as Halvorsen recounted it, “Picasso interrupted in a loud voice: ‘An exhibition in Kristiania! Why not? Let’s do it!’”19 Soon everyone at the terrace endorsed the idea and chimed in. In this electrifying moment, he asked Modigliani to sketch a portrait of Picasso20 while the latter enthusiastically explained to the Italian artist’s lover, Beatrice Hastings, that Halvorsen was: a Viking and a sailor, and [Picasso] painted a verbal portrayal of [Halvorsen] standing at the wheel of a small boat laden with canvases, sailing from Le Havre over the savage sea, far, far to the north. And the boat would be small, so the German submarines could not see it.21

Right away, Halvorsen booked the exhibition space of the Kunstnerforbundet (Norwegian Artists Association) in Kristiania for the fall, and set out to survey available artworks. He drew a list of painters together with Matisse and Albert Marquet, and visited all the studios he could access. By June, twenty-four artists had agreed to participate; by September, he had made his final selection, securing roughly 160 artworks directly from the artists. The exhibition included loans from Bonnard, Derain, Friesz, Gleizes, Léger, Marquet, Matisse, Picasso, and other artists.22 In addition, three paintings were lent by the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, and three by fashion designer and collector Paul Poiret.23 Halvorsen also commissioned Modigliani to draw Matisse’s portrait to form a pair with Picasso’s.24

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The selection was crated and shipped from Rouen on Fred Olsen’s Ganger Rolf—a Norwegian cargo carrier sailing under the British flag—but the much-awaited telegram from Kristiania announcing its safe delivery did not come for days. The possibility of a German submarine having torpedoed the shipment stirred up much anguish all around, until Halvorsen finally received word that the paintings had arrived, prompting a tournée at La Rotonde. The 1916 Kunstnerforbundet exhibition of French art in Kristiania opened on November 18 and closed on December 10. It was accompanied by a twenty-page catalogue including 125 numbers25—all for sale—and texts by Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, and André Salmon, whereby Halvorsen borrowed a staple feature of the classic dealer-critic apparatus that typifies the modern-art market.26 The stellar triumvirate, recently returned from the front, was grateful for this chance to fly the colors of their country and boastful about the preeminence of French culture. Cocteau equated modernism with a “cerebral war” pitting genuine innovation against petty mockery, cautioning his readers: “New beauty, or what Charles Baudelaire coined ‘the most recent expression of beauty’ … necessarily triggers the crowds’ laughter.”27 Apollinaire’s text, smacking of wartime propaganda, stated that contemporary French art, like ancient Greek art, would impact all art forms for centuries, adding: “Parodying Voltaire’s famous verse, I would like to tell you, oh colorful land of the far north: ‘It is from France that light reaches you today.’”28 As to Salmon’s foreword, it invites the mention of a Paris exhibition in July 1916 titled “L’Art moderne en France,” known as the Salon d’Antin, that Salmon organized with Henri Barbazanges.29 Firstly, Halvorsen exhibited seven of his own paintings at the Salon d’Antin30 (where Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was first exhibited and its title was coined31) while organizing the Kristiania show. Secondly, even though Salmon’s show preceded, it derived from Halvorsen’s exhibition idea,32 and the poet played no part in the organization of the Kristiania show, contrary to what the catalogue foreword might suggest (Salmon’s being the longest text and the only one translated in Norwegian, preceding the prefaces). Poiret—owner and sponsor of the Salon d’Antin—was the only collector to lend to the Kristiania show, and his three paintings were included in both exhibitions, but this merely shows Poiret’s endorsement of Halvorsen’s project. It should be noted that of the 166 Paris catalogue numbers and the 125 Kristiania numbers, only six paintings overlap (including Poiret’s three). Halvorsen’s checklist comprised different artists and artworks and was clearly his own original selection, in consultation with Matisse and Marquet. All in all the critical reception in Kristiania was rather positive, especially considering that the French press lambasted the Salon d’Antin and, as Halvorsen noted, “30 years later, the London press went wild on the occasion of an exhibition of Matisse and Picasso there.”33 Most importantly, many artworks were sold. They fetched excellent prices too, as the Artists’ Association quoted the French values but substituted the Norwegian currency, worth 60 percent more than the franc. Halvorsen’s success rested in large part on the fact that neutral Scandinavia was experiencing an economic boom, with a thriving shipping trade and strong stock market, while wartime deprivation plagued the rest of Europe; it was also generally pro-French.34 The sizable profit was distributed among the exhibiting artists, and 10,000 francs were given to charities.

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Halvorsen’s only regret was to not have been able to include works by Gris and Braque, both unable to contribute due to war-related circumstances.35 This show—organized by an artist and composed of artworks lent by fellow artists— was unconventional in the art-world economy of France where exhibition loans were typically granted by, and sales brokered through, primary dealers.36 And indeed Halvorsen tipped over to the other side right about then. It could be argued that he sensed a business opportunity, even though he later spun an altruistic story and there is no indication that he stood to gain much from this exhibition and ensuing sales aside from connections and goodwill. If wartime disruptions and a climate of dire need justified this singular enterprise—which had a philanthropic purpose according to Halvorsen— he was in effect treading on art-market territory. The mercantile import of developing a Norwegian clientele was significant, and Halvorsen undeniably started trading then. Through Matisse’s mediation, in 1916 he bought Picasso’s large gouache Famille d’acrobates avec un singe (1905) from Michael and Sarah Stein.37 He attempted to sell it to the National Museum in Stockholm, together with works by Matisse, Renoir, Lautrec, and Corot, but the museum was only able to acquire works by Matisse and Renoir.38 Subsequently Sørensen, who advised the Swedish collector Conrad Pineus (1872–1945) on new acquisitions, brokered Halvorsen’s sale of this Picasso gouache to Pineus, from whose collection it was acquired by the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 1922.39 Halvorsen also bought Matisse’s canvas Sculpture et vase au lierre (1916–17) from the artist in 1917, sold it to the Finnish collector Gösta Stenman (1888–1947) of Helsinki in 1918, who sold it to Frithjof Tikanoja (1877–1964) of Vaasa, who in turn gifted it to the city of Vaasa in 1951 (Tikanoja Art Museum). Halvorsen likewise bought Matisse’s Intérieur au violon (1918) from the artist in 1918, which he sold to the art historian Johan H. Langaard (1899–1988) of Oslo in 1922 (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen).40 There is also evidence that by 1917 he was gathering artworks selected with Matisse’s input to be sent to Walter Pach and sold in America (including a Boucher and a Rubens). Matisse was to get half of the profits, except on artworks bought by Halvorsen outright, on which Matisse got 10 percent.41 Halvorsen’s access to Scandinavian collectors and museums was remarkable enough, but his newfound friendship with many artists (and endorsement from the likes of Matisse and Picasso especially) unwittingly turned him into a force to be reckoned with. Moreover, this outsider who successfully brokered enviable sales marked himself as a maverick for the considerable prices he realized, upsetting the artists’ cote (going rate). His can-do attitude and salesmanship prompted a mix of excitement and trepidation among the primary dealers in Paris, who wanted in on the action. The hallowed inventories of prestigious Parisian galleries soon opened up to him, but not as trustingly as artists’ studios had, as the Parisian dealers wanted to control the market. Halvorsen apparently destroyed his archives years later,42 so we are left to piece together the facts based on other extant records, but what transpires is that by 1916 Halvorsen had an arrangement with Paul Rosenberg that was renewed well into the 1920s.43 They owned works in half shares that Halvorsen sold in Scandinavia, and shared the profits equally. Interestingly, on October 25, 1917, Halvorsen requested

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from Rosenberg a written pledge to seal their mutual agreement with regard to his next exhibition, and insisted on the consistency of asking prices: Through this letter … you commit for a year and a half once [I am] in possession of your paintings, to not accept from anyone else any offers under the asking prices you quoted me. I hold you accountable to this engagement strictly with regard to Scandinavian countries and their agents. This exhibition to which you have kindly agreed to contribute amounting to patriotic resolve and pro-French propaganda in Scandinavian countries, and myself having always striven to fight against German influence and to defend French interests in said countries, it goes without saying that I shall only sell those paintings to citizens of neutral or allied countries.44

That these arrangements occurred during the tense war years, when more was at stake than commercial interests, is quite salient in this last provision—even if most expressions of patriotism and chauvinism were intended for the censor’s ears in those years—yet a shift from philanthropy to market considerations is noticeable. A letter was sent to Halvorsen the same day (likely in answer) by a consortium of Paris dealers—namely, Georges Bernheim, Bernheim-Jeune, Eugène Druet, DurandRuel, Jos Hessel, and Paul Rosenberg—that appears to amend a prior price list regarding his upcoming show, to which they were lending. It also centers on going rates:45 We declare that the general price hike for paintings on the Paris market forces us to raise the [asking] price on some of the canvases we sent to Kristiania. In order to defend you against [malice], we commit and declare that we shall not accept from anyone else any offers under the asking prices we quoted you. Since no one can predict the future, this engagement will remain valid for a year and a half after the paintings have been returned to us.46

Asking prices (with which the Kunstnerforbundet had inadvertently toyed in 1916) were controlled by the Corporation des Marchands de Tableaux modernes (replaced in 1925 by the French Syndicat des éditeurs d’art et négociants en tableaux modernes)—the association of modern-art dealers to which these gallery owners belonged—to prevent primary dealers from one-upping each other. By sourcing paintings in Paris through such contracts, Halvorsen now had to abide by the Corporation’s rules, but in effect controlled the market in Scandinavia. Indeed, while Halvorsen increasingly delegated to brick-and-mortar galleries in various Scandinavian cities (while he himself was based in Paris), those dealers deferred to him as the Corporation’s sole authorized agent.47 This arrangement resulted from preexisting relationships as some important acquisitions predate October 1917, such as Matisse’s 1912 canvas Paysage marocain, Acanthes (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), bought by Halvorsen from Léonce Rosenberg in 1916, which he then gave to the National Museum in Stockholm in 1917 [Figure 9.1]; Matisse’s 1896 Lemons and Bottle of Dutch Gin (MoMA, New York), bought by Halvorsen from Bernheim-Jeune on December 5, 1916, later sold to Galerien Thannhauser, Berlin; and Matisse’s 1912 Poissons rouges (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), bought by Halvorsen from Bernheim-Jeune in May 1917 on behalf of Tetzen-Lund.48

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Figure 9.1 Henri Matisse. Paysage marocain, Acanthes, 1912. Oil on canvas, 115 × 80 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Gift of Walther Halvorsen, 1917. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (See Color Plate 12.)

The 1918 Exhibition The second show sent by Halvorsen to the Kunstnerforbundet in Kristiania during the war, Den franske utstilling (The French Exhibition), which took place in January– February 1918, comprised works lent by dealers this time. It was accompanied by a forty-eight-page catalogue listing 142 numbers,49 comprising insightful prefaces on Courbet and Manet by Théodore Duret, and on Cézanne and Renoir by Matisse (in French and Norwegian), as well as a nine-page preface by Halvorsen dated August 1, 1917 (in Norwegian only),50 followed by ten reproductions.51 It included paintings by luminaries of the nineteenth century such as Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas,

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Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Redon, Renoir, Seurat, Lautrec, van Gogh, and Vuillard, as well as the modernists Braque, Manguin, Matisse, Puy, H. Rousseau, Valloton, and Valtat, in addition to works on paper and sculptures.52 The show was presented in Stockholm next as “Utställning af fransk konst” at the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in April to May 1918;53 in Gothenburg as “Utställing af fransk konst” at the Valand Art School in September 1918; in Bergen as “Fransk malerkunst” at the Bergens Kunstforening in October 1918; and in Copenhagen as “Udstilling of Fransk Kunst” at the Danske Kunsthandel, January 16 to February 2, 1919—each with its own catalogue. As the emphasis shifted from living artists’ loans to nineteenth-century paintings on the secondary market, Halvorsen’s professional dealing and Scandinavian network crystallized. In a little over a year he had de facto become an agent for French galleries, selling through Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish associations and dealers, as well as a trader in his own right, albeit without a storefront. Halvorsen had a “collection” too— although the word was essentially a euphemism for stock—and owned no. 44, Nature morte in the 1918 Kristiania catalogue, namely Matisse’s Poissons rouges (MNAM, Paris), originally destined for the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin but sold by the artist to Halvorsen in 1918 [Figure 9.2].54 It remained with Halvorsen for eight years and was eventually sold via Rosenberg to Baron Napoleon Gourgaud on June 3, 1925, for 40,000 francs.55 The fact that Halvorsen had a substantial stock of paintings is undeniable: in January 1918 Georges Bernheim approached Halvorsen with a deal to partner up as primary dealers for Matisse.56 At the time, the latter’s long-standing contract with Gaston and Josse Bernheim-Jeune (not related to Georges) concerned only half of his production and Matisse was at liberty to dispose of the other half as he wished (conditional upon requisite pricing); the idea was that Georges Bernheim and Halvorsen would jointly buy Matisse’s half. Halvorsen wrote to Matisse that he would prefer to work solo, but Matisse’s reply was: “I recommend that you accept. We will both have peace of mind and our relationship won’t change.”57 A three-year contract dated April 1, 1919, between Georges Bernheim, Halvorsen, and Matisse was renewed for three years on March 25, 1922.58 Halvorsen was the primary lender on the occasion of a very successful 1919 exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London,59 and soon after both Halvorsen and Bernheim sent Matisses to another London exhibition.60 By 1920, one of Halvorsen’s main British clients was Herbert Coleman of Manchester.61

The Postwar Period Before the show traveled to its second venue, on March 11, 1918, Halvorsen and Matisse visited the seventy-seven-year-old Renoir, who was featured prominently in Halvorsen’s exhibition. Several photographs show the elder painter at his villa in Cagnes-sur-Mer surrounded in turn by Halvorsen, his wife Greta Prozor,62 Matisse, Marquet,63 Andrée Heuschling,64 as well as Claude and Pierre Renoir [Figures 9.3 and 9.4].65 As the war neared its end, Halvorsen’s urge to engage directly with French artists and advocate for their paintings was as strong as ever, but he had made a name

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Figure 9.2 Henri Matisse. Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges, 1914. Oil on canvas, 147 × 97 cm. Musée national d'art moderne, Paris. Legs Baronne Eva Gourgaud, 1965. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (See Color Plate 13.)

for himself and was undoubtedly introduced by Matisse to Renoir as an influential agent on the Scandinavian market, as well as Matisse’s own (then prospective) dealer. The idea of a solo exhibition may have germinated when they met in person, as a little over a year after the artist’s death a Renoir exhibition was held at the National Gallery in Kristiania from February 12 to March 6, 1921, under the directorship of Halvorsen’s friend Jens Thiis. Organized by the Norwegian Foreningen Fransk Kunst— the Association of French Art founded in November 1918 and presided by the shipowner and formidable collector Jørgen Breder Stang (1874–1950)—it comprised fortyfour paintings including loans from Durand-Ruel’s collection, but primarily from Scandinavian private and public collections.

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Figure 9.3  Photograph taken on the occasion of a visit by Matisse and Halvorsen to PierreAuguste Renoir (1841–1919) at “Les Collettes,” Cagnes-sur-Mer, on March 11, 1918. Renoir, seated, surrounded by, left to right: Albert Marquet, Walther Halvorsen, Henri Matisse, and Andrée Heuschling. © Archives du Musée Renoir, Ville de Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Halvorsen was a dealer of international stature by then: when the Danish collector Wilhelm Hansen (1868–1936),66 a client of Rosenberg’s, was forced to sell his collection at the end of 1922, the competition was fierce among interested parties. The German collector Oskar Reinhart (who ended up acquiring many of Hansen’s artworks, and whose agent was the dealer Alfred Gold) competed with a redoubtable consortium comprising Halvorsen, the Japanese industrialist Kojiro Matsukata, the Galerie Barbazanges, and the New Carlsberg Glyptotek.67 Three years after the Renoir show, a large Matisse exhibition was organized by the Norwegian Foreningen Fransk Kunst under the aegis of Tryggve Sagen. It featured ninety-one paintings in Copenhagen, followed by reduced versions in

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Figure 9.4  Photograph taken in 1918 on the occasion of a visit by Matisse and Halvorsen to Pierre-Auguste Renoir at “Les Collettes,” Cagnes-sur-Mer. Left to right, seated: Henri Matisse, Auguste Renoir, and Greta Prozor; standing: Walther Halvorsen and Pierre Renoir. © Archives Henri Matisse, Issy-les-Moulineaux.

Stockholm and Oslo.68 This major retrospective of his former teacher and faithful friend was undoubtedly a momentous occasion for Halvorsen—who had been one of Matisse’s dealers for five years by then—yet there were complications: TetzenLund lent to Copenhagen but declined to lend to the Stockholm and Oslo venues, although his loans represented a third of the original exhibition.69 In 1922 Sagen had sold his Matisses to the General Consul of Norway in Paris, Peter Krag, but some Matisses with a Stein-Sagen-Krag provenance were exhibited in Olso in 1924 nevertheless. If Scandinavia had experienced a period of prosperity during the First World War, a financial crash followed postwar, forcing collectors to sell—like Hansen and Sagen. The early 1920s ushered in a period of crisis during which many French paintings were resold, upending this remarkable albeit short chapter in the history of collecting. Even Stang was not immune,70 although many French artworks safely remained at the National Gallery of Oslo, counting about thirty by 1929. Compounding the economic downturn in Scandinavia, in 1925 the Norwegian newspapers voiced general resentment against French dealers following a scandal where, as Halvorsen wrote to Rosenberg on February 7, “They’ve tried to fire Thiis

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here, because he stands accused of buying forged gothic [stone heads] from Stora … The entire art market has been attacked, and French painting.”71 If he could not exhibit in Scandinavia, Rosenberg would do the next best thing: likely through Halvorsen, he lent artworks to the exhibitions “D’Ingres à nos jours” (June–July 1925) and “Le portrait français au XXe siècle” (December 1925) at the Maison Watteau in Montparnasse, managed by the Association of Scandinavian Artists led by the Swedish artist Lena Börjeson.72 From March through August 1928, an exhibition titled “De David à Courbet” was presented at the National Gallery in Oslo (suggesting that Norway’s interest had not subsided), followed in February 1929 by the publication in La Renaissance of an extensive article dedicated to French art in Norway.73 Its author, Paul Jamot, essentially focused on Stang’s extraordinary collection,74 said to rival the National Gallery of Oslo’s75—both abundantly described and illustrated—and stated: For the museum’s acquisitions, the initiative has been taken more than once, particularly during the last twelve to fifteen years, by M. Walther Halvorsen, always in accord with M. Stang and M. Thiis.76

Halvorsen’s own collection was said to comprise three Renoirs—Portrait de Mme Choquet (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart),77 Le jugement de Paris,78 and Portrait d’une jeune fille79; three Cézannes—Baigneuses (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart),80 Paysage au Jas de Bouffan (Guggenheim Museum, New York),81 and Portrait de Mme Cezanne (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)82; and a Manet, Portrait de Georges Clémenceau (Kimbell Art Museum).83 Whether they were his collection or stock is debatable, as some of these paintings appear to have been for sale by 1929. The article appears to have been a clever publicity coup for both Halvorsen and Stang at a time when both were trying to sell.84 Jamot found in Stang and Halvorsen “a predilection for the same masters and a choice guided by the same tastes,” and noted that “the friendship that exists between the two art lovers implies profitable exchanges of ideas.”85 Other Norwegian collectors were mentioned, including Sagen86 (especially his gifts to the National Gallery), Anton Klavenes, Christian and Hafdan Mustad, Werenskiold,87 Thiis, and Krag. Krag’s collection was said to include six Matisses: a gray landscape, Pot de cyclamen sur un tapis rouge, Paysage d’automne, Pont Saint-Michel, Jeune Matelot assis, and La Coiffure.88 The Scandinavian crash was followed by the Great Depression, which impacted all of Europe and America, but Halvorsen, from Paris and in collaboration with a transnational network of colleagues, continued to promote French art through exhibitions and sales in Scandinavia and beyond. One notable venture Halvorsen contributed to was the 1931 exhibition Fransk Genombrottskonst från nittonhundratalet (French Avant-Garde Art of the Twentieth Century) shown in Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg, and Copenhagen from March to June. It was co-organized by Halvorsen in Paris, Jean Heiberg and Simon Throrbjörnsen in Oslo, Ragnar Hoppe in Stockholm, Alex Romdahl in Gothenburg, and Leo Swane in Copenhagen. The fifty-two page catalogue included an introduction by Tor Hedberg and texts by Hoppe for works by

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Bonnard (nos. 1–15), Braque (16–30), La Fresnaye (31–35), Derain (36–78), Leger (79–87), Matisse (88–113), Picasso (114–137), etc., mostly lent by Scandinavian collectors.89 A few years later, in 1938, Halvorsen organized an exhibition at the Artist House in Oslo with Paul Rosenberg, including works by Matisse, Braque, Laurens, and Picasso.90 The latter contributed thirty-two paintings, including Guernica. First shown at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World Exposition in Paris, Guernica was then exhibited in 1938 at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo (priced at 30,000 Norwegian krone), the Liljevach Konsthall in Stockholm, and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, before being shown at the New Burlington Galleries in London in October.91 The number of artworks that passed through Halvorsen’s hands in the interwar period is as impressive as their quality and geographic reach. Given the financial crisis in Scandinavia, by the early 1920s Halvorsen looked further. He worked with Kahnweiler—once the latter was back in Paris from his war-period exile—who sent works by Braque, Derain, and Vlaminck with the understanding that they could not be sold in Germany, which was Alfred Flechtheim’s turf and crippled by currency devaluation.92 However, by 1928–29 Halvorsen sold paintings to Justin K. Thannhauser in Berlin and they were buying in co-shares in the 1930s.93 Examples of sales to Thannhauser include van Gogh’s canvas Mountains at Saint-Rémy (Guggenheim, New York), and Cézanne’s drawing Study of a Harlequin (Art Institute of Chicago). Other instances of sales Halvorsen brokered outside of Scandinavia include Georges Seurat’s Gray Weather, Grande Jatte (The Met), which he sold to the New York Collector John Quinn in 1921; Cézanne’s Portrait de Madame Cézanne (Philadelphia Museum of Art), which Halvorsen acquired from Vollard and sold to the Swiss collector Gottlieb Friedrich Reber;94 and Edgar Degas’s pastel Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando (Tate), which Halvorsen sold to the British collector Samuel Courtauld through the Leicester Galleries in 1926, to name a few. Halvorsen also sold a remarkable group of paintings to the Czechoslovak state on the occasion of the exhibition “French Art of the 19th and 20th centuries” organized by the Mánes Association of Fine Artists at Prague’s Municipal House in the spring of 1923. They include Daumier’s Family on the Barricades of 1854; Gauguin’s Escape of 1902; Renoir’s Lovers of 1875; Henri (Le Douanier) Rousseau’s Self-Portrait of 1890; and van Gogh’s Green Wheat Field of 1889, with Matisse’s Joaquina of 1910 thrown in as a gift95 (all Narodni Galerie, Prague). For his work toward the advancement of French culture, Halvorsen was awarded the distinction of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur on January 17, 1920, then was promoted to Officier de la Légion d’honneur on September 27, 1928—both upon the recommendation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in France.96 He lived in Paris through the interwar years, then resumed his work as a painter for the remainder of his life in Norway, sharing his time between Oslo and Grimstad. His tireless promotion of French art for the better part of three decades expanded the market for French modernism and left an enduring mark in the ownership history of countless artworks of first magnitude.

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Notes 1 2

Oslo was known as Kristiania until 1924. Gee 1981: 79 defined the marchand en chambre as a dealer without a gallery, whose “transactions were private and uncontrolled by legislation.” 3 Although Halvorsen played a crucial role in the dissemination of French art in Scandinavia, he did not literally introduce it. The first two French paintings entered the national collections of Norway in 1892, and Jens Thiis (1870–1942), Director of the National Gallery in Kristiania/Oslo from 1908 to 1941, was open to international influences early on, from his involvement with the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne. Thiis, Stang, and Halvorsen are said to be the three men responsible for bringing French art to Norway in Jamot 1929: 79. A notable event was the exhibition “Exposition d’art français du XIXe siècle” at the Royal Museum of Copenhagen (May 15–June 30, 1914), featuring paintings ranging mostly from David to Cezanne. Regarding Denmark’s “admiration of all things French and opposition to all things German,” see Aagesen 2012: 303, 305–7, 310, 317–20. Of note also is Dr. Alfred Gold (Vienna, 1874–1958) who engaged in art dealing in Copenhagen from 1916 to 1921, developed quite a network in the Scandinavian art world (see Gold 1920), and subsequently had galleries in Paris and Berlin, until his New York exile in 1941. His clients included Christian Tezten-Lund and Edvard Brandes in Copenhagen, Jørgen Breder Stang in Oslo, and Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur. The Swedish collector Rolf de Maré (1888–1964) is also worth mentioning (see Naslund 2008). 4 Aagesen 2012: 303, wrote that in 1910, “the school attracted a particularly large number of students from the Nordic countries—of a total of around 40 students, almost half were Swedes and Norwegians … These tendencies were first presented in Copenhagen in 1911 in the exhibition ‘Young Norwegian Art,’ featuring works by Matisse students Henrik Sørensen, Per Deberitz, Severin Grande, Jean Heiberg and Axel Revold.” See also Grammont 2011: 155–60. The Académie Matisse closed in spring 1911. 5 Halvorsen 1959. My account of the events unfolding until 1916 is largely based on this series of articles. I would like to thank Nils Messel, Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, for kindly sending me a transcript of the articles in Norwegian, at my request, in connection with research I was conducting for a Matisse exhibition at The Met in 2012. I am solely responsible for the translations and understanding presented here. 6 Halvorsen 1959 (December 11). 7 Halvorsen 1959. 8 A 1916 checklist of Matisse paintings from Michael Stein’s collection sent to Fritz Gurlitt in June 1914 is preserved in the Cone Collection archives, Baltimore Museum of Art; reprinted in Barr 1951: 178 n. 4, 540–1. See also Grammont 2011: 160, 161 pl. 116, 163; and photos of Rue Madame: 377–87. 9 See Monrad 2008. 10 Several Matisse paintings acquired by Tetzen-Lund are today in the collection of the Royal Museum of Copenhagen, and one bronze is at the National Gallery in Oslo. Five Matisses acquired by Sagen were sold to Peter Krag in 1922. 11 In his letter to Matisse’s wife of January 23, 1918, Halvorsen inquires whether Matisse has further details on this baffling sale: “As you know I had done some business with Mr. Stein through your husband. [See the 1916 sale mentioned below, note 37.]

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14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22

Pioneers of the Global Art Market These deals were conducted promptly and cleanly and I was under the impression that Mr. Stein was contented. Several times I had mentioned to him, prompted by my relations in Scandinavia, that he could sell part of or his entire collection of Matisses. Matisse even accompanied me to try and obtain some canvases but Mrs. Stein protested vehemently that she would not part from them for millions … Mr. Stein sold his collection to the very people who had asked me to buy it … I am happy that these canvases are going to my country but annoyed because this deal indicates to Scandinavian buyers that paintings that were valued at 10,000 francs during the war were quickly sold for 3,000 francs after the armistice, and moreover that this concerns Matisse paintings, on which we relied the most” (my translation). Henri Matisse Archives, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Halvorsen correspondence, 180123. See also Grammont 2011: 163, 165 n. 73. Halvorsen 1959 (December 12). Norway is said to have been a “Neutral Ally,” as Britain’s strong pressure on Norway forced it to put its large shipping fleet and other resources at the Allies’ disposal, and to sever all trade with Germany. This led to intensified submarine warfare and antiGerman sentiment in Norway. Halvorsen 1959 (December 12). For the implications of an artist’s signature, see Force 2019: 18–28. 1947 article by Sørensen cited in Halvorsen 1959 (December 14). Inscribed by Matisse, “Je certifie que ce tableau est d’André Derain, en ce moment au front, oct. 1915” Halvorsen 1959 (December 14). See below, note 87. Gee 1981: 64. Derain had a contract with Guillaume (covering part of his production) in 1917–18, but Derain’s correspondence shows that he mostly relied on Halvorsen during the war years. He renewed his contract with Kahnweiler in 1920 but dropped him in favor of Guillaume from 1924. The large one later belonged to his grandson, Jens Erik Werenskiold, as per Nils Messel. Halvorsen 1959 (December 14). Halvorsen paid 10 francs for the drawing. Halvorsen 1959 (December 14). Georgette Agutte (2 paintings); Pierre Bonnard (3 paintings, including Le pont de la Concorde à Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, sold in Kristiania to an unidentified buyer, sold in England in the 1920s, Tate since 1944); André Derain (1); Raoul Dufy (3 + 11 works on paper), La Fresnaye (1 + 1: according to Halvorsen 1959, Les Baigneurs was bought by the Swedish painter Richard Bergh, curator at the National Museum in Stockholm, although this painting is not included in the catalogue; the painting Marie Ressort was acquired by Stang, then by Ragnar Motzau); Othon Friesz (5 paintings sold in Kristiania); Albert Gleizes (2 + 3); Fernand Léger (2); André Lhote (8 + 4); Marquet (4 paintings, including no. 77, Effet de neige, bought by the National Gallery in Oslo, and no. 79, Port de Marseille & no. 80, Quai des Grands Augustin, acquired by Stang); Jacqueline Marval (3 + 3); Henri Matisse (5 + 20, including no. 29, La Bouteille de Schiedame, 1896, 1,400 Swedish krona (Kr), MoMA, New York); Marguerite Matisse (4 + 6); Jean Metzinger (3); Hélène Perdriat (3 + 13); Picasso (2 + 8, including no. 1, Portrait d’homme, Kr 6,000, likely the painting about which Halvorsen wrote to Picasso on May 14, 1918: “I just got an offer of 4,500 from Kristiania for the ‘Portrait d’Homme.’ I would be very happy if you would accept this offer as it’s a painter who is the buyer”—Archives Musée Picasso, C60); Félix Valloton (3), Villon (2 + 3, including Soldats en marche, MNAM, Paris); and Vlamick (2), among others.

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23 According to Halvorsen 1959, in addition to the Bonnard, Bernheim-Jeune lent one painting each by Cross and Signac. He likely got the additional three Cross and three Signacs from Mme. Cross and Signac, respectively. Poiret’s loans were a Boussingault panel, a Segonzac landscape, and a Derain portrait, nos. 73–75. 24 Modigliani’s drawings were published in Dagbladet on November 5, 1916, and Aftenposten on December 15, 1959. The caption in 1916 read: “Dagbladet reproduces [Modigliani’s] portraits of Matisse and Picasso courtesy of the excellent exhibition organizer, Hr. Halvorsen.” (I owe this information to Nils Messel.) Yet Modigliani did not lend, likely due to his solo show at Galerie Berthe Weill in December 1916. 25 Some catalogue numbers include several works on paper. No illustrations, other than a Matisse drawing as frontispiece. 26 On the dealer–critic system, see the introduction above. Salmon’s foreword in Norwegian (4 pages) is followed by prefaces I, II, & III in French by Cocteau (4 pages), Apollinaire (2 pages), and Salmon (6 pages—French version of the foreword). 27 Den franske utstilling, Kunstnerforbundet, Kristiania, November to December 1916, p. 3. 28 Ibid., p. 5. Their insistence on the “civilizing mission” of France (perhaps for the censors’ benefit) caused Henning Gran to write a caustic review in Kunst og Kultur. However, positive reviews were published by Kristian Haug in Aftenposten, November 24, 1916, and Jean Heiberg in Dagbladet, November 30, 1916. 29 Premises at 26 avenue d’Antin (now avenue Franklin Roosevelt), which could be accessed through Galerie Barbazanges at 109 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. 30 Catalogue nos. 56–62; see Gee 1981: 253–4; and Kluver 1997: 3. Note the exhibition title which circumvents the notion of French art: “Modern Art in France.” It included twenty foreign artists out of fifty-two, such as Burty, de Chirico, Halvorsen, Kisling, Modigliani, Picasso, Severini, Vlaminck, de Zarate, etc. Conversely Halvorsen’s show included two foreign artists out of twenty-seven: Picasso and Galanis. 31 See Kluver 1997: 20–41 for photos of the artists who regularly met at La Rotonde in 1916, including Modigliani, Picasso, Jacob, and Salmon. 32 As rightly inferred by Klüver 1997: 65, quoting Halvorsen 1959, referring to Salmon’s skepticism regarding Halvorsen’s idea, the previous spring, of sending a group show to Norway. However Salmon’s show in Paris came about, it did not yield the many sales Halvorsen envisioned and realized. 33 Halvorsen 1959 (December 14) referring to Yves Sjöberg’s “Matisse-Picasso,” Victoria and Albert Museum, December 1945, and subsequent tour in the UK. 34 Note that the Marshal of France Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, a product of Bonaparte’s Empire, became King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway in 1818—start of the current royal family of Sweden. 35 Halvorsen and Braque shared a lifelong friendship going back to those years. In Richardson’s Picasso biography, his only mention of Halvorsen is in connection with a banquet organized in honor of Braque’s discharge from the army, on January 14, 1917, including thirty-five guests. The invitation listed the organizers, namely, Picasso, Apollinaire, Gris, Jacob, Metzinger, Pierre Reverdy, Paul Dermée, Marie Wassilief, Matisse, and Halvorsen. Richardson 1996: 427. 36 As opposed to Germany and Scandinavia, where associations of art lovers and artists such as the Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler in Düsseldorf (1909–16) or the Kunstnerforbundet in Kristiania, for instance, customarily organized exhibitions and brokered sales. Watson 1992: 158. 37 Halvorsen wrote to Matisse in October 1916, likely about Michael Stein: “I’ve been thinking of the Picassos at Stein’s. I could perhaps sell them here in Paris

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market if he wants to entrust them to me some day next week. In any event, let him have them photographed” (Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 161018). Additionally, Leo and Gertrude Stein had acquired Picasso’s gouache and Girl with a Basket of Flowers from the dealer Clovis Sagot in 1905, but Gertrude disliked it and it is next visible in photographs of Michael and Sarah Stein’s place by 1907. This information was kindly provided to the author by Eva Nygårds, Curator and Coordinator for loans, Gothenburg Art Museum, citing Nationalmuseums årsbok 1978, Samlat, pp. 98–103. Rosen 1946: 117. Halvorsen brokered the sale of Conrad Pineus’s collection of French art to Gothenburg Museum director Axel Romdahl in 1922, with Sørensen’s assistance. Information courtesy Eva Nygårds. Langaard left it on extended loan to the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo from c. 1923 to 1925, then sold it to Paul Rosenberg through Halvorsen’s agency in 1925; Rosenberg sold it in November–December 1925 to Johannes Rump, who gave it to the National Gallery of Denmark in 1928. Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 170000. He burned his papers in later life according to Greta Prozor (unpublished statement). This must have been after 1953; see below, note 93. Paul Rosenberg’s archives include correspondence with Halvorsen as early as 1916 (I.A.55a; I.C.30a), and 1917 (I.A.57; I.C.6a; I.C.9a; I.C.21b). See also I.A.59a: Undated List of artworks sold by Rosenberg and Halvorsen between October 1916 and December 1917, and total. By April, through August 1918, tempers flared between Rosenberg and Halvorsen regarding paintings they owned in half shares, but they eventually reconciled. (Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 180400. Paul Rosenberg Archives, New York, I.A.57; I.A.62A.) Halvorsen and Rosenberg also had a serious dispute in 1938 (documented in Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen 380309—380409, likely because Rosenberg was Matisse’s dealer by then.)I want to thank Georges Matisse for welcoming me into the Matisse archives. I also want to thank Elaine Rosenberg for welcoming me into the Paul Rosenberg archives, as well as Donald Prochera, who created the finding aid. Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.A.57. Norway remained neutral during the First World War, although it would be best described as a “Neutral Ally.” With one of the largest merchant fleets in the world, the stakes were high, and by 1915 it negotiated a trade agreement with Great Britain. By April 1917, Britain negotiated “Tonnage Agreements” with the governments of Denmark and Norway, then Sweden in 1918, whereby Scandinavian ships were requisitioned during the war. Again, some transactions with the dealers included predated this contract: on October 13, 1916, Jos Hessel entrusted to Henri Matisse two paintings by Renoir and one by Cézanne destined for Halvorsen; Archives Matisse, 161013a1, 161013a2. A copy of the signed one-page contract is in the Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.A.57. An undated copy of a longer contract, including twelve clauses, is in the Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.B.30, documents # 92–95.Regarding this time when dealers curtailed competition by jointly controlling prices and anticompetitive practices were broadly tolerated, see my introduction to this book, above. It would appear that Gösta Olson, when he opened the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm, considered that this arrangement extended to himself, as Halvorsen’s agent. In a letter to Paul Rosenberg dated October 20, 1918, Halvorsen wrote that the window of Olson’s new gallery listed the six Paris dealers, and asked whether that was

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acceptable. And on December 2, 1918, Halvorsen wrote: “I need to know whether our contract is still valid after January 15, 1919, and whether your name should continue to appear in the Scandinavian galleries that work for me” (Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.A.57). Tetzen-Lund later sold it (auction sale, Copenhagen, May 18–19, 1925, no. 91) to Johannes Rump, who gifted it to the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen in 1928. Halvorsen also bought Matisse’s La coupe aux oranges (1916, private collection) from Bernheim-Jeune on November 10, 1916, for 3,200 francs (Henri Matisse Archives, Bernheim-Jeune correspondence, 161110, 161122). 106 paintings, 5 sculptures, 9 numbers in the drawings and prints section, and 22 numbers in the watercolors section, with some numbers including several items. A French typescript of Halvorsen’s introduction is in the Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.B.30. Illustrations were lacking in the 1916 catalogue, as was any mention of Halvorsen. Bonnard (4), Braque (2), Cézanne (4), Corot (2), Courbet (2), Degas (2), Delacroix (5), Denis (2), Gauguin (4), Gericault (1), Manet (2), Manguin (2), Matisse (5 + 8 studies), Monet (4), Morisot (2), Pissarro (3), Puy (2), Redon (10), Renoir (13), Th. Rousseau (1), H. Rousseau (1), Roussel (2), Seurat (5), Sisley (3), Lautrec (4), Valloton (2), Valtat (1), van Gogh (1), and Vuillard (4). A show that launched Gösta Olson’s career, including thirty-six paintings from Halvorsen’s 1916 exhibition plus seventy unsold ones from the 1918 exhibition in Kristiania. It was shown in Stockholm (cat. 55), Gothenburg (cat. 51), Bergen (cat. 73), and Copenhagen (no. 41, ill.), although it was not for sale. Regarding Halvorsen’s purchase of the canvas from Matisse, but Matisse’s reluctance to let Halvorsen sell it in case Shchukin reclaimed it after the Soviet Revolution, see Henri Matisse archives, 180115, 180119, 200311 (Halvorsen initially wanted to keep it for himself but in March 1920 he asked Matisse if he could sell it to Herbert Coleman. The sale did not take place despite Halvorsen’s plea: “It seems to me that there should be no doubt that I can dispose of the painting as I see fit now. It has been two years since the war ended and three years since it’s been paid for.”). Paul Rosenberg archives, I.A.79, and index card, inv. 1106. The partnership idea had been brewing for a while as in 1916 Halvorsen wrote to Matisse about Georges Bernheim that he had not been able to see him but “in any event, if possible, for the future I would rather conduct my business dealings alone, which as a matter of fact are going pretty well now” (Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 161100). Henri Matisse archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 180119, in response to 180115. Henri Matisse archives: Bernheim-Jeune correspondence, 190401, 220325 & Halvorsen correspondence 190316, 201100, 250319. If the Bernheim-Halvorsen contract ended in 1925, Halvorsen’s arrangement with Matisse may have continued informally for a little while (see Halvorsen correspondence, 250319), but likely did not extend beyond the end of Matisse’s contracts with Bernhein-Jeune (1909–26). Pictures by Henri Matisse and Sculptures by Maillol, Leicester Galleries, London, November–December 1919; fifty-one works. See Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 190424. The dealer Brandon Davis bought seven or eight paintings, Michael Sadler about six, John Maynard Keynes one, George Eumorphopoulos one, Walter Taylor two. (Korn 2004: 117, 129 n.53.) Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 200223. See Korn 2004: 117.

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61 Henri Matisse archives, 200311. See Korn 2004. 62 The painter and actress Greta Prozor (1885–1978) was a student of and sitter for a 1916 portrait by Matisse (MNAM, Paris) commissioned by Halvorsen (Letter from Halvorsen to Matisse dated November 1916; Henri Matisse Archives, 161100). In 1923 Halvorsen married the painter Anita Mowinckel (1894–1983), who studied in Paris from 1919, and with whom he had two children, Anita Louise Henriette Marcelle Halvorsen in 1924 and Celine Halvorsen in 1930. 63 Marquet would spend the summer of 1925 in Norway and Sweden at Halvorsen’s invitation. 64 In 1920, Renoir’s model Andrée Heuschling (1900–1979) would marry his son Jean Renoir, who featured her in several of his movies as Catherine Hessling. 65 These shots appear to have been taken by Halvorsen, with Halvorsen’s camera, as in April 1918 he sent the photos to Matisse (Henri Matisse Archives, Halvorsen correspondence, 180400). He likely sent copies to Renoir as well. (The photos where Halvorsen appears were likely taken by Renoir’s sons on Halversen’s camera.) 66 Hansen was director of Det Forenede Danske Livsforsikrings Aktieselskab (United Danish Life Insurance Limited Company), “Hafnia.” Following the Danish Landmandsbanken crash in the summer of 1922, Hansen was forced to sell his collection, although his correspondence in the Paul Rosenberg Archives (I.A.77b) suggests that he was buying again by 1924. 67 Kjærboe 2016: 380–1. 68 Henri Matisse: Udstilling af hans arbejder, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, September 1924; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, October 24 to November 16, 1924; Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, November to December, 1924. On this exhibition, and on Tetzen-Lund’s Matisses, see Hahnloser-Ingold 1986: 264. 69 Tetzen-Lund acquired his French artworks between 1916 and 1920, by which time he owned twenty first-rate Matisses, including The Green Stripe [S] and Red Onions [S] (both Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen); Red Madras Headdress [S], La joie de vivre, Le Rifain assis, and Les Trois soeurs (all four Barnes Foundation); and View of Collioure [S] (The Met), among others. [S] indicates a Stein provenance. 70 The records of Jacques Seligmann & Co at the Archives of American Art, Box 394, F 18, show that Alfred Gold traveled to Oslo to look at some artworks Stang wanted to sell, which Gold offered to Cesar de Hauke in December 1928. The works in question were shipped to Gold in Berlin in January 1929 so de Hauke could see them. See letters dated December 31, 1928 and January 22 and 24, 1929. 71 The defamation of French dealers in Norway is discussed also in Halvorsen letters dated June 17 and July 11, 1925; Paul Rosenberg Archives I.A.79. 72 On Maison Watteau, see Claustrat 2012: 133. 73 Jamot 1929: 67–106. 74 Most notably, Stang owned Gauguin’s Que sommes-nous? D’où venons-nous? Où allons-nous? (illustrated in Jamot 1929: 68–70); Cézanne’s Arlequin (75), Baigneurs (78), and Les Joueurs de cartes (81; Courtauld Institute); Picasso’s Jeune Hollandaise, étude de nu (83), and La Toilette (96); Renoir’s Gabrielle en buste (86), Paysage de Provence (99), and La Baigneuse blonde (103); Degas’ Jeune femme au menton levé (86); Manet’s Portrait of Carolus Duran (91); van Gogh’s Portrait de jeune fille (94) and Paysage de Provence (99); Pissarro’s Deux jeunes paysannes causant sous les arbres (96); Seurat’s Etude pour Un Dimanche à la Grade Jatte and Etude pour La Baignade (100), and Courbet’s Etude pour Les Demoiselles de la Seine (74), among others.

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75 Jamot 1929: 93–4, citing Stang’s statement that he was awakened to French painting on the occasion of the 1914 exhibition in Copenhagen (see above, note 3). 76 Jamot 1929: 79. Halvorsen is discussed pp. 79–80, 101–2. 77 Jamot 1929: 71 (ill.), 102. Halvorsen mentioned his acquisition of Cézanne’s Mme Choquet in a letter to Paul Rosenberg dated June 28, [1924] (Paul Rosenberg Archives, I.A.77b). A handwritten note in the Jacques Seligmann & Co records (Archives of American Art, B188, F12) indicates that Halvorsen left this painting with Germain Seligmann in 1935. In May 1937, Halvorsen lent this painting to a Renoir exhibition at The Met. 78 Jamot 1929: 82 (ill.). An undated photo of this painting of 1908 in the same Seligmann records suggests that Halvorsen tried to sell it, perhaps through several dealers. It later belonged to Charles Laughton, then Louise Reinhardt Smith, who promised it to MoMA by 1958 (Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 26, no. 1, 1958, p. 45). 79 Jamot 1929: 97 (ill.), 102. An undated photo of this painting in the Seligmann records suggests that Halvorsen tried to sell it through several dealers; he appears to have sold it through Thannhauser. This Renoir, Mademoiselle Henriot—Jeune fille au ruban bleu (1876), was sold at Sotheby’s New York on November 14, 2017. 80 Jamot 1929: 79 (ill), 101. A photo of Baigneuses devant une tente (1883–5) in the Seligmann records suggests that Halvorsen tried to sell it through several dealers. 81 Jamot 1929: 98 (ill.), 101. A photo of this painting in the Seligmann records suggests that Halvorsen tried to sell it before Jamot’s article was published: the verso is inscribed: “1,000,000—un million; chez Thannhauser Berlin, Xbre 1928.” The Neighborhood of Jas de Bouffan (1885–7) is now at the Guggenheim. 82 Jamot 1929: 89 (ill.), 101. A photo of this Cézanne in the Seligmann records suggests that Halvorsen tried to sell it by then: The verso is inscribed: “200,000 Mk; chez Thannhauser, 16 janvier 1929.” Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne in Blue, as it is known today, which Halvorsen acquired from Vollard, passed through Thannhauser in Lucerne and Knoedler in New York (July 26, 1930), then Mrs. R. Lee Blaffer, whence to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 1947. 83 Jamot 2919: 87 (ill.), not credited to Halvorsen, however an undated photo of this painting in the Seligmann records is inscribed on the back: “Halvorsen does not want it known that it belongs to him.” Halvorsen acquired Manet’s Portrait of Clemenceau (1879–80) from Georges Bernheim and sold it to Thannhauser. (Another version was in the Havemeyer collection.) 84 See above, note 70. 85 Jamot 1929: 101. 86 Halvorsen sold Courbet’s Landscape with stag (1873) to Sagen in 1919 (Art Gallery New South Wales). 87 Derain’s Le Chien de l’artiste, Jamot 1929: 90 (ill.), 106. See above, note 16. 88 Jamot 1929: 76 (ills), 105. The following Krag Matisses in Jamot 1929 were sold by Tetzen-Lund in 1925: La Coiffure (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart) and Le jeune marin I (Collection Sheldon H. Solow) of which version II is at The Met. 89 Lender list, pp. VI–VII. See also the exhibition Halvorsen organized in 1937: Walther Halvorsen, “Exposition Braque, Laurens, Matisse, Picasso à Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhague,” Cahiers d’Art 12 (1937): 218–20 [excerpt from Halvorsen’s catalogue preface]; and Georges Duthuit, “Henri Laurens—À propos de l’exposition Braque, Laurens, Matisse, Picasso à Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhague,” Cahiers d’Art 12 (1937): 222–3.

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90 Catalogue by Georges Duthuit, Walther Halvorsen, Ragnar Hoppe, and Leo Swane, 91 See 1982 correspondence between Ellen C. Oppler and Alexander Rosenberg (Paul Rosenberg Archives, New York). 92 Assouline 1991: 177. 93 The fact that Halvorsen happily exploits the German market by the late 1920s contradicts the anti-German sentiment expressed earlier and suggests that his overriding motivation was commercial, although by then France’s anti-boche sentiment had largely subsided as well. Of course Thannhauser had a long-standing relationship with French dealers, and that with Halvorsen is poignantly referred to in a letter to Halvorsen dated April 9, 1953, where Thannhauser wrote: “The Nazis have sequestered and evidently destroyed our papers and books in Germany, and they did the same to … our papers and everything which had been in the house we occupied in Paris before this war, at 35, Rue de Miromesnil. I have now tried to reestablish the acquisitions I made from you … by memory, with the appropriate values in dollars paid upon the agreements of that time and I would appreciate if you could examine the list and confirm to me the correctness of my statements.” Halvorsen wrote his reply, dated June 10, 1953, at the bottom Thannhauser’s letter: “It took some time for me to find my papers from 1928 and 1929 but now it is done and I can confirm … your statements above.” ZADIK, Business correspondence. 94 It then went through Paul Rosenberg to London collector Samuel Courtauld, and later to Philadelphia collector Henry P. McIlhenny, who bequeathed it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 95 No. 32 in Halvorsen’s 1916 exhibition. 96 Email to the author dated August 7, 2019, from Laurence Wodey, Archives, Services des décorations, Grande Chancellerie de la Légion d’Honneur, Paris.

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Gold 1920. Alfred Gold. “Kunst und Sammler in Dänemark und Skandinavien.” Der Cicerone 12, no. 24 (1920): 871–8. Grammont 2011. Claudine Grammont. “Matisse as Religion: The ‘Mike Steins’ and Matisse, 1908–1918.” In The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian AvantGarde, edited by Janet Bishop, Cécile Debray and Rebecca Rabinow, 151–65. New Haven, CT & London: Yale University Press, 2011. Exhibition catalogue. Hahnloser-Ingold 1986. Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold. “Collecting Matisses of the 1920s in the 1920s.” In Henri Matisse: The Early Years in Nice, 1916–1930, edited by Jack Cowart and Dominique Fourcade, 235–74. New York: Abrams, 1986. Exhibition catalogue. Halvorsen 1959. Walther Halvorsen. “Kunstnerforbundets utstilling av moderne fransk kunst i 1916” [The Artists Association’s Exhibition of French Modern Art in 1916]. Aftenposten, December 11, 12, 14, 15, 1959. Jamot 1929. Paul Jamot. “L’art français en Norvège: Galerie nationale d’Oslo et Collections particulières.” La Renaissance (February 1929): 67–106 (in French and English). Kjærboe 2016. Rasmus Kjærboe. “Collecting the Modern: Ordrupgaard and the collection museums of modernist art.” PhD dissertation, Aarhus University, April 2016. Klüver 1997. Billy Klüver and Julie Martin. A Day with Picasso, with Twenty-Four Photographs by Jean Cocteau. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1997. Korn 2004. Madeleine Korn. “Collecting Paintings by Matisse and by Picasso in Britain before the Second World War.” Journal of the History of Collections 16, no. 1 (2004): 111–29. Monrad 1999. Kasper Monrad. “Christian Tetzen-Lund: The Merchant with the Sharp Eye and Unlimited Ambition.” In Henri Matisse: Four Great Collectors, edited by Kasper Monrad, 137–55. Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 1999. Exhibition catalogue. Monrad 2008. Kasper Monrad. “Two Danish Collectors and Their Choice of Matisse’s Portraits: Christian Tetzen-Lund and Johannes Rump.” In Matisse: People, Masks, Models, edited by Ortrud Westheider, Munich: Hirmer, 2008. Exhibition catalogue. Näslund 2008. Erik Näslund. Rolf de Maré: fondateur des ballets suédois, collectionneur d’art, créateur de musée. Arles: Actes sud/Stockholm: Bokförlaget Langenskiöld, 2008. Richardson 1996. John Richardson. A Life of Picasso: The Painter of Modern Life, 1907– 1917. New York: Random House, 1996. Rosen 1946. Ingeborg von Rosen. Conrad Pineus. Minnen och dagboksanteckningar [Memories and Diary Notes]. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1946. Watson 1992. Peter Watson. From Manet to Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market. New York: Random House, 1992.

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When French Dealers “Turned Their Eyes toward Scandinavia”: The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm Christina Brandberg

When reviewing the high quality and international scope of art exhibitions in Stockholm before the opening of the Moderna Museet in 1958, curator Ulf Linde1 pointed out that several accomplished galleries had presented museum-quality exhibitions of modern art in Sweden for decades. He clarified: “What was recently shown in Paris was soon also exhibited in Stockholm.”2 The galleries Linde had in mind were Gösta Olson’s Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet (Swedish-French Art Gallery) (1918–61), Agnes Widlund’s Konstsalongen Samlaren (1943–77), and Gustaf Engwall’s Galerie Blanche (1947–)—all three renowned for promoting French modernism. This chapter focuses on Gösta Olson (1883–1966), founder of the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, and the work relations he developed in France after the First World War and throughout his career: How these collaborations took shape and became the core of his business; how they developed over time and perdured; and more specifically, examples of artworks that were exported to and sold in Stockholm.

Auspicious Beginnings While Gösta Olson was working in Paris as a physiotherapist in the early 1910s, he developed a taste for contemporary art that led to his being tasked with the organization of an exhibition in Stockholm, with loans from major modern-art dealers. Several years later, he recounted: The judicious persons with whom I discussed the matter in Paris were Paul Rosenberg, Durand-Ruel, Bernheim, and other art dealers, whose interests I would represent. They unanimously encouraged me to accept and predicted brilliant success, and more importantly, pledged their future support and collaboration.3

Another Scandinavian had paved the way, namely, the Norwegian artist, collector, and agent Walther Halvorsen (1887–1972), who lived and worked in Paris in the interwar years and initially served as intermediary between the Parisian art market and

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Scandinavian collectors and curators.4 Olson followed in Halvorsen’s footsteps, and the latter’s example and backing were crucial: archival records show how much the SvenskFranska Konstgalleriet owed him early on. It was, in fact, an exhibition organized by Halvorsen, which was first shown in Oslo in 1918, that started Olson’s career as an art dealer when the latter hosted its Stockholm venue in his brand-new premises. The first trace of Halvorsen’s intervention dates to January 1918, when Félix Fénéon, in charge of contemporary art at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, sent photographs of artworks by Eugène Carrière, Henri-Edmond Cross, and Edouard Vuillard to Olson for consideration, at Halvorsen’s request.5 Likewise, in April of the same year, Paul Durand-Ruel sent Olson a list of works by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley at Halvorsen’s request, adding, “If you come to a decision regarding these paintings, please write directly to Monsieur Halvorsen, to whom we give a 10 percent discount.”6 Durand-Ruel offered Olson three paintings by Monet priced at 45,000 francs each, similarly advising him to write to Halvorsen about his decision.7 Halvorsen was already an established personality in Paris, and his access and reach were unmatched in Scandinavia at the time. In 1918, he asked Olson to drive this point across to the director of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Richard Bergh: “I hold those direct relationships in my hands. Would you please explain it to them. French artists speak to me—the good ones at any rate.”8 Halvorsen always wrote to Olson in French during his Paris years, although he sometimes wrote in Norwegian in later letters sent from Norway. Olson, although fluent in French, replied in Swedish. Olson’s exhibition Fransk Konst (French Art), shown in Stockholm from April 17 to May 8, 1918, followed Halvorsen’s initial show in Oslo. It was composed of loans from Paul Rosenberg, Bernheim-Jeune, Georges Bernheim, and Durand-Ruel, granted with the understanding that Halvorsen could keep them for half a year.9 Aside from the Parisian dealers’ artworks, which were for sale, Halvorsen included examples from his own collection as well as his friends’ to inspire other Scandinavian collectors. Some of the artworks having been sold in Oslo, Halvorsen compensated by providing additional paintings for Stockholm, allowing Olson a 5-percent markup as commission.10 The exhibition thus maintained its appeal despite earlier sales, ensuring “the same success as in Kristiania.”11 Halvorsen recommended printing a simple catalogue and hiring a night watch—the exhibition’s insurance value amounting to one million francs.12 He also demanded from Olson that he: focus on the sale of the little things that belong to me in your exhibition, as I have a good deal of money invested in them, and hardly anything of mine sold [in Oslo]. Then make every effort to sell the three small Delacroix contributed by Schönmeyer, and Ekegardh’s Daumier, which I asked him to bring you. They are not mine but belong to friends who I convinced to enter into a business deal that, if it works, could lead to something quite profitable for us both.13

The exhibition Fransk Konst garnered interest from both the public and the press. Over 1,700 people paid the entrance fee, and three times as many entered with free admission. Olson explained to Halvorsen:

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There are a lot of efforts from my side behind the substantial press comments, not the least in the form of dinners and small drawings given away as gifts. In spite of this some mistakes are made, but it is not easy to handle a critic, who for example never saw a van Gogh, which was the case with one of them; and another one never saw other Renoirs besides the two at the Nationalmuseum.14

According to Olson, Stockholm was harder to sell on French art than Oslo, especially based on photographs.15 Norwegian artists who promoted modernism unwittingly helped, whereas Swedish artists were not as progressive, Olson claimed. Still, he foresaw great possibilities, through hard work and with continued support from Paris.16 Halvorsen was pleased with the results, although his main goal was not only to sell paintings but also to promote great artists and guarantee high standards, as he wrote to Olson: The Swedish newspapers called me a merchant of art, which I am not; my role here is to control a trend that, without me, would be encumbered with forgeries, and to steer it in the right direction. Make it clear over there that that is my sole function.17

Olson reported sales of 350,000 francs from the exhibition Fransk Konst, not counting his commission. A Nature morte by Matisse that Halvorsen paid 7,000 francs for was sold for 8,400 francs.18 Delacroix’s three paintings were sold, namely, Cavalier arabe (60,000 francs), Saint Sebastien (16,000 francs), and Chasseur de lion (30,000 francs). Renoir’s three paintings, Buste de femme (22,000 francs), Jeune femme au corsage rose (40,000 francs), and Baigneuse (27,000 francs), found buyers—with the latter purchased by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Picasso’s Nature Morte (4,000 francs) and Portrait d’homme (6,000 francs) sold, as well as Pissarro’s Paysage (8,000 francs) and van Gogh’s Paysage (28,500 francs). The collector Rolf de Maré bought both Picasso’s Nature Morte and Seurat’s Le canal de Gravelines, soir.19 Among the works on paper, the pastel La Toilette by Degas (25,000 francs), a drawing and seven watercolors by Rodin, and four drawings by Guys sold (for 900–2,000 francs each).20 Maillol’s sculpture Flora (3,000 francs) and Rodin’s Niobé (12,000 francs) were also sold. Major purchases by Swedish collectors thus resulted from Olson’s first exhibition of Parisian modernism, and the critical reception was largely positive. One of its champions was the artist and collector Georg Pauli, who had studied with André Lhote and founded the avant-garde art journal flamman [The flame]. Pauli was among those who supported this effort most vigorously, Olson reported to Halvorsen.21 In his review of the exhibition, which he considered a remarkable event, Pauli stated22: Knowing the incredible impact that French art had on the development of Swedish art in the last century, it is rather surprising that so incredibly little of it has found its way up here. Exhibitions that might have given the public an understanding of French artists have seldom been invited, and even fewer French masters have been included in Swedish collections.23

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Figure 10.1  The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in 1919. To the left, paintings by Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Courbet, Cézanne, Monticelli, Redon, and Renoir. The two lower rows are reproductions. The other artworks are by contemporary Swedish artists. Konstbiblioteket, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Reprinted by permission of the National Museum of Sweden.

Pauli considered the relatively high prices as one explanation for the few international artists represented in Swedish collections, but judiciously noted that the French art market was now more proactively promoting its artists and seeking new clients in Scandinavia: Their German and Russian clients being out of the picture due to the First World War and the 1917 Revolution, Parisian dealers now “turned their eyes towards Scandinavia, which before was terra incognita. The French have determined that the interest is mutual.”24 Pauli stated further in his review that from now on Olson and Halvorsen would work in tandem in Scandinavia as agents for Durand-Ruel, Bernheim-Jeune, Druet, Rosenberg, Hessel and Georges Bernheim— some of “the most renowned art dealers in Paris, and the world.”25

Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet On November 15, 1918, Olson launched his Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet at Sturegatan 26 in Stockholm with an exhibition of French and Swedish contemporary art. As its name suggested, the gallery relied on a constant flow of merchandise sent from Paris, guaranteed contractually.26 In the ensuing years, Olson regularly arranged group exhibitions called Fransk Konst, a generic reference to art originating from Paris rather than specific artists or trends (“isms”). In 1941, the painter Otto G. Carlsund, who had studied in Paris in the 1920s, pointed out: [Stockholm galleries] seem to have difficulties in finding titles for their exhibitions; one would be grateful if the gallery owners tried to rely on something more useful than nationality labels. Svensk-Franska’s current exhibition is entitled “Swedish and French Art,” like hundreds of others … it’s monotonous and impersonal.27

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Notwithstanding this objection, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet’s exhibitions of French modernism were usually impressive, as exemplified by this 1950 review by Carlsund: It is French, which in itself does not necessarily mean much. It boasts our time’s most respectable artists’ names, which is not always a guarantee of outstanding quality … but generally Svensk-Franska does not show any studio refuse. And the current display is of exceptionally high level … Most things in the exhibition are excellent. There is a rare and refined collection of Braque prints; there is an incredibly beautiful wall dedicated to Estève; there is Picasso, a couple of fine Borès, and a pair of playful Laurens drawings. There are paintings by Gris … And then Léger. The two walls with paintings by Léger are magnificent.28

Olson did not just import art from France; he also adopted the working methods of primary dealers in Paris.29 He emulated the system of select artist contracts, allowing him access to a steady stream of Swedish painters’ canvases in exchange for a yearly allowance.30 He also espoused French promotional tactics, at both a national and international level, advocating for his artists “methodically, purposefully, through exhibitions, placing their works where they would be noticed, and generally through wise and efficient advocacy.”31 He shrewdly used his own art journal, Konstrevy (Art Revue), established in 1925, to promote his stable. Olson’s support system functioned well until 1932, when his artists left and founded their own gallery, Färg och Form (Colour and Shape). The market crash of 1929 and ensuing depression of the 1930s became “something of an interregnum, as economic difficulties circumscribed any significant expansion or development.”32 Kahnweiler has described the situation in Paris during “the seven meagre years, in 1929–1936”: It was incredible: We sold nothing. I had to fire my staff. I only kept my sister-inlaw, Louise Leiris, who had cooperated with me since 1920. We were alone in the gallery for days without seeing anyone.33

The Kreuger crash of 1932 had a significant impact on the Swedish economy and severely affected its art market. It was as if “all the money in the country was gone,” Olson later recalled, and “the market for modern art was practically dead.”34 The turning point came around 1935, when Olson managed to gather 50,000 SEK in cash and decided to reconnect with his Parisian sources. In September 1936, Olson wrote Paul Rosenberg: You probably remember the good rapport we used to have when I took paintings of yours [to Sweden] and sold them here. Since then, as you know, I opened a gallery that caters to a significant clientele. I steered some buyers of important artworks towards French art, who still follow what’s happening in Paris.35

Olson inquired about the possibility of renewing their collaboration, offering to send his Swedish clients to the Rosenberg gallery in Paris.36 Rosenberg replied that

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of course he remembered their excellent business relations and would gladly renew them.37 Although Olson’s ambitions in 1918 had been to continue the collaboration with Paul Rosenberg, this letter suggests that there had been no or little contact since then. In addition to Rosenberg, Olson’s 1937 list of Parisian addresses comprised dealers like Maurice Lévy-Hermanos of Galerie Marcel Bernheim; M. J. de la Chapelle of Bernheim Jeune & Cie; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler of Galerie Simon; and Jos Hessel, among others. He also corresponded with Paul Rosenberg’s brother Léonce, who offered him some paintings by Hayden and Severini. By 1937, Léonce mentioned the successful exhibition of abstract art at the Musée du Jeu de Paume to which he had contributed works by Metzinger, Herbin, and Picabia.38 A few months later he commented that the demand for cubist and abstract paintings was quite high, their rarity making them seem all the more desirable:39 Every day here, the demand for modern painting increases considerably. Since, for the moment, there is no new art movement or new artist whose quality matches the pre-war generation (cubists and abstracts), galleries see their painting stock diminish rapidly.40

Kahnweiler’s biographer mentions Olson as a friend who worked confidently and diligently toward the introduction of French modernism in Sweden, and Stockholm as a major outlet, “as is often the case for ignored, unknown, or unexploited markets,” adding: Kahnweiler was convinced that it was a promising country, and that the essentially local client base had to be built up from scratch. It would take time, that was all. But one had to have a presence from the beginning.41

In December 1937, Kahnweiler thanked Olson for a 9,025-francs check in payment for eleven paintings—four Kermadecs, four Borès, one Beaudin, one Lascaux, and one Susanne Roger—and wished that their pleasant relations would continue the following year. The remaining 23,000 francs for Picasso’s Verre et Pipe, Gris’s Femme devant la fênetre, and Roux’s La violiniste assise would be sent as soon as the clients had paid, Olson assured.42 Starting before the First World War, Kahnweiler had initiated a systematic policy of loans from his inventory to art galleries all over northern and eastern Europe, and beyond, “to blanket these regions with his artists’ work”—a strategy that proved quite efficient in exploiting new potential markets.43 While they lasted, before the outbreak of the Second World War, Olson’s regular purchase trips to Paris represented “a glorious period.” He later recounted: “I walked from one gallery to another and just pointed at what I wanted, and brought the artworks back to Sweden without any restrictions at all regarding customs, currency, etc.”44 Restrictions would soon follow however, with the currency regulations implemented by the Swedish Central Bank, as well as the control of all art imports from England, France, and Holland by the Trade Commission, enforced in Sweden between 1939 and 1953.

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Figure 10.2  Gösta Olson and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1959 at the opening of the new premises of the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet at Drottninggatan in Stockholm. © Dagens Bild.

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Due to the war, for the art market as in other commercial dealings, it became necessary to limit the hemorrhage of Swedish crowns and the import of foreign commodities. But art-import licenses were motivated by additional reasons. For decades, Swedish artists had lobbied against the unwelcome competition of “bad foreign art” and argued for the need to prevent it from penetrating the Swedish art market, as it was detrimental to domestic artists. Furthermore, import licenses were designed to protect the public from a type of art that was considered demoralizing. (Import licenses were not abolished until 1953, when the desire to educate the public took precedence.) Gösta Olson and his peer Gustaf Engwall, Director of Galerie Blanche, constituted the committee that evaluated modern artworks considered for import during this period. The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet had precedence (presumably because Olson established his gallery in 1918 and always imported high-end artworks), and was always allotted the largest quota of all Swedish galleries. For instance, in 1953 Olson obtained a license to import paintings, drawings, and sculpture purchased from the Parisian galleries Carré, Leiris, Dubourg, Maeght, Jacquart, and others, worth 100,000 SEK, then the equivalent of 6,700,000 francs.45 Kahnweiler and Olson kept in touch despite the war. In September 1940, Kahnweiler wrote that since the Germans invaded Paris he was staying in a safe place while his sisterin-law kept the gallery open; he was not sure whether it was possible to send any paintings

Figure 10.3 Photograph by Bertil Höders. Picasso and Léger works in the “Jubileumsutställning” at the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, December 14, 1953. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Reproduced by permission.

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Figure 10.4 Photograph by Bertil Höders. Picasso and Léger works in the “Jubileumsutställning” at the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, December 14, 1953. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Reproduced by permission.

to Sweden at the moment, or for Olson to sell any.46 At the end of the war, Kahnweiler reported that he was back in Paris and the gallery had been saved thanks to Louise Leiris.47 Olson in turn expressed his eagerness to resume their business relations, although art prices were sky-high at the time; he planned to go to Paris as soon as possible, and his first visit would be to Kahnweiler’s.48 Their cooperation lasted until Olson’s death in 1966. The correspondence between Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris and Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm often amounted to several letters a week and joint business deals abounded.

Conclusion The influx of foreign art on the Swedish market was a recurrent theme in the press. In January 1948, one critic claimed that international art exhibitions had increased after the war, and that “foreign countries, despite our currency’s weak situation, are especially interested in Sweden” to sell their art.49 Soon thereafter, in 1949, Dagens Nyheter’s Yngve Berg (who some thirty years earlier had edited Pauli’s art periodical flamman) noted that French dealers had been eying the Swedish market for years, sending quite a few exhibitions to Stockholm; some had been extraordinary, others had seemed a bit rushed, but most had nothing on Swedish art.50 In 1950, the Stockholms-Tidningen’s

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senior art critic argued that the favorable currency-exchange rate had attracted French art dealers at first, but their interest continued unabated when that was no longer the case.51 In point of fact, through both wars, Sweden’s neutrality afforded a relatively stable economic situation in which the art market could thrive, feeding a wide range of artworks to a growing number of collectors. Regardless of such a posteriori explanations, however, the original impetus was one man’s passion for Parisian modernism, which he introduced, promoted, exhibited, and traded in Stockholm from 1918. The Parisian network that Olson maintained for over four decades contributed not only to the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet’s reputation as a leading institution in the Swedish art world, but to the cross-fertilization of transnational twentieth-century art trends.

Notes 1

Art critic, professor, curator at the Moderna Museet, and member of the Swedish Academy. 2 Linde2008: 51. All documents are translated by the author, unless otherwise indicated. 3 Olson 1943: 7. 4 Messel 2016: 100. 5 Fénéon, F., letter to Olson, G., January 30, 1918. Gallery records of the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Series II.B, Correspondence 1918–73. (Hereafter Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet archives.). This is the first trace in the Getty archives of the collaboration between Halvorsen and Olson regarding the Scandinavian exhibition tour, but surely they met earlier in Paris. 6 Durand-Ruel, P., letter to Olson, G., April 11, 1918. Ibid. 7 Durand-Ruel, P., letter to Olson, G., April 25, 1918. Ibid. 8 Halvorsen, W., letter to Olson, G. (in French), May 18, 1918. Ibid. 9 Messel 2016: 137, note 304. Reference to copies of letters to Halvorsen form several lenders, October 25, 1917, PR I. A.57, Paul Rosenberg Archive, New York. The exhibition Den franske utstilling opened on January 19, 1918 at Kunstnerforbundet in Oslo and was on show “January–February 1918” according to the catalogue. Messel 2016: 135f. 10 Halvorsen, W., letter to Olson, G., (in French), February 8, 1918. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 11 Ibid. The Norwegian capital was named Kristiania until 1925. 12 Ibid. 13 Halvorsen, W., letter to Olson, G., (in French), May 18, 1918. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 14 Olson, G., letter to Halvorsen, W., May 10, 1918. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.

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17 Halvorsen, W., letter to Olson, G., June 1918. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 18 Messel 2016: 149, 152. 19 Olson, G., letter to de Maré, R., May 10, 1918. Ibid. The painting The Channel at Gravelines, Evening, Marine avec des ancres (summer 1890) by Seurat is now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. See https://www.moma.org/ collection/works/80354. 20 Olson, G., letter to Edstrand, T., April 24, 1918. Halvorsen, W., letter to Olson, G., summer 1918. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 21 Olson, G., letter to Halvorsen, W., June 7, 1917 [1918]. Ibid. 22 Pauli 1918. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Olson, G., letter to Halvorsen, W., June 7, 1917[8]. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 27 Carlsund 1941: 260. 28 Lindwall 1950. 29 Romdahl 1945: 14. 30 Olson 1965: 151. 31 Romdahl 1945: 15. 32 Robson 1995: 13. 33 Kahnweiler 1969: 70f. 34 Olson 1965: 62. 35 Olson, G., letter to Rosenberg, P., September 1936. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 36 Ibid. 37 Rosenberg, P., letter to Olson, G., October 14, 1936. Ibid. 38 Rosenberg, L., postcard to Olson, G., July 6, 1937. Ibid. 39 Rosenberg, L., postcard to Olson, G., October–November 1937. Ibid. 40 Rosenberg, L., postcard to Olson, G., unclearly dated 1937. Ibid. 41 Assouline 1988: 214. 42 Olson, G., letter to Kahnweiler, H., December 20, 1937. Ibid. 43 Assouline 1988: 214. 44 Olson 1965: 177. 45 Stockholm, Statens Konstråd. A1A:9. 46 Kahnweiler, D. H., letter to Olson, G., September 1940. Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet Archives. 47 Kahnweiler, D. H., letter to Olson, G., September 14, 1945. Ibid. 48 Olson, G., letter to Kahnweiler, D. H., October 9, 1945. Ibid. 49 Palmgren 1948. 50 Berg 1949. 51 Näsström 1950.

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Bibliography Assouline 1988. Pierre Assouline. L’homme de l’art: D.-H. Kahnweiler (1884–1979). Paris: Balland, 1988. Berg 1949. Yngve Berg. “Konstkrönika.” Dagens Nyheter, January 5, 1949. Carlsund 1941. Otto G. Carlsund. Konstvärlden. Stockholm: Caslon Press, 1941. Kahnweiler 1969. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Mina gallerier—Mina målare. Stockholm: Söderström & Co., 1969. Linde 2008. Ulf Linde. Från kart till fallfrukt:70 korta kapitel om mitt liv et cetera. Stockholm: Bonnier, 2008. Lindwall 1950. Bo Lindwall. “Konstrond.” AftonTidningen, November 1, 1950. Messel 2016. Nils Messel. Franske Forbindelser: Kunst, kapital og konjunkturer i Norge rundt 1.verdenskrig. Oslo: Nasjonalgalleriets venner, Messel Forlag, 2016. Näsström 1950. Gustaf Näsström. “Svenskt och franskt på tre vernissager.” StockholmsTidningen. February 6, 1950. Olson 1943. Gösta Olson. Svensk-Franska konstgalleriet 25 år. Jubileumsutställning. Stockholm: Caslon Press, 1943. Exhibition catalogue. Olson 1965. Gösta Olson. Från Ling till Picasso: en konsthandlares minnen berättade genom Karin Jacobsson. Stockholm: Bonniers, 1965. Palmgren 1948. Nils Palmgren. “Internationellt.” Aftonbladet, January 20, 1948. Pauli 1918. Georg Pauli. “Den nya franska utställningen. Ett evenemang inom konstmarknaden.” Dagens Nyheter, April 12, 1918. Robson 1995. Deirdre A. Robson. Prestige, Profit, and Pleasure: The Market for Modern Art in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. London & New York, Garland Publishers, 1995. Romdahl 1945. Axel L. Romdahl. Svensk-Franska konstgalleriet 25 år. Jubileumsutställning. Stockholm: Caslon Press, 1945. Exhibition catalogue.

11

The Galerie Paul Rosenberg and the American Market in the Interwar Era MaryKate Cleary

Together with a number of other Parisian dealers, Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959) shaped the dealing and collecting of art in the early twentieth century by establishing broad networks for reception, exhibition, and collecting. Initially, this was done by forging relationships in Germany and Great Britain before 1914; however, the First World War inevitably changed Rosenberg’s access to these markets and necessitated a shift in strategy toward collectors in the United States. The American market would become a significant part of Rosenberg’s business from the 1920s, and would dominate it after his emigration to New York in 1940 as a result of Nazi persecution.1 Using primary-source transactional records and correspondence from The Paul Rosenberg Archives, as well as other institutional archives, this chapter investigates the relationships Rosenberg built to market art to the United States.2 It aims to introduce Rosenberg’s key strategies; examine the networks with agents and dealers that facilitated Rosenberg’s practice in the interwar era, especially Paul and Charles Durand-Ruel and Georges Wildenstein; and analyze Rosenberg’s role with key collectors, in particular, Albert C. Barnes and John Quinn, though these are by no means the only examples. And while these figures are all well known in their own right, Rosenberg’s connections with them, and his immense impact on the shape of the field has, hitherto, remained underexplored.

Early Years in Paris The Rosenberg family’s engagement with the art trade started with Alexandre Rosenberg (1845–1913), who began trading antiques in Paris in the mid-1880s, and gradually moved into handling Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Alexandre’s sons, Paul (1881–1959) [Figure 11.1], and Léonce (1878–1947) would also enter the fine-art trade. After several collaborative years, each developed his own specialties and approaches. The Galerie Paul Rosenberg opened at 21 rue de la Boétie in the eighth arrondissement in 1908 [Figure 11.2], first with a focus on the masters of the nineteenth century. Léonce Rosenberg’s Haute Époque (called Galerie de L’Effort

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Figure 11.1  Photograph by Henri Manuel (1874–1947). Paul Rosenberg, late 1920s. Centre Pompidou/MNAM-CCI/Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Fonds Paul Rosenberg. Reproduced by permission.

Figure 11.2  The front of Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 21 rue La Boètie, Paris, c. 1924. Source: La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe 1 (1924).

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Moderne after the First World War) opened on rue de la Baume in 1910, and quickly honed in on publishing strategies and art criticism to promote young Parisian artists, especially the Cubists.3 By the time he established his own gallery, Paul Rosenberg maintained a stock of mostly secondary-market French nineteenth-century painting, including artworks by Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Delacroix, Ingres, and Manet, in addition to Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Nabis artists, including Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, and van Gogh. He held group exhibitions as well as solo shows, including of Armand Guillaumin (1908), Leo Nardus (1913), and Henri de ToulouseLautrec (1914). Rosenberg bought at auction, invested as a member of dealer syndicates, and purchased outright from collectors to add directly to his stock or provide liquidity for new opportunities. Rosenberg’s burgeoning patronage of the contemporary avant-garde, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Marie Laurencin found its greatest initial success after 1918. He financially bolstered those emerging artists with a stock of established masterworks affording him the confidence to delve into new territory, but also to leave his distinctive mark on the formal approach and subject matter of the artists under his representation. The period after the First World War was one of a return to French national identity and a classicizing aesthetic of visual culture, in form and subject matter. This backdrop of retour à l’ordre spread throughout the cultural fabric of the country as it looked backward to resituate its identity following the devastation of the Great War.4 Rosenberg’s commitment to the approaches of the French Masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both reflected and perpetuated his situating of the young Parisian artists within a deeper and more established narrative of French art. Despite the palpable formal influence Rosenberg exerted on his contemporary artists, it is evident in an enigmatic interview with art critic Tériade (Efstratios Eleftheriadis, 1897–1983) for the journal Cahiers d’Art, that by 1927 Rosenberg saw his role primarily as an entrepreneurial one. Asked to assess his position in the careers of the artists with whom he worked, Rosenberg rather glibly fashioned his engagement as one of promotion, not discovery or construction: “I find a painting beautiful when it sells, and I discover a painter once he is already well-known.”5 This confident approach was bolstered by two aspects of Rosenberg’s business practice: his international dealer and collector networks, and the institutional connections these fostered. In his 1994 text Marketing Modernism, cultural sociologist Robert Jensen interpreted the modalities through which art dealers (especially in France) had operated, distinguishing between “entrepreneurial” dealers who focused on commercial objectives—often through risk-taking and/or the identification of a particular gap in a market—and “ideological” dealers, those purportedly motivated less by the prospect of financial gain than acting for altruistic reasons on behalf of art for its own sake. Building on his frameworks, I propose to nuance one of Jensen’s categorizations to allow for the concept of “transnational patron-entrepreneur.” This encompasses how Rosenberg’s broad networks and strategic international exhibition program shaped the sphere of collecting and display of French art internationally, achieving this through support of contemporary artists and a commitment to garner substantial prices for them—not the mark of a dealer who emerged from the critical or publishing sphere alone, or one necessarily in pursuit of the distribution of art for purely ideological reasons.

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Expanding Networks in America: Durand-Ruel, Wildenstein, Rosenberg Between the years 1906 and 1929, Rosenberg transacted works of art with thousands of unique dealers, collectors, and institutions. In Paris, his professional networks included the brothers Josse (1870–1941) and Gaston Bernheim (1870–1953) of the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, the Galeries Georges Petit, Paul Guillaume (1891–1934), Jos Hessel (1859–1942), René Gimpel (1881–1945), and Pierre Loeb (1897–1964), among many others. He accessed the German-speaking market through connections with gallerist Heinrich Thannhauser (1859–1935), the collector/dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), the brothers Paul (1871–1926) and Bruno Cassirer (1872–1941), and later Walter Feilchenfeldt (1894–1953) of the Cassirer firm. In Britain, he transacted numerous artworks with Joseph Duveen (1869–1939), the Leicester Galleries (Ernest Brown and Phillips), the French Gallery (Wallis & Son), and Alexander Reid (1854– 1928). Dealings with Knoedler & Co (New York, London, and Paris) were also numerous. Germany, Britain, and the United States constituted the three centers most consistently seeking to collect foreign, and above all within that category, French, art.6 While the early international contacts in the nascent years of the Rosenberg Frères partnership are overwhelmingly with dealers in London and Germany, as early as 1903, Paul Rosenberg dealt with significant American individuals, including Louisine Havemeyer (1855–1929), to whom he sold such works as Puvis de Chavannes’s Tamaris, 1886–87 (The Met, 30.20) for 10,000 francs, a work which allegorized French creativity in a lineage of Greco-Roman classical heritage, and represented the established arm of Rosenberg’s practice.7 He also sold in that same transaction, and for the same amount, Edgar Degas’s Three Dancers Preparing for Class, circa 1878 (The Met, 29.100.558), a frenetically rendered pastel with heavy line and jaunty perspective that would have been an intimate yet enterprising acquisition for Havemeyer. In this early moment, the Frères were also in touch with art patrons like John G. Johnson (1841–1917), lawyer and prolific collector of fourteenth- to nineteenth-century European paintings and objets d’art, whose works now form a bedrock of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.8 Philadelphia clients were as important for Rosenberg as they had been for DurandRuel thirty years before.9 Above all other dealer collaborations, Rosenberg’s agreements and cooperations with the Durand-Ruel and Wildenstein firms were the most significant for his transnational success. Since the inception of Rosenberg’s gallery in Paris, he had worked with Nathan (1852–1934) and Georges Wildenstein (1892–1963) and Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922) in the purchase and exchange of artworks. As his efforts in the United States expanded, Rosenberg would engage the next generation, including Felix Wildenstein (1883–1952) and Charles Durand-Ruel (1905–1985), in coinvestments that represented complex purchase, ownership, exhibition, promotion, and distribution syndicates. From at least 1925, links with Wildenstein & Co in New York provided Rosenberg a physical location within that firm’s first premises in the city (the former Vanderbilt House at 647 Fifth Avenue, between Fifty-First and Fifty-Second Streets) from where to operate his US enterprise, Paul Rosenberg & Co, Inc. It was also through

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collaboration with Wildenstein & Co that Rosenberg held primary representation of Picasso from 1918.10 By 1932, a rift in the Rosenberg–Wildenstein partnership gave Picasso’s management entirely to Rosenberg.11 Despite this ultimate separation, the Rosenberg–Wildenstein co-shared New York location can be credited with first making Picasso’s market “global,” and ensuring the dissemination of his work especially into an American market.12 Prior to having a physical location within the walls of the Wildenstein Gallery New York, Rosenberg had also begun forging networks with American collectors through other well-established collaborators, especially the Durand-Ruel firm in New York— the conduit through which Rosenberg first conducted business, for example, with one of the most prolific collectors of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century French art in the United States, Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951) of Philadelphia.13

The Aesthetic Collector: Selling to Albert C. Barnes Barnes’s notorious aesthetic display techniques (unchronological “visual ensembles”) were profoundly influenced by extensive engagement with the theories of English critics Roger Fry (1866–1934) and Clive Bell (1881–1964), and especially the German critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867–1935). The latter’s Entwicklungsgeschichte der Moderne Kunst (History of Modern Art, published in German in 1904 and English in 1908) valorized the emotional character manifested in the aesthetics of late-nineteenthcentury French painting. It had so impacted American collectors by the mid-1920s that dealers like Rosenberg capitalized on intellectual approaches codified in Germany; it was in fact increasingly important for Paris-based dealers working with a transnational collectorship familiar with scholarly dialogues.14 The voluminous depth of reliably marketable stock Rosenberg held of artists such as Renoir and Degas allowed him to oscillate offerings, as with Havemeyer, between established “masters,” and “rising stars” of the avant-garde.15 On December 22, 1921, Barnes wrote to Paul Rosenberg, confirming his desire to purchase a painting by Marie Laurencin (La Barque), the first School of Paris artist under contract with Rosenberg, for the amount of 10,000 francs, which was delivered by Rosenberg to Barnes through Durand-Ruel New York.16 By this first documented contact in the 1920s, Barnes’s precise “four-pillar” model of collecting was well-established—a directive to focus on the acquisition of works by Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse, explained in detail in the scholarship of Colin Bailey.17 Barnes’s Parisian dealer/agent networks were also well-established—and had not to this point included Rosenberg.18 This makes Barnes’s interest in acquiring work by Laurencin all the more noteworthy, as Rosenberg was not a staple source for him, nor was the work of Laurencin an established interest. The ease with which the Laurencin transaction was concluded was not representative of Barnes’s dealings with Rosenberg into the early 1920s, which need to be viewed particularly in context of Barnes’s comments about Rosenberg in a 1923 letter to Louisine Havemeyer.19 Barnes ranted to Havemeyer over his dissatisfaction with his acquisition of thirteen Cézanne paintings formally in the collection of

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Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866–1911), apparently resulting from the fact that though the transaction was conducted through Durand-Ruel New York, it was financially backed, allegedly without Barnes’s knowledge, by a syndicate of Paris-based Jewish dealers, headed by Paul Rosenberg.20 “I never heard of Rosenberg in the transaction until more than a year after the matter was ended,” Barnes wrote. “I paid the money to D-R.” He continued: In Paris last year, one of the members of the syndicate told me that Rosenberg bought out the other members … Rosenberg was the sole owner of the ones [Cézanne paintings] I bought and if D-R didn’t know it, and didn’t know enough to beware of Jews, they are worse boobs than I thought them.21

Barnes’s objections are alarming in their use of antisemitic sentiment. Romy Golan has discussed how the fear of a “so-called Jewish invasion of French art (and its market)” was also expressed by certain contemporary critics in France in connection with a perceived degradation of French art after Impressionism, capitalized upon by Jewish greed, as dealing in contemporary art was becoming an increasingly lucrative “speculative venture.”22 While the Hoogendijk Cézannes incident would have no doubt caused acrimony between Barnes and Durand-Ruel, Wildenstein & Co proceeded to promote Rosenberg’s stock to Barnes through the late-1920s. Josef Stransky (1872–1936), a Czech composer and art collector who became an associate of Wildenstein New York after his tenure as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, wrote to Barnes on Paul Rosenberg & Co Inc. letterhead: “If you want to see the finest landscape by van Gogh, please call upon us.”23 Barnes does not appear to have reacted to this invitation, possibly as it was outside of his main collecting focus. A few months later, Felix Wildenstein, also on Paul Rosenberg & Co letterhead, wrote again to Barnes: “We take these means to advise you, that we have received in our galleries several of the paintings which Mr. Paul Rosenberg had the privilege of showing you in Paris last summer.” In a further act demonstrative of the complexity and competition intrinsic to dealer syndicates in this moment, as well as perhaps a more insightful knowledge of Barnes’s interests, Wildenstein continued: “Besides those that you have already seen, we have in our possession some most important examples by Cezanne [sic] and Courbet which we would very much like to bring to your attention, and to have the opportunity of showing to you.”24

John Quinn: The Collector and His Estate While Rosenberg would engage network contacts with collectors and institutions in other cities (Pittsburgh, Hartford, Washington), his records make clear that the crux of collecting interest came from concentrations in Chicago and New York. One of the most significant relationships to emerge from Rosenberg’s increasing presence in the United States was with New York lawyer and eminent collector of modern art,

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John Quinn (1870–1924). This relationship was forged first through contacts with Léonce Rosenberg, and then solidified through the efforts of Paul Rosenberg’s agent and essential collaborator in New York, the French avant-garde writer and marchand amateur, Henri-Pierre Roché (1879–1959), who would be chief art advisor to Quinn himself by the early 1920s. This triangulation would mean that Rosenberg would become one of Quinn’s primary sources of contemporary art, especially the work of Picasso. In his first purchase from the dealer, Quinn bought two 1919 works, including Young Girl with a Hoop (Fillette au Cerceau), 1919 [Figure 11.3] for a total of 60,000 francs, which more than tripled Paul’s investment.25 Quinn, a notoriously verbose correspondent and self-appointed authority on the who’s-who of the New York art world, wrote copiously to Rosenberg regarding critical opinions of works of art, the latest gossip as to the personalities of various other collectors, and of course, in support of numerous transactions. Though the nature and volume of Quinn’s acquisitions from Rosenberg would be significant, Quinn’s attitude toward Rosenberg was, like with Barnes, tinged with antisemitic sentiment, which both John Richardson and Michael FitzGerald seem to dismiss as an occurrence within the relationship that did not prohibit the two from “understanding each other well” or carrying out successful transactions, but it is still worthy of examination. Richardson recalls from Quinn’s correspondence: Rosenberg was very anxious to come and see my things. Finally, I had to agree … [Felix] Wildenstein and he accepted my invitation to dinner … Wildenstein is a perfect gentleman whereas Rosenberg showed himself to be a cheap little Jew. He disgusted everybody by constantly turning to me and asking me to come in … so I can show you a wonderful portrait of Madame Cézanne, etc. etc. … Rosenberg talked shop nearly all the time and nothing but shop. Wildenstein did not talk shop and showed himself to be a sympathetic and gentle man.26

On June 24, 1924, Quinn penned his last letter to Roché in which he further maligned Rosenberg: “I don’t like that kind of Jew job-bery. That is too much of Paul Rosenberg’s trickiness for me.” In 1924, Quinn passed away suddenly. Quinn’s testament stipulated that the bulk of his collection was to be sold through public auction. In 1926, a portion was to go on display in a memorial exhibition at the Art Center on Sixty-Fifth Street.27 Rosenberg seized the opportunity of this moment. His purchases from the Quinn estate sale are some of the most indicative of the way in which he operated through his US dealer networks to function effectively on the New York market. Rosenberg acquired (and in some cases, re-acquired) a staggering number of Picassos, including Picasso’s “Blue Period” Old Guitarist (1903–04). “It was announced last evening that all of the fiftytwo Pablo Picasso paintings in the collection together with a small group of Georges Seurat, had been bought by Paul Rosenberg of Paris through Felix Wildenstein of this city,” a local news publication announced.28 This acquisition in absentia through an “intermediary” made Rosenberg’s influence seem somehow more powerful, in terms of both his control of the artist’s body of work and his influence on the US art market.

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Figure 11.3  Galerie Paul Rosenberg inventory data card, Liste de Photographies no. 216. The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Reproduced by permission.

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The 1930s: Expanding Strategies By the mid-1930s, the country and international financial industries were still emerging from the throes of economic depression. Rosenberg’s efforts in America clearly indicate expanding acquisition programs at major museums; however, major purchases appear to have largely held to nineteenth-century French masterworks. In this climate, Rosenberg also expanded a practice which characterized much of his exhibition program throughout his career: the “benefit” show. From February 12 to March 10, 1934, the “Exhibition of Important Paintings by Great French Masters of the Nineteenth Century for the Benefit of the Children’s Aid Society and French Hospital of New York” was organized by Paul Rosenberg and Charles Durand-Ruel and held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York [Figure 11.4]. All paintings in the show were provided by Rosenberg. On March 14, 1934, New York Times critic Edward Alden Jewell reviewed the collaboration between the Durand-Ruel Galleries and Rosenberg which then emerged out of that first February/March exhibition: a subsequent display of oils by Braque, Picasso, and Matisse, also for sale to benefit the Children’s Aid Society and the French

Figure 11.4  Installation view, Paul Rosenberg’s “Great Masters of French Art” (Braque, Picasso and Matisse), Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, March 1934, including, depicted second from right: Picasso, Three Musicians, Summer 1921, oil on canvas, 200.7 × 222.9 cm, acquired by The Museum of Modern Art in 1949. The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Reproduced by permission.

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Hospital of New York. “While the entire gallery is given over to this display,” Jewell began, “it is the big main room that contains the most striking pictures. Especially provocative are the Picassos and the Braques. Enthroned, as it were, is Picasso’s large abstraction called ‘Three Masks,’ with its pattern of brilliant blues, reds and yellow.” Though he seems at first taken by the “high palette” and “design” of this array of works, Jewell concludes that “all of this work, by both artists, now definitely ‘dates.’ It is a product of a phase, of an era, that has gently eased into history.” He goes as far as to impugn Picasso’s painting that Jewell names Woman Sleeping (1932) as an indication that the artist has “exhausted the fund of invention characterizing past achievement.”

The Nazi Era: Emigration to New York The 1930s represented a time when Rosenberg was back-and-forth to the United States from France more than ever to pursue such exhibitions, and developing relationships with individual collectors and major institutions. The invasion of Paris by the Nazis in May of 1940 marked a turning point for the French art market and the Galerie Paul Rosenberg Paris. Following the invasion, collaborationist dealers prospered while well-established Jewish dealers like Rosenberg, the Wildensteins, Jacques Seligmann, Bernheim-Jeune, and René Gimpel, among others, were forced to flee France or retreat from public life.29 Together with his wife and daughter, Rosenberg sought visas for transit to Portugal, where they would be able to flee the continent. Through the heroic efforts of Portuguese Consul General Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Rosenberg family received their travel documents, and by September, had secured passage from Lisbon to New York.30 Rosenberg’s son, Alexandre (1921–87) joined the French Free Forces in London. Shortly after the family left Paris, the premises of the Galerie Paul Rosenberg were sequestered by sympathizers of the Vichy government, and horrifically transformed into the infamous Institut d’études des questions juives, a meeting place for antisemitic sympathizers. After safely arriving in New York, Rosenberg secured premises for a new gallery at Sixteen East Fifty-Seventh Street and almost without interruption resumed his activities. Dealers and curators lost no time approaching him for expertise and loans of the collections and stock he succeeding in removing from Nazi-occupied Europe, a demonstration of the relationships he cultivated since the end of the First World War. Rosenberg frequently interacted with New York institutions before the war, but after his emigration, these relationships flourished. Of the approximately 800 works of painting and sculpture in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), for example, nearly fifty hold provenance that bears Rosenberg’s name in some capacity, the most significant of which were acquisitions after 1940. As documented in a letter from Alfred Barr to Fernand Léger, in 1942 the MoMA acquired its first work by the artist, Three Women, 1921–22, purchased from Rosenberg.31 Rosenberg had lent the work on a number of occasions, including in 1939, when it was to remain at MoMA for safe-keeping until Rosenberg’s arrival in New York. Barr had desired the work for the collection for many years, and its ultimate acquisition was of unprecedented importance for the basis of the Museum’s collection of Cubist masterpieces.

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Conclusion The complexities of the Parisian, European, and transatlantic dealer networks in which Rosenberg participated can be analyzed in many ways, not least because of the sheer volume of contacts and number of works that passed through his galleries. While Rosenberg did not pioneer these kinds of connections and international trade mechanisms, he consistently and successfully maximized their benefit, especially through his collaborations on the American market with the Wildenstein and Durand-Ruel firms. He transformed the scope of network effectiveness by strategically placing artists’ work in significant private collections, which were often swiftly gifted to public collections and significantly bolstered his artists’ presence in, and impact on, the art-historical canon in America—as in the instance of his work with Barnes and Quinn in the interwar period. This research is ongoing, and will continue examining specifically how Rosenberg’s sales to American institutional clients in particular shaped the canon of French modern art, and how his pricing strategies were integral to this effort.

Notes 1 2

See Cleary 2017. This research is indebted to the Rosenberg family, their colleague, Mrs. Ilda Francois, and Michelle Elligott, Chief of Archives at The Museum of Modern Art, who have all generously permitted me extensive access to The Paul Rosenberg Archives. The essential sources are as follows: Fonds de la Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Centre de Documentation, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Fonds Paul Rosenberg. Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. 3 For the most recent examination of Léonce Rosenberg, see Casini 2018. 4 Léonce Rosenberg’s 1920 text, Cubisme et Tradition, appearing under the auspice of his “Editions de L’Effort Moderne,” also stressed the debt pre-war Cubists owed to older movements. This may have impacted his brother’s approach in situating Picasso and Braque’s work, in particular in the early 1920s. 5 Tériade 1927: 2. (English translation from Bailey 2017.) Tériade’s interview with Rosenberg was part of a series of conversations with Parisian art dealers in the late 1920s in Cahiers D’art, including Paul Guillaume, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Alfred Flechtheim, Berthe Weill and Léonce Rosenberg. On this short-lived endeavor, see Sfakianaki 2015. 6 Reist 2017: 1. 7 Shaw 2002: 68. 8 The Paul Rosenberg Archives (I.A.2 and I.A.5), MoMA Archives, NY. 9 Thompson 2015: 136. 10 Wildenstein 1999: 49. 11 FitzGerald 1995: 8. 12 These efforts in the United States were complemented by collaborations between Rosenberg and Alfred Flechtheim (Düsseldorf, Berlin) and the Galeries Thannhauser (Munich, Lucerne) in Germany, that took shape by the mid-1920s and contributed

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Pioneers of the Global Art Market especially to the growth of Picasso’s institutional market in the German-speaking realm that had been nurtured in its infancy, before 1914, by Daniel Henry Kahnweiler. Letter, Paul Rosenberg to A.C. Barnes, December 20, 1921. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. See, for example, a letter of expertise relating to authenticity (Gutachten) written by Meier-Graefe in 1925 relating to a work by Manet in the Berlin collection of Georg Wolde. The Paul Rosenberg Archives (I.A.86_14), MoMA Archives, NY. See MacDonald 1988. Letter, A.C. Barnes to Paul Rosenberg, March 14, 1922. The Paul Rosenberg Archives (I.A.72_35), MoMA Archives, NY; and Letter, Paul Rosenberg to A.C. Barnes, March 23, 1922. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Bailey 2008: 535. For further context of Barnes’s relationship with the dealer who would become his main source in Paris, Paul Guillaume, see Giraudon 1993: 79–103. See also chapter 13 in the present book on Barnes and Etienne Bignou. Letter, A.C. Barnes to Louisine Havemeyer, February 8, 1923. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Rabinow 2006: 343. Letter, A.C. Barnes to Louisine Havemeyer, February 8, 1923. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Golan 1995b: 78. Letter, Josef Stransky on behalf of Paul Rosenberg & Co to A.C. Barnes, September 23, 1926. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Letter, Felix Wildenstein on behalf of Paul Rosenberg & Co to A.C. Barnes, November 17, 1926. Albert C. Barnes Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. FitzGerald 1995: 113. Richardson 2007: 248. Harris and Zilczer 2010. The Paul Rosenberg Archives (I.A.71), MoMA Archives, NY. See Moulin 1987. Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1957. NARA, Records of the US Customs Service, RG 36, Microfilm M237, Roll 6498; Line: 1; Page Number: 24. The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Painting and Sculpture MC files, 189.1942. Reproduced in Herbert 1980: 71–2.

Bibliography Bailey 2008. Colin B. Bailey. “The Origins of the Barnes Collection, 1912–1915.” The Burlington Magazine 150, no. 1265 (August 2008): 534–43. Bailey 2017. Colin B. Bailey. “The Steely Connoisseur.” (Review of 21 rue La Boétie, an exhibition at the Musée de La Boverie de Liège, September 22, 2016 to February 19, 2017; and the Musée Maillol, Paris, March 2 to July 23, 2017, and catalogue based on

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the book by Anne Sinclair). The New York Review of Books 64, no. 18 (November 23, 2017): 22. Braddock 2013. Jeremy Braddock. Collecting as Modernist Practice. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Brauer 2017. Fae Brauer. “‘Dealing with Cubism’: Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s Perilous Internationalism.” In Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940, edited by Lynn Catterson, 115–58. Boston, MA: Brill, 2017. Casini 2018. Giovanni Casini. “Le cubisme, c’est la marche à l’étoile. Léonce Rosenberg and the Galerie l’Effort Moderne: a syncretic view of French art during the 1920s.” PhD dissertation, University of London, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2018. Cleary 2017. MaryKate Cleary. “Paul Rosenberg and His Collection: Reconstructing the Fate of Nazi-Spoliated Art.” In Markt und Macht, edited by Uwe Fleckner, Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Christian Huemer, 219–35. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2017. Cowling 1990. Elizabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy. On Classical Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico, and the New Classicism, 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery, 1990. Exhibition catalogue. D’Alessandro 2013. Stephanie D’Alessandro. Picasso and Chicago: 100 Years, 100 Works. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press/Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2013. Exhibition catalogue. FitzGerald 1995. Michael C. FitzGerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1995. Gee 1981. Malcolm Gee. Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting: Aspects of the Parisian Art Market between 1910 and 1930. New York: Garland Pub, 1981. Giraudon 1993. Colette Giraudon. Paul Guillaume et Les Peintres du XXe Siècle: de L’art Nègre à L’avant-garde. Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 1993. Golan 1995A. Romy Golan. Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Golan 1995B. Romy Golan. “The Ecole Française versus the Ecole de Paris: The Debate about the Status of Jewish Artists in Paris between the Wars.” In The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity, edited by Linda Nochlin and Tamar Garb, 77–89. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995. Green 2000. Christopher Green. Art in France: 1900–1940. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Harris and Zilczer 2010. Neil Harris and Judith Zilczer. “American Art Collecting: The Dispersal of the John Quinn Collection.” Archives of American Art Journal 49, no. 1/2 (Spring 2010): 54–65. Herbert 1980. Robert Herbert. Léger’s Grand dejeuner. Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1980. Exhibition catalogue. Jensen 1994. Robert Jensen. Marketing Modernism in Fin-De-Siècle Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. MacDonald 1998. Glenn M. MacDonald. “The Economics of Rising Stars.” The American Economic Review 78, no. 1 (1988): 155–66. Monnier 2017. Bruno Monnier, Élie Barnavi, Benoît Remiche and Anne Sinclair. 21 Rue La Boétie: D’après le Livre d’Anne Sinclair. Paris: Hazan, 2017. Exhibition catalogue. Moulin 1987. Raymonde Moulin. Arthur Goldhammer, trans. The French Art Market: A Sociological View. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Patry 2015. Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins. Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market. London: National Gallery, 2015. Exhibition catalogue.

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Prochera 2012. Donald Prochera, Elaine Rosenberg and Ilda François. Paul Rosenberg and Company, from France to America: Exhibition of Documents Selected from the Paul Rosenberg Archives. Presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, January 27 to April 5, 2010. New York: Paul Rosenberg & Co., 2012. Exhibition catalogue. Rabinow 2006. Rebecca A. Rabinow, ed. Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Exhibition catalogue. Reid 1968. B. L. Reid. The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Reist 2017. Inge Reist. British Models of Art Collecting and the American Response: Reflections across the Pond. London: Routledge, 2017. Richardson 2007. John Richardson and Marilyn McCully. A Life of Picasso, vol. III. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Sfakianaki 2015. Poppy Sfakianaki. “Promoting the Value(s) of Modernism: The Interviews of Tériade and Zervos with Art Dealers in Cahiers d’Art, 1927.” Visual Resources 31, no. 1–2 (2015): 75–90. Shaw 2002. Jennifer L. Shaw. Dream States: Puvis De Chavannes, Modernism and the Fantasy of France. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Sinclair 2014. Anne Sinclair. My Grandfather’s Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Originally published in French as 21 Rue la Boétie in 2012 by Bernard Grassat, France. Tériade 1927. E. Tériade. “Nos enquêtes: Entretien avec Paul Rosenberg.” In “Feuilles Volantes,” supplement, Cahiers d’Art 2, no. 9 (1927): 1–2. Thompson 2015. Jennifer A. Thompson. “Durand-Ruel and America.” In Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market, edited by Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins, 134–51. London: National Gallery, 2015. Wildenstein 1999. Daniel Wildenstein and Yves Stavridès. Marchands d’art. Paris: Plon, 1999.

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International Dealer Networks and the Market for Impressionism in London and Glasgow: Etienne Bignou, A.J. McNeill Reid, and Ernest Lefèvre Frances Fowle

Although much focus has been given to Paul Durand-Ruel’s campaign in London in the late nineteenth century, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of French dealers in relation to the British market for Impressionism between the wars.1 An international outlook was imperative for Britain’s most successful dealers of modern art, from Ernest Gambart—who, capitalizing on his close links with Goupil, dominated the market in the second half of the nineteenth century—to Reid & Lefèvre after the war.2 The focus of this chapter is the three-way partnership that was established in the 1920s between Alex Reid in Glasgow, the Lefèvre Gallery in London, and Etienne Bignou in Paris. All three were to become major players in the market for Impressionism, establishing an international dealer network which eventually spread outward from Paris to London, Glasgow, and New York. What were the three dealers’ motives for joining forces and what approach did they develop for the promotion of modern French art and the cultivation of new clients?3 In order to address these questions, it is necessary to explore Reid’s and Lefèvre’s independent relationship with Bignou and other Paris-based dealers before they went into business together. This chapter will investigate their business strategy, including joint purchases and profit sharing, as well as the selection and staging of joint or related exhibitions of modern French art. Partly as a result of these activities, several major British collectors of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art were to emerge during this period, notably William Burrell, Samuel Courtauld, and Elizabeth Workman. Ultimately the network operated to the dealers’ mutual benefit, resulting in the establishment of the Alex Reid & Lefèvre Gallery in London in April 1926, with Bignou as a founding director. Among the primary reasons for the network’s success were the complementary characters of the three partners: Bignou, McNeill Reid, and Lefèvre. Etienne Bignou (1891–1950), was what Albert Boime and Robert Jensen have described as an “entrepreneurial” dealer, and it is perhaps fitting that he took over the gallery of Georges Petit, who was more commercially minded than many of his contemporaries.4 The successful entrepreneur identifies gaps in the market place and exploits new

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opportunities in order to start a business and create wealth. He is prepared to risk failure, which makes him more willing than most to embark on a new venture. Indeed, a recent study published in the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation identified risk-taking as one of the five main characteristics associated with entrepreneurs, along with being hard working, persistent, independent thinking, and having a vision.5 Bignou possessed all five characteristics, but in addition to this—and crucially—he was also a connoisseur and, as the Scottish museum director Tom Honeyman once commented, he “oozed energy.” Honeyman leaves us with a vivid description of the dealer as follows: Smallish and neat in build, [Bignou’s] knowledge of European art, artists and dealers was encyclopedic. The excitements incidental to a big deal were more important to him than the money involved. The acquisition of fine paintings intrigued him far more than their disposal to collectors. He dramatized his discoveries and the romantic tinges were so delightfully touched in, that one completely forgot to stretch out for a pinch of salt. It was all part of the game, and if one dared an attempt to call his bluff, nothing could prevail against his gentle smile and the expressive shrug of his fashionably clad shoulders.6

Bignou had trained as a fur trader in London before becoming an art dealer and spoke fluent English, a huge advantage when it came to infiltrating the British market. He had been introduced to the picture trade by his step-father, who had a gallery on rue Laffitte specializing in Old Masters.7 He then inherited a stock of nineteenthcentury French paintings by artists such as Corot, Daumier, Boudin, and Lépine from Bonjean.8 He decided to sell these works in London, where there was a steady market for French art of this period, and he began dealing with the Lefèvre Gallery in London just after the war.9 Initially he sold them pre-Impressionist works, specializing in the work of Daumier, and in 1922 he organized a show of Daumier watercolors at the London Gallery.10 Bignou appears to have targeted Lefèvre, and one can easily understand why. Ernest Albert Lefèvre (1869–1932) was the great-nephew of the Belgian-born Ernest Gambart (1814–1902), who for many years had directed the French Gallery in London and who was renowned for having introduced modern French art to English collectors.11 In 1867 Gambart sold the gallery to Henry Wallis and opened a new business at 1A King Street, London, along with Ernest’s father Léon Henri Lefèvre (d.1915) and F.G. Pilgeram.12 When Ernest joined the firm it was renamed L.H. Lefèvre & Son and by the 1920s was still recognized as one of the top dealers in London, their main rival being Agnew’s.13 The third player in the triumvirate was A.J. “McNeill” Reid (1893–1972) [Figure 12.1], the son of the great Scottish art dealer Alexander Reid (1854–1928), who had shared an apartment with Vincent van Gogh on rue Lepic, Paris, in 1887, and worked alongside his brother Theo at Boussod, Valadon et Cie Reid senior set up his business, La Société des Beaux Arts (later known simply as “Alex. Reid”), in Glasgow in 1889, and in the 1890s succeeded in selling works by the Impressionists to a number of rich Scottish industrialists.14 Indeed, he was the only dealer, apart from Durand-Ruel, and to a much lesser extent David Croal Thomson, to attempt to establish a market for Impressionism in Britain before the turn of the century.15

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Figure 12.1 A. J. McNeill Reid in Royal Flying Corps uniform, 1917. Photograph © Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.

McNeill Reid, so named after his godfather, James McNeill Whistler, joined his father’s business in 1913. Organized and clear-thinking, he was of a gentle disposition. Honeyman described him as “the easiest of colleagues, approachable, constructive, calm, sympathetic, level-headed and, if he found himself in opposition to a suggestion, prepared to concede the value of a relevant discussion.”16 McNeill Reid’s greatest asset was his strategic approach to business. He established formal relations with other dealers in Scotland and in 1920 initiated, along with his father, the first of a series of important exhibitions of Impressionist works. He realized, however, that the gallery was in need of a reliable source of good-quality pictures and that it would benefit from a London base, since not only did they have several clients based in the city, but the market for Impressionism was slowly beginning to develop there. Up until the First World War, Reid’s main sources for French paintings had been dealers such as Durand-Ruel, Bernheim-Jeune, and Gustave and Jean Tempelaere on rue Laffitte.

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He had not yet established a relationship with the new breed of more progressive dealers on and around rue La Boétie, such as Paul Rosenberg, Georges Bernheim, the Galerie Barbazanges, and Bignou himself. It was McNeill Reid who, around 1919, determined to cultivate these younger and more “entrepreneurial” dealers. In the early spring of 1920 he paid a visit to rue La Boétie, calling on Georges Bernheim at number forty, Rosenberg at number twenty-one, and Bignou at number eight; and made purchases at the last two.17 Later that year he returned to Bignou’s gallery and acquired pictures by Corot, Daubigny, and Fantin-Latour.18 These were by no means adventurous purchases, but Bignou was soon to become an important contact for the Reid gallery, not only as a source of goodquality works, but also as a broker or agent, liaising between Paris, London, and Glasgow. Bignou’s next move was to corner the British market. According to Douglas Cooper, he began by cultivating both Reid and Lefèvre individually and would often oblige them to compete with one another for the same work.19 However, there is no evidence of him attempting to sell Impressionist pictures in Scotland until February 1922, and on this occasion it was the Glasgow dealer who made a comfortable and immediate profit from the transaction. Reid paid Bignou just under £2,000 for Edgar Degas’s Dancers on a Bench, circa 1898 (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow) and one other (unidentified) pastel, for which he had already found buyers.20 His clients were two wealthy Scottish shipowners, Leonard Gow and William McInnes, partners in the Glasgow shipping firm of Gow, Harrison and Co, who went on to build up important collections of modern French art, as well as contemporary Scottish painting.21 The turning point in Bignou’s relationship with Reid and Lefèvre came in the summer of 1923 when the two British dealers decided independently to hold exhibitions of Impressionist art in London. The Lefèvre exhibition comprised works by Degas, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro; the Reid exhibition, which took place at Thomas Agnew & Sons at Forty-Three Old Bond Street, also included Cézanne;22 while a third exhibition at Knoedler’s gallery, Fifteen Old Bond Street, featured works by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.23 These three shows demonstrate the importance not only of Bignou, but also of Rosenberg and Georges Keller at the Galerie Barbazanges in helping to establish the Impressionist market in London. In preparation for the exhibition at Agnew’s, entitled Masterpieces of French Art, Reid purchased a selection of works from Bignou, but for his Impressionist pictures he relied primarily on Rosenberg and the Galerie Barbazanges, from whom he was also buying the occasional picture on a half-share basis. Works acquired from the latter included Cézanne’s Landscape at Osny, while the magnificent Cézanne Still Life with Plaster Cast was supplied by Rosenberg. Both pictures entered the collection of the textile magnate Samuel Courtauld [Figure 12.2] whose fascination with Impressionism, and above all Cézanne, was kindled that year.24 Courtauld’s expenditure at the three exhibitions was impressive: From Agnew’s he acquired the two Cézannes for £5,250 and the beautiful Monet Vase of Flowers for £2,500.25 From Lefèvre he bought Daumier’s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, circa 1870 (which had come through Bignou) for £1,35026; while from Knoedler he acquired Manet’s Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil of 1874 and Monet’s Antibes of 1888 for £9,100. These last two pictures had, once again, been supplied by the Galerie Barbazanges and Paul Rosenberg, respectively.27

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Figure 12.2 Samuel Courtauld, 1920s. Photograph © The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

In response to these exhibitions, the Telegraph commented on “the extravagant, the incredible prices that the Impressionists of the Monet-Manet school … now obtain.”28 Their attention was particularly drawn to the centerpiece of the Agnew’s exhibition, Manet’s Le Bon Bock (Philadelphia Museum of Art), a painting that had been praised by the likes of George Moore and the English artist Wynford Dewhurst, but above all, by Théodore Duret, who devoted an entire chapter to this work in his seminal 1902 book on Manet (published in English in 1910).29 The painting was now on sale for the staggering price of £35,000.30 Reid, who had briefly owned this famous painting in 1887,31 almost certainly used it as a marketing tool to draw attention to the show and also to signal his presence to potential new clients among London’s “nouveau riche.”

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It was only through partnership that Reid was able to afford such an outrageously expensive painting. Paul Rosenberg, who had arranged for the Manet to be sent to London, had a close working arrangement with Wildenstein in New York. The cost of the picture and its shipping was shared between Reid, Rosenberg, and Wildenstein, all of whom were attempting to penetrate a buoyant London market.32 In the end a buyer was found not in Britain but in the United States: it was sold by Wildenstein in October 1923 to Carroll S. Tyson Jr. of Philadelphia, with the profit divided three ways.33 The equivalent work in the Lefèvre Gallery exhibition was the more modestly priced, but no less magnificent pastel and gouache Portrait of Duranty of 1879 by Degas (Burrell Collection, Glasgow). The critic Edmond Duranty, author of La Nouvelle Peinture, was one of the earliest supporters of the Impressionists, particularly Degas. McNeill Reid had seen the picture in the window of the Galerie Barbazanges the previous year, priced at £1,100, but had been dissuaded by his father from buying it, even though he had a particular buyer in mind.34 This was the Glasgow shipbuilder William Burrell (1861–1958) [Figure 12.3] who had bought his first work by Degas from Reid in 1894 and went on to acquire at least twenty-two works by this artist, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s.35 To McNeill Reid’s irritation Burrell not only bought the Duranty portrait from Lefèvre for £1,900—nearly double the original price—but also acquired a second Degas pastel, Les Bijoux, for an additional £625.36 Before the war, Reid had enjoyed a virtual monopoly as far as supplying Burrell with French pictures was concerned; he now found himself working in competition not only with Lefèvre but also with Knoedler, who like Lefèvre, had taken little interest in the Impressionists until very recently. Burrell had a particular love of pastels and bought two more from the Knoedler exhibition: Degas’s La Jupe Verte (The Green Ballet Skirt) of circa 1896 and Manet’s more challenging Au Café (also known as Les Bockeuses or Women Drinking Beer) of 1878 for a total of £1,500.37 From Reid, meanwhile, he acquired only one work, but also one of Degas’s more beautiful and complex pastels, Le Foyer de la Danse à l’Opéra (circa 1877), featuring a group of dancers, and two more soberly dressed companions, set against the window of a room at the opera.38 At £2,500 it was one of Burrell’s most expensive purchases to date, and it was thanks to Bignou that the Reid gallery was able to source such a high-quality work.39 With collectors such as Courtauld and Burrell taking a serious interest in Impressionism, it was important for Reid to retain them as clients. Courtauld in particular required cultivation since he, like Burrell, would go on to acquire an important collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, not only for himself, but also for the National Gallery in London. The solution was for Reid to enter into an informal partnership with Lefèvre, with Bignou acting as their agent, since he was well placed to source Impressionist works that were coming up for auction in Paris. Independently, Bignou had made a similar arrangement with Georges Keller at the Galerie Barbazanges. By 1924 Bignou was acting as Reid’s primary agent for Impressionist art. Furthermore, Bignou, Reid, and Lefèvre had established a three-way partnership on their most modern French pictures, including works by Henri Matisse, Marie Laurencin, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Utrillo, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Georges

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Figure 12.3  Sir William Burrell, c.1906 Photograph © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection.

Rouault.40 In addition, both Bignou and especially Lefèvre were independently operating a half share with Reid on individual works. In addition to joint purchases, Reid and Lefèvre were organizing joint exhibitions, with assistance from Bignou. For example, in October and November 1923, Alex Reid and Lefèvre co-organized an exhibition of “Post-Impressionist Masters,” comprising works by van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir, whose work was being bought in large numbers by collectors such as Albert C. Barnes.41 The most important buyer at the exhibition was Elizabeth Russell Workman (1874–1962) [Figure 12.4], an existing client of Reid’s.42 In 1923 the Vorticist Percy Wyndham Lewis described Mrs. Workman, who is virtually unknown today, as “one

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Figure 12.4  Elizabeth Workman on board Nyria, 1920. By kind permission of the Janson family.

of the only people in England to understand French painting.”43 The oldest daughter of James Allan, a wealthy merchant from Helensburgh in Dunbartonshire, Elizabeth was born and brought up in the west of Scotland.44 She moved to London after her marriage in 1900 to Robert Alfred Workman, a ship broker. By 1920, Robert occupied a prominent role in the shipping industry as chairman of the Northumbria shipping company, and the couple lived at 3 Seamore Place in the exclusive Mayfair district of London.45 With family in Scotland, they had been regular patrons of Alex Reid’s Glasgow gallery since the early 1900s and it was Reid who introduced Elizabeth to French art. Toward the end of the First World War she turned her attention to Impressionism, that is, well before Samuel Courtauld, and in several ways she was more adventurous in her tastes. In 1920 alone she bought works by Degas, Vuillard, Monet, and Renoir from Reid, including masterpieces such as Degas’s Portrait of Diego Martelli (1879, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh) and Monet’s

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Boulevard des Capucines (1873–74, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City).46 As the decade progressed, she went on to acquire pictures by the Impressionists, PostImpressionists, Pablo Picasso, and the Fauves, including several important works by Matisse. Elizabeth Workman’s purchases at the 1923 exhibition demonstrate not only how advanced she was in her tastes, but how good the quality of the selection was. The show also gives some insight into how Reid and Lefèvre operated, since the profits were not equally shared. The first purchases made by Mrs. Workman can be credited exclusively to Reid. They included Gauguin’s Martinique Landscape (1887, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), his Portrait of Meyer de Haan (1889, Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Toulouse-Lautrec’s Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge (1892, Wadsworth Atheneum), which she acquired on November 26 for a total of £3,500.47 However, among the most outstanding purchases from the exhibition was van Gogh’s Still Life with Oleanders (1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art), which was jointly owned by Reid and Lefèvre and the income shared fifty-fifty.48 On this occasion the buyer was the Leeds educationalist Michael Sadler, but the picture soon ended up in the Workman collection, along with van Gogh’s The Bridge at Trinquetaille (1888, private collection).49 There were clear advantages to the three dealers collaborating on exhibitions. Given that the Workmans were largely London based, it made sense for Reid to use the Lefèvre Gallery as a more convenient location from which to entice them to further purchases—and also to attract the attention of other London-based collectors such as Courtauld. From Lefèvre’s perspective, Reid already had an important client base, including not only the Workmans but also rich Glasgow industrialists such as Burrell, Gow, McInnes, and others. By collaborating with Bignou, both British dealers could guarantee a supply of top-quality paintings from Paris to satisfy their new clients, and Bignou would receive a percentage of the profit. In addition to targeting major collectors, both Reid and Lefèvre worked to place Impressionist pictures in Britain’s national institutions. As a result of their joint exhibition of Impressionist art, held at Lefèvre’s Gallery in May 1924,50 two works made their way to the national museums. The first was Monet’s The Beach at Trouville (1870, National Gallery, London), which was purchased with money from the recent Courtauld bequest and destined for the new Duveen Galleries of modern foreign art at the Tate Gallery. Lefèvre almost certainly let it go for the relatively modest sum of £650 because of the prestige associated with such a sale.51 The following year, Reid persuaded the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh to acquire its first Impressionist painting, Monet’s Poplars on the Epte of 1891, which remains one of the stars of the collection.52 In October 1924, Reid and Lefèvre organized their most progressive joint exhibition to date. It opened in Glasgow and included works by André Derain, Othon Friesz, Raoul Dufy, and Vlaminck, as well as three works by Georges Braque and Picasso. P.G. Konody wrote the preface to the catalogue and reviewed the exhibition for the Observer when the show moved to London, remarking that this was the most significant exhibition to be shown in the capital since Roger Fry’s groundbreaking exhibitions of 1910 and 1912.53 Once again Elizabeth Workman was

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the main buyer at the exhibition, demonstrating that her taste was already far in advance of any other British collector of the period. She acquired seven pictures, this time for astonishingly low prices, including Matisse’s The Closed Window (c. 1918–19, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond) and Le Canapé Rouge (1919, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), as well as Picasso’s Child with a Dove (1901, Qatar Museums), which later passed into Courtauld’s collection.54 The Picasso came through Rosenberg, but Bignou continued to provide Reid & Lefèvre with goodquality works, and over the next eighteen months the dealers jointly organized four more exhibitions of Impressionist and modern art, which were shown in Glasgow as well as London. By the end of 1925, all three parties recognized that they had established a good working relationship. Finally, on April 26, 1926, the long-standing association between the Lefèvre Gallery in London and Alex Reid’s gallery in Glasgow became permanent, and the new company of Alex Reid & Lefèvre Ltd. was formed with McNeill Reid, Ernest Lefèvre, and Etienne Bignou as the founding directors, along with Duncan Macdonald, who had joined the Reid Gallery the previous year. The new organization was highly progressive in its outlook and their first move was to remove all trace of the printpublishing arm of the old Lefèvre Gallery. Their next strategy was to focus on solo exhibitions, rather than mixed shows of French art. The inaugural exhibition was a show of ten pictures by Georges Seurat, with Les Poseuses (1888, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) as the centerpiece. In a brilliant gesture of self-promotion, Reid and Lefèvre even presented a small oil panel from the exhibition, Seurat’s Clothes on the Grass of 1883, to the Tate Gallery. Bignou ceased to be a director of Reid & Lefèvre in 1927 but continued to work in close partnership with the London business throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, sourcing good-quality works for clients like Courtauld. In 1929 he organized an exhibition of paintings at Knoedler’s Gallery in New York, including several works from Mrs. Workman’s collection acquired through Reid & Lefèvre. Over time Bignou built up his relationship with Knoedler in New York, always maintaining the link with Reid & Lefèvre, and creating a solid base of American clients, including Chester Dale. Entrepreneur to the end, in 1935 he opened a New York Gallery on East Fifty-Seventh Street, effectively creating an American branch of the Reid & Lefèvre Gallery. The timing was fortuitous, since in 1932 the Glasgow branch of Reid & Lefèvre had been forced to close, due to the economic downturn north of the border. Meanwhile the London company continued to flourish, thanks to the networks established during the 1920s with Parisian dealers such as Rosenberg, Keller, and especially Bignou. For the next eighty years they led the market in Britain, and created a global brand for Reid & Lefèvre as the champions of Impressionist and modern art.

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Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

On Durand-Ruel in London, see most recently Anne Robbins’s essay in Patry 2015: 170–93. Although Ernest Lefèvre’s name was spelled with an accent on the second “e,” the firm dropped this after Alex Reid & Lefèvre Ltd. was established in 1926 and used the abbreviation “the Lefevre Gallery.” For the purposes of this chapter the accent will be retained when referring to the firm of Reid & Lefèvre from 1926 onward or to L.H. Lefèvre & Son, that is the Lefèvre Gallery before 1926. In an attempt to answer these questions I have drawn largely on the Reid & Lefèvre Gallery archive, now lodged at Tate Britain and, to a lesser extent, on the Knoedler archive. Boime 1976; Jensen 1997: 34, 63–7. See Black 2010. Honeyman 1971: 20. Zervos 1927. Cooper 1976: 17. This Bonjean was possibly Théodore Bonjean, listed in the Paul Rosenberg archive. He may have been related to Jacques Bonjean, who had a gallery (with Christian Dior as his silent partner) at 34 rue La Boétie from 1928. Bignou’s gallery is listed in Reid’s Glasgow Ledger 1920–25 as “8 rue de la Boétie.” Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/271. Douglas Cooper sets the date of Bignou’s first dealings with Reid at around 1922, and with Lefèvre the previous year. He also asserts that Bignou was dealing with Lefèvre before he discovered the Alex Reid Gallery in Glasgow. See Cooper 1976: 17. Cooper 1976: 17. On Gambart’s French Gallery, see Maas 1976 and Fletcher 2007. Gambart retired in 1870, leaving the other two men as partners in the business. The company was registered as Pilgeram & Lefèvre from at least 1871 to 1880 and was known as Pilgeram and Lefèvre, successors to E. Gambart & Co, until the name was changed to L.H. Lefèvre & Son, presumably once Pilgeram retired. When Lefèvre died in 1915 the business passed to his son. Maas 1976: 208. On Reid, see Fowle 2010. On the market for Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in Scotland, see Fowle 2008: 65–95. Honeyman 1971: 21. He bought pictures from Bignou (March 1920) to the value of £1,900 and an unidentified work from Rosenberg for £120 (April). For a total of £3,020; see Reid Daybook 1913–20, Tate Archive ref 2002/11/279. Cooper 1976: 17–18. The entry in the Reid stockbook is as follows: “20 Feb 1922 Etienne Bignou Paris/ Two pastel Drawings by Degas 92,000 francs/103/£1,933.6.11.” On February 14 Reid sold a pastel Danseuse (stock no. 3223) to Leonard Gow, Eight Gordon Street, for £925; on February 20 William McInnes, Eight Gordon Street, acquired Les Danseuses (stock no. 3222) for £1,300. See Invoices 1920–25; Tate archive, ref 2002/11/272. A third pastel Femme prenant un bain (no. 2152) was bought by Thomas Couper, Moore’s Hotel, for £480 on February 15. See 1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275.

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21 McInnes bought Degas Dancers on a Bench, pastel on paper, 54.8 × 76cm which he bequeathed to Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow in 1944. On Leonard Gow and William McInnes see Fowle 2008: 130, 132. 22 Catalogue of Masterpieces of French Art organized by Mr Alexander Reid of Glasgow in collaboration with Messrs. Thos Agnew & Sons, 43 Old Bond Street, London W.1., July 1923. 23 M. Knoedler & Co, Exhibition of Nineteenth Century French Painters, exh. cat. (London), June 26 to July 21, 1923. 24 On Courtauld and his collection see House 1994 and Serres 2019. On Courtauld and Cézanne see Buck 2008. 25 All Courtauld’s purchases are now in the Courtauld Art Institute, unless otherwise indicated. Reid had acquired the Monet through Bernheim-Jeune. The Cézanne still life was sold to Courtauld by Reid in May 1923 for £2,850; the landscape was sold to Courtauld in July 1923 for £2,400. See House 1994: 64, 80, 122 and Serres 2019: 194, 210. 26 Acquired in May 1923 for £1,350. See House 1994: 86 and Serres 2019: 102. 27 House 1994: 106 and 124 and Serres: 110, 160. According to the Knoedler London stockbook 1923 he bought Manet Argenteuil for £7,500 and Monet Antibes for £1,600 on August 3, 1923. http://rosettaapp.getty.edu:1801/delivery/ DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE951206. In the same month he also bought Manet’s La Servante de Bocks and Renoir’s La Première Sortie from Knoedler for the Courtauld Gift to the National Gallery. House 1994: 221. 28 Daily Telegraph, June 19, 1923. 29 Duret 1902: 97–115; Duret 1910: 61–70. 30 To put this in context, in 1920 the average salary for a shipbuilder/worker was £2 per week, or just over £100 per annum. 31 Reid had acquired Le Bon Bock from Durand-Ruel in around 1887 for only £250, and sold it on to Jean-Baptiste Faure for £500. See Letter dated February 22, 1965, from McNeill Reid to V. van Gogh, McNeill Reid files, Acc. 6925, National Library of Scotland; Fowle 2010: 33. 32 Rosenberg had taken over Georges Wildenstein’s gallery at 21 rue La Boétie. 33 I am grateful to Jennifer Thompson for passing on this information. 34 Cooper 1976: 17. 35 On Burrell see Marks 1983. On Burrell’s collection of Degas pictures see Hamilton, Vivien, “Burrell and Degas” in Hamilton 2017: 20–31. See also Hamilton, Vivien, “William Burrell and Impressionism” in Fowle 2008: 109–17. 36 All purchases by Burrell are now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, unless otherwise indicated. 37 On June 29, 1923, he bought Degas La Danseuse en Repos (now La Jupe Verte) for £500 and Manet Au Café for £1,000. See Knoedler London stockbook 1923, http:// rosettaapp.getty.edu:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE951206 38 Now known as Preparation for the Class, Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 35.238. 39 On June 25, 1923, Burrell bought Degas’s Le Foyer de la Danse à l’Opéra (stock no. 3711) from Reid for £2,500 and Bignou received £150 commission. The entry reads: “25 June 1923/Wm Burrell Rozelle, Ayr/One Pastel drawing by Edgar Degas/No 3711 Le Foyer de la Danse a l’Opera £2500.” The commission to Bignou was logged on August 1, 1923, as follows: “Etienne Bignou (for June) Commission on Degas sold to Wm Burrell £120.” (1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275.)

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40 See entry for June 5, 1924 (1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275): “M Etienne Bignou 8 Rue de la Boetie/1 oil pg by H Matisse No 3796 Dans la Compagnie de Nice 1/3 share £20 6s plus 1/3 share of profit £12 4s total £32 10s.” The entry for December 19, 1924 reads: “Messrs LH Lefèvre & Son/6 oil paintings by Derain no.3859 Paysage £150 Marie Laurencin no. 3884 ‘Portrait de Femme’ £150 M. Utrillo no.3882 Rue a Ajaccio £400 Vlaminck no. 3866 Petites Fleurs £60 Vuillard No.3886 Paysage £120 Vuillard No. 3887 ‘Sieste’ £120 Total £1000 Less 2/3 (1/2 account Bignou) leaves £333 6s 8d” The entry for December 20, 1924 reads: “Messrs L H Lefèvre Rouault No 3878 ‘Le Repas’ Rouault No.3871 ‘Fruit sur une Table’ The 2 £210 less 2/3 (1/3 Bignou) leaves £70” 41 Barnes eventually acquired 181 works by this artist. As a collector he was extremely advanced in his tastes and bought a large number of avant-garde works during a trip to Paris in the autumn of 1922, which were exhibited at Paul Guillaume’s gallery at 59 rue la Boétie in January and February 1923. On Barnes see Bailey 2008. 42 On the Workmans’ collection, see Manson 1926; Korn 2002 (on the van Goghs); Fowle, Frances, “Van Gogh in Scotland” in Bailey 2006: 40. On the Workmans see also Fowle 2008: 136 and Fowle 2010: 111–12, 129–34, 142–3. 43 Wyndham Lewis 1967: 229. 44 James Allan was a “provision merchant” and lived at Red Tower, Douglas Drive, Helensburgh, which he had built by William Leiper in 1898. Elizabeth’s mother was Margaret Dunn Allan (nee Warren) (1848–1946). Robert Workman’s parents were William S. Workman and Margaret Orr. They lived at Dunluce House, Dullatur, Dunbartonshire and at 12 University Gardens, in Glasgow’s Hillhead district. 45 Robert worked initially for the shipping firm of Montgomerie & Workman at Seventeen Gracechurch Street, London and by 1920 had acquired Messrs. Workman, Clark of Belfast. 46 These were acquired on January 2, 1920. See 1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275. The Degas was bought along with Auguste Renoir’s Melon et Fleurs 1883, 53.9 × 65.4cm (Christie’s November 6, 2007), for £5,500 and the Monet for £1,500. 47 The entry in the Reid stockbook is as follows: “26 Nov 1923 (Mrs Workman) 3 Oil paintings/No.3735 ‘Meyer de Haan’ by Gauguin £800/No.3736 ‘Paysage Exotique’ by Gauguin £1650/No. 3734 ‘Jeanne d’Avril’ by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec £1050.” See 1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275. 48 The entry in the stockbook reads: “29 Nov L H Lefèvre & Son, London/1 Oil painting by Van Gogh Les Lauriers Roses no.3737 (1/2) £1100.” 49 The Bridge at Trinquetaille came through Bignou and was bought on March 7, 1924. The entry reads: “Mrs Workman 3 Seamore Place/1 oil painting by Van Gogh No.3799 ‘Bords du Rhone a Arles’ £1550.” Reid’s 1920–1925 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275. 50 The exhibition entitled “Important Pictures by Nineteenth-Century French Masters” was held in May–June 1924, included works by Manet, Morisot, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Gauguin, and others.

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51 This work came through Bignou and was sold by L.H. Lefèvre & Son in July 1924. House 1994: 222. 52 It was bought for £1,200. National Gallery of Scotland Board Minutes, vol. IV, March 18, 1925: 34. See also Fowle 2005: 16. 53 Konody, P.G. “Art and Artists: French Post-Impressionists.” Observer, November 16, 1924. 54 The two works by Matisse were £355 and £270, respectively. She acquired the Picasso for £450. She also bought Dufresne’s The Rape of Europa (National Galleries of Scotland) for £400 and pictures by Derain, Braque and Utrillo for £175 each. These purchases are recorded in Reid’s 1920–25 Day Book, Tate Archive, Ref. 2002/11/275. On early British collectors of Matisse and Picasso, see Korn 2004.

Bibliography Bailey 2006. Martin Bailey, with an essay by Frances Fowle. Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2006. Exhibition catalogue. Bailey 2008. Colin Bailey. “The Origins of the Barnes Collection 1912–15.” The Burlington Magazine 150, no. 1265, Collectors and Collecting (August 2008): 534–43. Black 2010. Ervin L. Black, F. Greg Burton, David A. Wood and Aaron F. Zimbleman. “Entrepreneurial Success: Differing Perceptions of Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists.” International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 11, no. 3 (August 2010): 189–98. Boime 1976. Albert Boime. “Entrepreneurial Patronage in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Enterprise and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth- and Twentieth France, edited by Edward C. Carter II, Robert Foster and Joseph N. Moody, 331–50. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Buck 2008. Stephanie Buck, John House, Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen and Barnaby Wright, eds. The Courtauld Cézannes. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2008. Exhibition catalogue. Cooper 1976. Douglas Cooper. Alex Reid & Lefèvre 1926–1976. London: The Lefevre Gallery, 1976. Duret 1902. Théodore Duret. Histoire d’Edouard Manet et de son œuvre. Paris: BernheimJeune, 1902. Duret 1910. Théodore Duret and J. E. Crawford Flitch, trans. Manet and the French Impressionists. London: Grant Richards, 1910. Fletcher 2007. Pamela M. Fletcher. “Creating the French Gallery: Ernest Gambart and the Rise of the Commercial Gallery in Mid-Victorian London.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 6, no. 1 (2007). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring07/143-creatingthe-french-gallery-ernest-gambart-and-the-rise-of-the-commercial-art-gallery-inmid-victorian-london Fowle 2005. Frances Fowle. “Prejudice and Parsimony: Early Acquisitions of Modern French Paintings at the National Gallery of Scotland.” Visual Culture in Britain 6, no. 2 (2005): 5–19. Fowle 2008. Frances Fowle. Impressionism and Scotland. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2008. Exhibition catalogue. Fowle 2010. Frances Fowle. Van Gogh’s Twin: The Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid (1854–1928). Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2010.

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Hamilton 2017. Vivien Hamilton, Julien Domercq, Harriet Stratis, Sarah Herring and Christopher Riopelle. Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell Collection. London: The National Gallery, 2017. Exhibition catalogue. Honeyman 1971. Tom J. Honeyman. Art and Audacity. London: HarperCollins, 1971. House 1994. John House. Impressionism for England: Samuel Courtauld as Patron and Collector. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Jensen 1997. Robert Jensen. Marketing Modernism in Fin de Siècle Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Korn 2002. Madeleine Korn. “Collecting Paintings by Van Gogh in Britain before the Second World War.” Van Gogh Museum Journal 2002 (2002): 120–37. Korn 2004. Madeleine Korn. “Collecting Paintings by Matisse and by Picasso in Britain before the Second World War.” Journal of the History of Collections 16, no. 1 (May 2004): 111–29. Maas 1976. Jeremy Maas. Gambart: Prince of the Victorian Art World. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976. Manson 1926. James B. Manson. “The Workman Collection: Modern Foreign Art.” Apollo Magazine 3 (1926): 139–44, 156. Marks 1983. Richard Marks. Burrell: A Portrait of a Collector. London: Richard Drew, 1983. Patry 2015. Sylvie Patry, ed. Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market. London: National Gallery, 2015. Exhibition catalogue. Serres 2019. Karen Serres, ed. The Courtauld Collection: A Vision for Impressionism. London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019. Exhibition catalogue. Wyndham Lewis 1967. Percy Wyndham Lewis. Blasting and Bombardiering. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. First edition published London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937. Zervos 1927. Christian Zervos. “Entretien avec Etienne Bignou.” Cahiers d’Art, 7–8 deuxième année (1927): supplément 1–2.

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Etienne Bignou: The Gallery as Antechamber of the Museum Christel H. Force

The charismatic art dealer Etienne Bignou (1891–1950) was invariably perceived by his contemporaries as extraordinarily dynamic and enterprising, whether he was described as “always like an engine, spitting smoke through the ears,”1 or seen as “very much a live wire, but quite sympathetic.”2 Bignou’s boundless energy was disconcerting and his peripatetic life confounding, as his venerable confrère Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939) implied when he quipped: “In the morning he is in London; in the evening he opens an exhibition in Paris; the next day he takes a ship to New York.”3 It is also the spirit of caricaturist Cesar Abin’s rendition of Bignou on the go [book cover and Plate 1].4 Bignou may be largely overlooked today compared to his contemporaries in the French art market, but as both a gallery owner and an agent with a matchless network of peers and clients, abundant stamina and resourcefulness, and a proactive international outlook, he stood out in the interwar period as a consummate impresario and effective tastemaker. His entrepreneurial mindset, business acumen, and unrivaled art-world connections coalesced into making him a unique promoter and major exporter of French modernism. Before the war he actively scouted, acquired, and sold artworks, shipped them to other dealers in the United Kingdom and the United States, and organized countless exhibitions in and out of France. As will become clear, unlike the dealers Georges Petit and Vollard, for instance, who let foreign patrons come to them, Bignou epitomized a new generation of entrepreneurial dealers who actively promoted French modernism abroad.5 Bignou was one of the passionate advocates of modern art celebrated in a succession of eight art-dealer profiles published in 1927 in a supplement of the journal Cahiers d’Art titled Les Feuilles Volantes. Aside from Bignou, the subjects counted Alfred Flechtheim, Paul Guillaume, Jos Hessel, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Léonce Rosenberg, Paul Rosenberg, and Berthe Weill. This unusual series of interviews conducted by Christian Zervos and E. Tériade is emblematic of a very dynamic time period for the Parisian art market.6 The items as a whole underline the fundamental role of primary dealers in the social economy of modernism in France, lauding the profession as exciting, daring, and vital at a time when there was precious little contemporary art in French museums. It was entirely incumbent upon such dealers to support artists so

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they could experiment freely, and to promote their art at home as well as abroad, while also selling on the secondary market. In his “Entretien avec Etienne Bignou,” Zervos stated: Seurat’s Les Poseuses, Cézanne’s Les Terres Rouges and L’Homme à la Pipe, Daumier’s Le Wagon de Troisième Classe, very rare Corots, passed through his little gallery on rue La Boétie. When the glittering dust of fireworks created by Redons, Degas, and Renoirs settles, one discerns a jumble of Braques, Légers, Derains, Picassos, Lurçats, Utrillos, Matisses … His ambition? Make his gallery the antechamber of museums.7

This ambition reached beyond Paris, as Zervos underlined when he added that Bignou had “been promoting French artists in England with much fervor and success.” Indeed by then Bignou had engineered the fusion of the Glasgow gallery of Alex Reid (1854–1928) and the London gallery of Ernest-Albert Lefèvre (1869–1932), and was sending their way a steady flow of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.8 At thirty-six he had already accomplished a lot, but it was only the beginning. Etienne Jean Bignou was born in Paris on June 3, 1891. His father, Gaston Edmond Bignou, 34, was a bank employee who lived with his wife, Jeanne Bernard Blanc, 21, at 26 rue de Chabrol (10e).9 A few milestones of his youth had lasting repercussions: His mother re-married in 1899, and his step-father, Theodore Bonjean (1861–1913), owned an art gallery at 10 rue Laffitte (9e). Etienne was schooled in London and apprenticed in the fur trade there as a teenager,10 which gave him an edge later in life: he mastered the English language and felt quite at ease on both sides of the channel. The eighteen-year-old returned to Paris in 1909 and apprenticed with Bonjean until the latter’s untimely death in 1913. Young Bignou thus found himself in charge of the Bonjean gallery, which he later renamed after himself.11 An idea of what his formative years as an art dealer were like can be gleaned from Bonjean’s obituary in American Art News, of all places: M. Bonjean, who was a man of great taste and judgment, formerly dealt in modern pictures, but in recent years he abandoned them for the Old Masters … He had a rather exclusive clientele, who had great confidence in his judgment, and he was one of the very few picture dealers able to make collectors buy old pictures on their merits. M. Bonjean was noted for his uprightness in business, was universally respected.12

Bignou was briefly wedded to Juliette Suzanne Diot (1900–1996), then on May 3, 1917, he married Germaine Henriette Françoise Vrancken (1893–1965) with whom he had two sons, Michel in 1919 and Bernard in 1922.13 In 1919 he moved the gallery to 8 rue la Boétie (8e) and sold nineteenth-century and contemporary art, straddling the primary and secondary markets. By 1921 Bignou was promoting French painting in the UK, primarily through Reid’s son A. J. McNeill Reid (1893–1972) in Glasgow, and Lefèvre in London. This was a propitious time: the director of the National Gallery in London bought

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several Impressionist works at the Degas sale in 1918; the Leicester Gallery showed Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso from 1919 to 1925; and Samuel Courtauld started buying Impressionist and PostImpressionist paintings in the early 1920s.14 Between 1922 and 1927, Bignou procured at least six group exhibitions of PostImpressionist and modern paintings for Reid or Lefevre, as well as solo shows in London (Eugene Boudin, Maurice Utrillo, Henri Rousseau, Georges Seurat, Odilon Redon, Henri Matisse, Honoré Daumier).15 Their collaboration was undoubtedly mutually profitable as—in the first of a series of such ventures initiated or actualized by Bignou—the competing galleries joined forces on April 26, 1926. The new London firm, Alex Reid & Lefèvre Ltd., had four directors: Bignou (until 1927), Lefèvre (until 1931), Duncan MacDonald,16 and McNeill Reid.17 Though the specifics varied, this turned out to be Bignou’s most fruitful and long-lasting partnership. In the following years they organized more exhibitions together, including Amedeo Modigliani (1929), “Thirty Years of Picasso” (June 1931), “L’École de Paris” (1932); Georges Braque (1934); Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne (1935), Salvador Dali (1936), and “Abstract & Concrete Painting and Sculpture” (1936). Important sales by Bignou and Reid & Lefevre from that time include Edouard Manet’s Peonies (The Met) to Mrs. R. A. Workman around 1923; Seurat’s The Bridge at Courbevoie and The Channel of Gravelines: Grand-Fort-Philippe in 1926, and Cézanne’s Man with a Pipe to Courtauld in 1927 (Courtauld Institute); Seurat’s Black Horse to Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill in 1927 (National Galleries of Scotland); and Picasso’s Woman in White (The Met) to Lillie P. Bliss in 1927 (through Kraushaar), for instance. On the primary market front, from the 1920s Bignou represented Jean Lurçat and Raoul Dufy. Bignou’s portrait was painted by Lurçat in 1926,18 and his son Michel’s by Dufy several times in the 1930s.19 Lurçat later reminisced that his dealer was an electrifying character: [Bignou] was about my age but nevertheless a major gallery director. He had a shop in Paris, of course, but he had others as well, in London, Glasgow, and New York. He was an extremely active man, always under pressure, about to explode. He spent a good part of his life on planes, which at the time wasn’t common at all. He held the record of channel crossings. By 1926–28, he had already travelled from Paris to London about 40 times. Anyhow, he was an astonishing young man, a remarkable businessman. He made tons of money and painters courted him as his contracts were quite coveted.20

Actually Bignou did not have galleries in Glasgow, London, or New York then (although he’d have one in New York later); he had the Paris gallery, and scouted art for and sent exhibitions to other dealers overseas. In October 1928 Lurçat accompanied Bignou to New York on the occasion of a Lurçat show at the Valentine Gallery, and again in October 1930 on the occasion of three Lurçat shows Bignou organized: One of drawings and tapestries opened on November 8 at the John Becker Gallery in New York; another of oils and gouaches on November 10 at the Valentine Gallery; followed by a third from January 10 to 24 at the Crillon Gallery in Philadelphia. Lurçat

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stayed until May 1931 and commented: “America will remain for a long time the only place where genuine modern trends can assuredly bloom.”21 This was likely as much a comment on American collectors’ purchasing power as on their bold taste, and an opinion he shared with his dealer. Bignou asserted his presence in New York chiefly as a Paris-based scout and proxy for Reid & Lefevre through a portentous association with the major-league gallery M. Knoedler & Co—then run by Charles R. Henschel (1885–1956)—with branches in London and Paris.22 Bignou organized exhibitions for Knoedler New York from 1928 to 1933; and by 1927 he procured artworks in Europe, of which Knoedler and Reid & Lefevre shared the cost in half shares. The seller got a 15 percent sales commission on the gross profit, and the remainder of the profit was divided thus: 37.5 percent each for Knoedler and Reid & Lefevre, and 25 percent for Bignou.23 Bignou had no property interest; only a purchasing commission, although he could get 40 percent of the markup on works he sold. Thus by the late 1920s Bignou had a firm footing in New York as well as London and Paris, though he only owned the Galerie Bignou stock. (Bignou bought artworks outright from Knoedler by 1933, however.24) Examples of such transactions include Seurat’s canvas Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor (MoMA) scouted by Bignou in 1926, sold by Reid & Lefevre and Knoedler in 1927 to Lillie P. Bliss. Also van Gogh’s The Olive Orchard (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), which Bignou acquired from Alfred Gold in 1929, sold by Reid & Lefevre and Knoedler in 1931 through Galerie Bignou to Chester Dale.25 Another is Picasso’s Nude Standing by the Sea of 1929 (The Met), acquired by Bignou in 1929, sold by Knoedler and Reid & Lefevre to Aline Barnsdall, Santa Barbara. Yet another is Seurat’s Head of a Young Woman (Dumbarton Oaks), acquired by Bignou for Knoedler in 1929, sold to Robert Woods Bliss in 1935. By joining forces with Bignou and Reid & Lefevre, Knoedler de facto gained a well-connected French agent with enviable access to artworks in Europe,26 and a solid partner for joint acquisitions. Meanwhile Bignou secured prestigious premises to showcase his artists in New York and the occasion to make a name for himself in the United States, not to mention additional income. In the year 1929 alone, through this arrangement Bignou made the sizable sum of $39,218. In addition, Bignou also built an alliance with the French dealer Cesar Mange de Hauke, who since 1926 headed a subsidiary of Germain Seligmann’s firm, Jacques Seligmann & Co.27 Using the Seligmann addresses—3 East 51 St, New York, and 57 rue St Dominique, Paris—de Hauke & Co was de facto Seligmann’s modern art department,28 and greatly contributed to solidifying the Paris-based firm’s footing in the United States before the Seligmann headquarters moved to New York in 1937.29 Bignou likely approached both Henschel and Seligmann around the same time with the offer of a similar arrangement, seeing that cooperation was mutually beneficial to increase their purchasing power, source a limited number of artworks, and share a narrow pool of clients. After Seligmann and Bignou had lunch in Paris in July 1927, an encounter between de Hauke and Bignou was likely engineered, which appropriately occurred on board the SS Paris sailing from Le Havre to New York in February 1928. De Hauke dutifully reported his conversations with Bignou in a memo to Seligmann and portrayed him

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as a bit smug (Bignou mentioned close working relationships with Bernheim-Jeune, Georges Bernheim, Paul Guillaume, Hessel, and Hodebert in Paris, as well as Valentine Dudensing and John Kraushaar in New York),30 but Seligmann must have greenlighted an alliance as a regular correspondence ensued. The letters exchanged between Galerie Bignou and de Hauke & Co testify to joint purchases in co-shares, profit sharing, and cooperation on exhibition projects between Bignou, Reid & Lefevre, Knoedler, de Hauke, and Seligmann. This occasionally led to tangled transactions, as when a sale to John T. Spaulding followed the Redon exhibit at both Seligmann’s and Knoedler’s in New York in 1929, and the question of attributing the sales commission arose. Interestingly, Bignou was designated as the arbiter.31 They cornered the modern-art market as a result, as was the case when they agreed to share profits on all works by Roger de La Fresnaye from January 25, 1930, and planned a monographic show in Paris, London, and New York.32 Their cooperation only lasted from 1927 to 1930, when de Hauke & Co folded due to the Great Depression, however de Hauke continued to work with Seligmann, and Bignou with Knoedler, through the 1930s. The Seligmann and Knoedler firms, which already worked together before the First World War, continued to collaborate.33 Complex webs of allegiance rested on self-interest and trust, and an alliance between two dealers extended to their respective networks. Bignou’s association with Knoedler was part of a constellation encompassing Reid & Lefevre and Colnaghi in London; Bernheim-Jeune, Georges Bernheim, Vollard, Maurice Renou, and Pierre Colle in Paris; L’art moderne in Lucerne;34 Matthiesen in Berlin;35 Dudensing and Kraushaar in New York, etc. De Hauke’s association with Seligmann belonged to another constellation including Curt Valentin, Paul Rosenberg, Flechtheim, etc. Whereas these two constellations merged (up to a point, for a time), extant records comprise many references to competing dealers who needed to be kept at bay, outsmarted, and outmaneuvered. Alliances shifted also: Bignou would soon be seen as a competitor. For instance, Germain Seligmann wrote to Roland Balay of Knoedler on December 19, 1934, to inform him of a cable he sent to Paul Rosenberg regarding two Seurat paintings in the collection of Rolf de Maré.36 Seligmann and Knoedler were hoping to buy one of these canvases jointly with Rosenberg for 200,000 francs. The cable referred to Bignou’s purchase in October of de Maré’s Port de Honfleur by Seurat for that amount (which Bignou then sold to Albert C. Barnes, BF942). They expected Bignou to buy another as soon as his ship reached France and hoped Rosenberg would beat him to the punch. As if he didn’t have enough irons in the fire, in spring 1929 Bignou partnered with Jos Bernheim and Gaston Bernheim de Villers, proprietors of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, to buy controlling shares of the Galeries Georges Petit, with additional shares acquired by the larger-than-life American collector Chester Dale.37 Founded in 1846, this venerable gallery was Paul Durand-Ruel’s historical rival, with capacious exhibition and auction rooms at 8 rue de Sèze in Paris (9e).38 Under its new leadership, some of the most noteworthy exhibitions at Galeries Georges Petit (not counting auctions), were the inaugural show, “Cent ans de peinture française” (June 15–30, 1930), Max Jacob (December 1930), Swiss artists (February 1931), Scottish artists (March 1931), Oskar Kokoschka (March 1931), Matisse (June

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1931); Cuno Amiet (March 1932), Dali (May 1932), Picasso (June 1932), and Suzanne Valadon (October 1932), among others.39 Bignou brought to the partnership with Bernheim-Jeune—given prior arrangements of which he was the common denominator—alliances with Reid & Lefevre in London as well as Knoedler and Seligmann in New York, which led to the joint (and shifting) ownership of a considerable stock that they exhibited in turn.40 This was a powerful international consortium that ruled over the modern-art market for a few years. Adding to the international flavor, Bignou picked the French dealer of SwissBrazilian descent, Georges Frédéric Keller (1899–1981), as director of Galeries Georges Petit.41 Although unassuming, Keller was a powerful ally whom Bignou had known since the early 1920s, and loyal to the end. From 1923 to 1926, Keller had worked for Louis César Hodebert (1879–1932) of Galerie Barbazanges-Hodebert (109 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), then with Pierre Colle from 1926 to 1929 (29 rue Cambacérès). To illustrate Bignou’s early acquaintance with Keller, their network and the doors it opened, one could cite as an example Seurat’s Woman with a Monkey of 1884 (Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts), sold by Hodebert, Bernheim, and Bignou to Knoedler in October 1926, who sold it in 1928 to Cornelius J. Sullivan in New York. Through Hodebert, Keller had gained a formidable network of colleagues outside of Paris: they included McNeill Reid by 1922,42 the Independent Gallery in London,43 as well as Joseph Brummer,44 Pierre Matisse,45 and Knoedler in New York. In continental Europe they comprised various Belgian,46 German,47 and Swiss48 dealers, in addition to valuable contacts in Paris—galleries located near Bignou’s on rue La Boétie—such as Hessel (at 26)49; Georges Bernheim (at 40);50 and Paul Guillaume (at 59).51 And last but not least, Vollard, whom Keller introduced to Bignou. Hodebert catered to desirable Swiss,52 Scandinavian,53 British, and American collectors. Most notably, the legendary Albert C. Barnes was a client of Hodebert from 1922, and Keller had become the formidable collector’s “European secretary” and scout by 1927.54 Barnes’s patronage followed Keller when the latter was hired by Bignou in 1929. This was a mutually beneficial partnership that spanned the 1930s: Bignou and Keller gave Barnes access to invaluable stock (including Vollard’s), and the collector reciprocated by advertising his purchases from Bignou.55 It led to Barnes’s acquisition of about twenty paintings by Cézanne, and over thirty canvases by Renoir.56 As to Chester Dale’s decision to purchase “a block of the Georges Petit stock that was for sale,” it reflected his close working relationship with Bignou as much as it stemmed from a desire to bypass Parisian dealers’ markup by being one of them, as a shareholder in “one of the oldest and best known galleries in France, in fact in Europe.”57 Years later, when Dale sketched an account of his acquisitions of French art, which were extraordinary in terms of both quality and quantity, Bignou’s role was largely downplayed. Dale referred to the dealer who was instrumental in shaping his collection as “the man that dug up the pictures I wanted,” and “my particular friend among dealers at that time, I had practically brought him along from a small wholesaler into one of the outstanding dealers of Paris through my purchases from him.”58 In the same breath he recounted various instances when Bignou’s connections and resourcefulness enabled him to cinch these acquisitions, and many others when

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he took full advantage of the Great Depression to make absurdly low offers that French dealers could not afford to turn down, often through Bignou. On the other hand, Dale conceded that Bignou started the trend of cleaning and fitting nineteenth- and twentieth-century canvases in “magnificent old frames,” which considerably enhanced their appearance and later became customary. Among the artworks Dale gifted to the National Gallery of Art alone, the number of first-rate acquisitions with a Bignou provenance speaks for itself59: Bignou sales in 1927 include van Gogh’s Roulin’s Baby, Manet’s Madame Michel-Levy, Modigliani’s Girl in a Green Blouse and Madame Amédée, and Redon’s Evocation of Roussel. Bignou sales in 1928 include Cézanne’s The Artist’s Son, Paul, Modigliani’s Monsieur Deleu and Adrienne, and Rousseau’s Equatorial Jungle. Sales in 1929 include Courbet’s Portrait of a Young Girl, Fantin-Latour’s Still Life, van Gogh’s La Mousmé, Matisse’s Odalisque Seated with Arms Raised, Modigliani’s Chaim Soutine, and Vuillard’s Théodore Duret. Sales in 1930 include Corot’s Portrait of a Young Girl, Manet’s The Old Musician, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Rue des Moulins. Sales in 1931 include Corot’s Agostina, Derain’s Harlequin, Lautrec’s Maxime Dethomas, Renoir’s Girl with a Watering Can, and Van Gogh’s Olive Orchard. Sales in 1933 include Daumier’s Wandering Saltimbanques and Renoir’s Diana. Clearly Dale acquired paintings of the highest caliber because Bignou procured them—museum-quality canvases that are universally regarded as priceless today. Parenthetically it should be noted that at this time Chester Dale was a trustee of the Museum of French Art in New York, which essentially functioned as a Kunsthalle in that it mounted shows but had no collection.60 His wife, Maud Dale, was chairman of its exhibition committee and curated a series of remarkable exhibitions of modern art during her tenure, from 1929 to 1932, at exactly the time when the fledgling Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was beginning to show the same artists.61 Bignou’s sales to other American collectors from the 1920s to the 1940s include, for instance, van Gogh’s Postman Joseph Roulin (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) in 1928 to Robert Treat Paine II; Seurat’s Circus Sideshow (The Met) in 1932 to Stephen C. Clark; Gauguin’s Tahitian Landscape (The Met) in 1935 to Marshall Field; Rousseau’s The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre (The Met) in 1936 to Field; Renoir’s Portrait of Tilla Durieux (The Met) in 1935 to Stephen C. Clark; Matisse’s Bather (MoMA) in 1935 to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller; Seurat’s Bouquet (Fogg Art Museum) in 1940 to Maurice Wertheim; Daumier’s Advice to a Young Artist (National Gallery of Art) in 1941 to Duncan Phillips; and La Fresnaye’s Artillery (The Met) in 1943 to Samuel and Florene Marx. Some works were sold by Bignou directly to museums, such as Picasso’s La Vie to the Rhode Island School of Design in 1937 (now Cleveland Museum of Art),62 Lautrec’s At the Café La Mie to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1940, or Joan Miró’s Dutch Interior I to MoMA in 1945. Others remained in Bignou’s hands for a while before landing in a museum, such as Juan Gris’s Portrait of Picasso (Art Institute of Chicago), in his private collection from 1930 to 1946. These victories were hard-won: The effects of the 1929 stock-market crash were often mentioned in 1930s correspondence, and modern art suffered especially. Many collectors needed to sell, but few dealers could buy. In a letter to Bignou dated January 8, 1931, for instance, Henschel wrote from New York: “Since you have left, we have not sold any of

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the pictures in which you have an interest. It continues to be very hard to do business, and all we have sold have been in the fine Old Masters.”63 From Paris, Bignou wrote on January 8, 1932: “Berlin is broken, London is down, and Paris almost desperate.”64 In a letter to Bignou dated March 4, 1932, Henschel noted: “I am still of the opinion that it is well to liquidate as much as possible, and I am not at all anxious to make any new purchases. What little business has been done has been at very reduced prices.”65 On May 20, 1932, Henschel assessed: “Conditions here are probably much worse than they are in Europe; in any event, the atmosphere is. You can buy good pictures here very cheap if you are willing to put up the cash. It is absolutely useless, however, buying pictures if there is hardly any possibility of selling them irrespective of price.”66 This was a watershed moment; dealers’ correspondence is peppered with such remarks throughout the 1930s.67 Yet in the three years that the new venture lasted before the Great Depression forced it to fold,68 the Petit gallery appears to have been successful. Many of Barnes’s Matisses have a Bignou provenance from those years, and about half were acquired through the Galeries Georges Petit.69 The gallery also organized some of the most groundbreaking modern-art exhibitions of the interwar period, namely, the Matisse exhibition of 1931 [Figure 13.1],70 and the Picasso retrospective of 1932.71

Figure 13.1  Dinner in honor of Henri Matisse, Galeries Georges Petit, June 16, 1931. Bignou presiding at the left. Also present, aside from the artist (middle right): Suzanne and Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Maude and Chester Dale, Marguerite Duthuit, Pierre Matisse, Duncan MacDonald, A. J. McNeill Reid, and Georges F. Keller. Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Gallery Archives, 28C8, Chester Dale Papers. © 2020 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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It is worth noting that in 1931, when the director of the newly founded MoMA, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., approached Picasso and his primary dealer, Paul Rosenberg, regarding his plan for a Picasso retrospective in New York, the artist opted to support Bignou’s retrospective at Petit instead, forcing Barr to delay his project until 1939.72 In the summer of 1932, his wife Margaret Scolari Barr traveled to Paris by herself (Barr being sick) and went to the Galeries Georges Petit repeatedly, writing home extensively about the Picasso exhibition and her conversations with Bignou and others.73 She tried to pin down who the lenders were, and her annotations on installation photographs and in her copy of the catalogue were quite helpful to Barr a few years later—and are a godsend for scholars today. Matisse was less involved than Picasso in the selection of artworks, but Bignou’s hands-on approach was key in each case. The latter supervised all the logistics, although he enlisted the help of various colleagues: The initial checklist of the Picasso retrospective shows that by April 1932 the loan requests were to be initiated by Bignou, Colle, Picasso, and Rosenberg for French collectors, and by Carl Einstein, Flechtheim, and Keller for German and Swiss collectors.74 Since Bignou was working closely with Henschel at the time, the Knoedler gallery was put in charge of shipping the designated American loans from New York and back for both the Matisse and Picasso exhibitions.75 Most artworks were sent to Switzerland before they could be returned to the lenders. The Matisse exhibition was shown at the Kunsthalle Basel, and the Picasso show was sent to the Kunsthaus in Zurich – with some additions.76 It should be underlined here that Matisse’s 1931 retrospective at MoMA followed on the heels of Bignou’s show (Paris and Basel),77 and that Bignou’s 1932 Picasso exhibition shown in Zurich was the artist’s first museum retrospective.78 Bignou did not just scout and sell art; he produced first-rate exhibitions that inspired Barr; museum-quality shows that were veritable curatorial tours de force [Figure 13.2]. Despite such achievements, and the widest access possible to buyers worldwide, the Great Depression forced the shareholders to liquidate the Galeries Georges Petit in December 1932 and sell their stock.79 Bignou continued to run his gallery on rue la Boétie, with Keller at his side, relying more than ever on his partnership with Reid & Lefevre.80 He traveled between France, Britain, and the United States for as long as he was able, but selling French art was an uphill battle.81 Bignou had an edge during the Depression era, however, in that he secured privileged access to the legendary stock of the famously gruff Vollard. Over the years Keller had built a special relationship with Vollard, and as a result he and Bignou were able to slowly convince him to show artworks that had been stashed away for decades.82 Vollard, having been active since 1893 and favoring publishing over the trade by the 1930s, let himself be convinced of the advantages of having Bignou take some of that load off his shoulders and became the latter’s primary source in those years.83 By May 1932, Vollard had agreed to exhibit his limited editions of prints and books at Reid & Lefevre in London and at Galeries Georges Petit in Paris, as well as to an exhibition of the same, plus his private collection, at Knoedler in New York in March of the following year.84 Vollard lost heart, however, as the Depression negatively impacted the market. In a letter to Bignou dated January 1, 1933, he offered this rebuke to the idea of shipping an exhibition to America:

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Figure 13.2  Henri Matisse and Etienne Bignou at the Matisse exhibition, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1931. Photo © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images. © 2020 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

These last few days I saw various people who, without prompting, strongly advised me against pursuing the American project you proposed. Some Americans even volunteered that the situation in the U.S. is getting worse and worse and that all Americans want to do is sell, which they cannot do in the U.S. This was confirmed in a note I saw, in the Gazette de l’Hôtel Drouot I think, according to which important collections will be sent to Europe to this effect. This being the case, after due consideration, I think one would be well advised to wait for better days. That would not prevent us from discussing possible business arrangements if any Americans capable of making purchases were to come to Paris.85

Vollard was thus reverting to his default position, which was to wait for clients to show up, since, according to Walter Pach, his maxim was that pictures cannot be sold, they must sell themselves.86 Bignou of course did not take no for an answer, although it was a welcome delay as the Georges Petit liquidation sales took up most of that year. In the end the Vollard exhibition took place in 1933 as originally planned, but in November. It was announced in the press by the end of October, then abundantly reviewed.87 As the Journal de bord de la Compagnie générale transtlatique reveals, Bignou was “Conseiller du Commerce Extérieur de la France” (Foreign Trade Advisor to France), and it is as such that he traveled on the Ile-de-France with Vollard’s precious artworks, arriving in New York on October 31 [Figure 13.3].88

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Figure 13.3  Bignou during his return journey on the Ile-de-France (sitting at center left, under the large oval painting La chasse à courre by Léon Voguet and Eddy Legrand in the dining room designed by Pierre Patout), December 16, 1933, after the exhibition of Vollard’s collection in New York. Fonds Etienne Bignou, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © RMNGrand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

The exhibition “Paintings from the Ambroise Vollard Collection” was shown at the Knoedler Gallery in New York from November 6 to December 3, 1933.89 It comprised forty paintings, including twelve Cézannes (such as the Grandes Baigneuses acquired by Barnes); seventeen Renoirs (such as the Portrait of Vollard in Torero Costume, private collection, Tokyo); Rousseau’s The Dream (MoMA); four Degas; one painting each by Cassatt, Bonnard, and Rouault; and two Fauve views of London by Derain; and it was accompanied by a catalogue with prefaces by Barnes and Bignou. It was also shown at the Arts and Craft Club in Detroit (December 11, 1933 through January), where Bignou gave a talk.90 On November 15, an interview by the National Broadcasting Co at Radio City in New York marking the momentous occasion promised to reveal “the real Vollard through the personality of one of his best friends, Mr. Etienne Bignou.” Six years after the Feuilles Volantes item, Bignou’s triumphs were once again recorded in an interview, introduced thus: It was not until this year that Mr. Bignou persuaded Vollard to allow the best part of his collection to be publicly shown … And so for the first time anywhere in the world, the people of New York have the opportunity of viewing the great

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masterpieces of the outstanding modern French artists of the 19th century at the Knoedler Galleries. All this has been accomplished by the enterprising efforts and great courage of Mr. Bignou, whom we are privileged to have as our guest today.91

Bignou underlined Vollard’s efforts in the promotion of contemporary art by the 1890s and seized the opportunity to hail his most important patrons, noting the decades-long westward movement of French art: Thanks to Mr. Durand-Ruel’s efforts, American collectors were allowed to acquire these works as early as the 1890s. This impetus was greatly increased after the war and for the last 15 years, Paris has been drained of its treasures by your countrymen. Collections of such importance as the unique Barnes Foundation in Merion has been assembled in the last 30 years by the unceasing intelligent efforts of Dr. Barnes. And just as Vollard used Cézanne and Renoir as the pillars of his collection, so did Dr. Barnes. Today this collection comprises over 75 Cézannes and more than 160 Renoirs, and cannot be equaled in the world … And the Chester Dale collection formed in recent years has become one of the most representative of the French school. There is no doubt that when European art students of the future desire to know the painters of their ancestors, they will have to journey to the United States.92

In response to the market trend, in 1934 Bignou opened an eponymous gallery in New York, whose letterhead and ads also listed the Paris address. Located in the new Rolls-Royce Building at 32 East 57 Street, the Bignou Gallery counted MacDonald as President, Keller as Director, and Margaret Sharkey as secretary.93 As always Reid & Lefevre was involved, paying $2,500 per annum toward New York expenses in exchange for 50 percent of gross profits on sales.94 The space was inaugurated on March 4, 1935, with the exhibition “A NineteenthCentury Selection,” comprising works by Cézanne, Corot, Gauguin, van Gogh, Renoir, and Seurat.95 In his review, Edward Alden Jewell reminded his readers that Bignou had organized exhibitions for the Knoedler galleries from 1928 to 1933—most recently the Vollard Collection.96 Reviews of Bignou’s activities by Jewell and Howard Devree appeared in the New York Times until 1948—amounting to twenty years of continual exhibition programming in New York alone. Other exhibitions of nineteenth-century French paintings followed,97 as well as notable solo shows of modern artists including Bonnard (1946), Dali (1945, 1947), Derain (1936), Dufy (1938, 1942, 1943), Lurçat (1939, 1942, 1944, 1946), Matisse (1948), Ozenfant (1941), Picasso (1939, 1941), Rouault (1940), Sicard (1947), and Utrillo (1937, 1940), not to mention group shows. In a letter to Gertrude Stein dated April 13, 1936, Carl Van Vechten reported with emphasis that “the most exciting event in years is the show Madame Cuttoli is giving at the Bignou Galleries of Beauvais tapestries designed by Matisse, Picasso, Leger, Braque, and above all Rouault.”98 Bignou’s artists, Lurçat and Dufy, were at the center of the tapestry revival. “Modern French Tapestries” in 1936 and “Tragic Painters” in 1938 (van Gogh, Modigliani, Pascin, Rouault, Soutine, and Utrillo) garnered

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extensive press coverage.99 Several Barnes Foundation acquisitions coincided with Bignou exhibitions in New York, such as tapestries by Rouault (The Little Family, 01.27.01) and Picasso (Secrets, 01.27.02) in 1936; paintings by Luigi Settanni (BF981 & 983) in 1940; a painting by Liz Clarke (BF992) in 1943; and a canvas by Tilly Losch (BF196) in 1944. But one of Bignou’s most flamboyant coups was a joint trip to America with Vollard in 1936, while the ripple effects of the Depression lingered. Bignou somehow convinced Vollard to make his first and only trip to the United States, at 70, on the occasion of the opening of a Cézanne exhibition at the Bignou Gallery (November through December, 30 paintings).100 They journeyed together on the Ile-de-France, reaching New York on October 27.101 Vollard and Barnes gave talks at the Bignou Gallery on October 28 and November 5, as well as the Barnes Foundation on November 8, and a radio interview on WINS followed two days later. Vollard’s trip occurred on the heels of Monroe Wheeler’s exhibition “Modern Painters and Sculptors as Illustrators” at MoMA (April 27– September 2, 1936), whose catalogue was dedicated to Vollard as preeminent publisher and lender—although Vollard missed it.102 In addition to taking Vollard to Merion, Bignou took him to Chester and Maud Dale’s place, among others.103 Almost three decades later, Vollard’s friend, Marie Dormoy, recounted that the New York trip had been organized by the art dealer Bignou for his own publicity rather than for Vollard’s pleasure and glory. He was shown around and taken to museums and famous collections that were of no interest to him, as he only cared about his own stock. Upon his return, when asked what he saw or did, he responded with some bitterness: “They paraded me around like a donkey who plays the trumpet.”104

If Dormoy’s take on this trip truly echoed Vollard’s opinion (rather than her own distaste for entrepreneurial chutzpah), it was arguably more a reflection of the old man’s social awkwardness than evidence of shameless self-promotion on the part of Bignou. The latter can hardly be blamed for facilitating sales from which both profited, or for acquainting Vollard with some of the best collections of the time—and Vollard himself, in fact, expressed elation and gratitude105 [Figure 13.4]. Evidently Bignou was not averse to publicity as a business strategy and was the quintessential entrepreneur, while Vollard exemplified the romantic notion of a selfless impresario, styled as a collector or a patron.106 Vollard appeared to neither want nor need to sell, although the art trade was his profession, whereas Bignou readily embraced his vocation.107 At any rate, this trip was an anomaly in Vollard’s career. Bignou’s promotion of French art abroad was recognized soon afterwards, when he was awarded the order of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur on February 4, 1937, at the recommendation of the minister of commerce, Paul Bastid.108 Bignou and Vollard continued to work together until the latter’s death in 1939.109 In the ensuing decade, perhaps the most high-profile shows at Bignou’s New York gallery were displays of Dali’s work in 1945 and 1947—such as the painting Uranium and Atomica Melancholia Idyll (Museo Nacional Reina Sofia) with which the artist was

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Figure 13.4  Photograph of Ambroise Vollard dedicated by the latter to Etienne Bignou: “To he who loves painting so much/To Etienne Bignou.” Fonds Etienne Bignou, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. © Estate of Thérèse Bonney/Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, CA. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

photographed on site and which he advertised in the “Dali News” issue of November 20, 1945 (of which a second and last issue came out on the occasion of Bignou’s 1947 Dali show).110 Examples of the New York gallery’s sales include Miró’s Dutch Interior I in December 1945 to MoMA, and Bonnard’s The Bathroom in December 1946 to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Marx, Chicago (MoMA). Parenthetically, when the Bignou Gallery was about to close, in January 1949, Keller sold his large Matisse, The Red Studio, to MoMA.

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Health problems starting in the fall of 1936 prevented Bignou from traveling henceforth, but he remained active in Paris (with his son Michel in the 1940s111) while Keller ran the Bignou Gallery in New York. MacDonald and Keller were at the helm during the war, the armistice placing Bignou in enemy territory from 1940 and cutting him off from Britain and America. Sale profits were shared equally among the three men although Bignou’s capital, deposited in bank accounts in New York and London, was not accessible to him during the war.112 The New York gallery closed on January 30, 1949, and after a very productive and eventful life, Bignou died on December 12, 1950.113 With galleries in Paris and New York and enviable ties with major dealers and important collectors in France and abroad, Bignou was a force to be reckoned with in the interwar years. However his international reputation in the 1920s and 1930s is inversely proportionate to the relative obscurity into which he fell afterward.114 This downfall may have in part resulted from his unfortunate if tenuous connection with the disreputable dealer Martin Fabiani:115 After Vollard’s death in July 1939, his estate was divided between his siblings (including Lucien Vollard) and his long-time friend, Mme de Galea. Bignou was the designated expert for de Galea; Fabiani was the expert for the Vollard heirs; and that was the extent of their acquaintance until the estate was divvied up. Lucien then entrusted the liquidation of his share to Fabiani and they devised a profit-sharing agreement with the Bignou Gallery in New York and Reid & Lefevre in London. This perfectly legitimate arrangement stemmed from a long-standing Vollard–Bignou relationship and a reasonable desire to get the art out of continental Europe, as war was looming large. However, when Fabiani attempted to send the pictures (702 artworks by Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Bonnard, etc.) to the Bignou Gallery from Lisbon on the SS Excalibur in September 1940, the shipment was intercepted as enemy property by the British Admiralty in Bermuda, as France was by then under military occupation by the Nazis.116 The artworks were seized and held at the National Gallery of Canada for the duration of the war.117 After this debacle, Fabiani’s wartime schemes led to an order for his arrest for being a collaborationist in September 1945, while he absconded to London. Bignou’s reputation was undeservedly tainted by association. Bignou’s name also appears in connection with the liquidation of Nazi-looted Bernheim-Jeune artworks118 which were offered to the Galerie Tanner in Zurich for one million francs.119 Among those involved in the deal were Carl Montag, who was instrumental in the sale of looted pictures to Swiss clients (and who had dealt with Bignou regarding the Zurich venue of the 1932 Picasso retrospective), and Adolf Wüster who, as artistic advisor to the German Legation in Paris, was the leading Nazi intermediary in the Parisian art market. Bignou’s exact role is unclear, and any alleged involvement is puzzling given his history with Bernheim-Jeune.120 But Bignou unquestionably sold paintings to German museums during the Nazi Occupation of France, as recorded in the Schenker papers and the Art Looting Investigation Unit’s interrogation reports produced by the OSS.121 Bignou in fact voluntarily reported such sales (five paintings and one drawing) to the French authorities in February 1945.122 A large dossier documents the thorough postwar investigation that ensued, which shows that Bignou was sentenced to pay a hefty fine for wartime profiteering by the Comité de confiscation des profits illicites in 1947. The

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Comité national interprofessionnel d’épuration, however, which conducted its own inquiry, exonerated Bignou from any suspected collaboration on March 24, 1947, which in turn considerably lowered the aforementioned fine.123 On the one hand, German documents show that Bignou availed himself of a coveted pass that allowed him to drive his automobile freely throughout occupied France to transport paintings in the context of his work with the Munich dealer Eugen Bruschwiler124—which can be construed as evidence of willing collaboration or ascribed to intimidation. On the other hand, Resistance hero Henri Storoge testified that Bignou provided transport and liaison services as member of the sixth section of Ceux de la Résistance (CDLR). Parsing the contents of the “illicit profits” file would merit a detailed analysis but the short of it is that the allegation that Bignou was a shameless profiteer faltered between 1947 and 1949. What appears to have been suspicious and offensive in the investigators’ eyes was essentially Bignou’s sizable wealth—demonstrably from prior business in Britain and America—which far outweighed his wartime sales. On July 14, 1949, Bignou wrote a fourteen-page letter debunking the accusations leveled against him, explaining that notwithstanding his self-reported sales to German museums during the Occupation, which were coerced and kept to the strict minimum, he worked for the Resistance at the peril of his life and received several medals for his services. Perhaps he was pressured by Wüster and others, or perhaps the fact that he lost his prior sources of income when all contact with Britain and America was severed led him to trade with the enemy.125 The German Occupation of France produced countless instances of ambiguous or fluid allegiance: collaboration with the Germans sometimes went hand in hand with helping the Resistance as a way of hedging one’s bets, reconciling patriotism with self-interest, attaining some degree of agency, or simply surviving.126 Setting aside the five chaotic war years, Bignou’s career is worth remembering as emblematic of the westward movement of artworks in the two decades prior. As foreign trade became increasingly unavoidable, then absolutely necessary, Bignou flew back and forth between Paris, London, and Glasgow several times a year from the early 1920s through the 1930s, and sailed to New York from Le Havre or Cherbourg twice a year from 1928 to 1936, in the spring and fall.127 Sailing on legendary ocean liners such as the lavish SS Paris (with the rare luxury of private telephones in first class), the stylish SS Ile-de-France (with superb Art Deco design), the modern SS Champlain, the speedy SS Bremen, or the imposing SS Majestic, represented a week-long journey each way with the responsibility of precious crates and a plethora of meetings lined up. Because he was willing and able to spend so much time away from home, the ubiquitous Bignou facilitated and sustained seminal transatlantic alliances; he personified the Paris–London–New York network. Most extant photographs show the gregarious Bignou in a cordial mood—presiding at a banquet marking the opening of an exhibition at Georges Petit [Figure 13.1]; sharing a festive meal with friends aboard the Ile-de-France [Figure 13.3]; or shaking a cocktail in his dry bar [Figure 13.5]—but the F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque character Zervos conjured up in 1927 perhaps best captures the man:

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Figure 13.5  Etienne Bignou in his dry bar (business address) before it was decorated by Picasso, Lurçat, Dufy, Braque. Unidentified photographer. Chester Dale papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photo courtesy of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In the corporation of art dealers, Etienne Bignou is the epitome of the contemporary man. As soon as he awakens, after a quick glance at the Times, the Journal des Débats, L’Humanité, having wolfed down his tea he throws some punches, swims some lapses, hits a few tennis balls, drives his automobile like a race car, is off to Scotland as if he were sauntering to the Bois [de Boulogne]. His breathtaking conversation, which leaves his interlocutor breathless, jumps from motorcars to the exchange rate, from currency to Cachin, from Cachin to Clouet, from a difficult expertise to a fine culinary observation, so much so that were it not for his paintings, one would swear never to see him again for the sake of self-preservation.128

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But Bignou’s paintings were at the core of it all, of course. The quintessential modern man had elected to promote the best French modernism had to offer, far and wide, and did it with zest and panache. His own galleries, and those he impacted, were indeed the antechambers of museums.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

Jean Lurçat to Maud and Chester Dale, n.d. (Lurçat papers, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington DC). Willy Peploe to his mother, June 7, 1936 (Archives of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh). The painter Samuel J. Peploe’s son, Willy, was salesman at Reid & Lefevre in 1936–39, then director in 1949–66. Greenfeld 1987: 180. Abin 1932: n.p. Jensen 1994: 61 wrote about Georges Petit that “he would wait, according to Zola, for the Americans to arrive in Paris every May. What he bought for 10,000 francs, he sold for 40,000 … Waiting for the spring tide of Americans, Petit dealt in sure things, certified by history or by the immediate reputation of the Salon.” For his part, Vollard lent to foreign dealers early on—Cassirer in Berlin (1904), Miethke in Vienna (1907), the Grafton Gallery in London (1910), and the Armory Show in New York (1913)— but not as systematically as Bignou. Vollard mostly advertised his paintings outside of Paris via photographic reproductions (see Rabinow 2006: 21, 264). See Sfakianaki 2015: 75–90. Further evidence is the creation of the Syndicat des Éditeurs d’Art et Négociants en Tableaux Modernes in 1925, of which Josse BernheimJeune was president, Paul Rosenberg and Schoeller, vice presidents; Hodebert, treasurer, Bignou, secretary; Durand-Ruel, Georges Bernheim, Jos Hessel, Allard, Brame, Davey, members. “Un nouveau syndicat d’art moderne,” Le Bulletin de la vie artistique, October 1, 1925: 434–5. Zervos 1927: 1–2 (my translation). The Seurat and Cézannes mentioned are at the Barnes Foundation. See above, chapter by Frances Fowle on Reid & Lefevre. Etat civil de Paris, Archives de Paris,10th arrondissement. Zervos 1927: 1; Cooper 1976: 17. By the early 1920s the Galerie Bignou letterhead still said “Ancienne Maison Th. Bonjean.” See Bignou invoice dated October 14, 1922, Archives Galerie BarbazangesHodebert, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Hereafter Barbazanges archives. American Art News 12, no. 14, January 10, 1914: 1–12. Parenthetically, Watson 1992: 236 mentions that Jacques Bonjean (1899–1990) was Bignou’s uncle. Galerie Jacques Bonjean at 34 rue La Boétie consisted in an association with Christian Dior (1928– 31) and Pierre Colle (1931–35); listed in Gee 1981: 231. Charles Vrancken, who worked for Bignou in the 1920s and 1930s, was presumably his brother-in-law. Cooper 1976: 10. Zervos 1927: 1; Cooper 1976: 18. MacDonald joined Lefevre as a partner in May 1925, coming from Aitken, Dott & Son. The firm was later known as The Lefevre Gallery and Reid & Lefevre. The latter will be used here.

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18 Illustrated in Zervos 1927: 1; Denizeau 1998: 304, no. 1926–44. 19 Lafaille 1972–7, vol. 3, nos. 1339 (1934), 1340 (1933), 1341 (1938). Dufy also painted Bignou’s country house, Le Manoir du Vallon in Normandy, several times in the 1930s. 20 Faux 1962: 86 (my translation). Denizeau places their encounter in 1920; Lurçat in 1924. 21 Letter from Lurçat to Bignou c. 1931–32, quoted in Denizeau 1998. Bignou organized Lurçat exhibitions in his New York gallery in 1939, 1944, and 1946. 22 Henschel was Michel Knoedler’s grandson. Knoedler was the main source of American collectors such as Henry Clay Frick and Paul Mellon before the First World War, beating Duveen and Wildenstein. The Paris branch of Knoedler, managed by George Davey, was at 17 Place Vendôme until 1932, then 22 rue des Capucines. 23 Document dated November 20, 1929, and affidavit of October 31, 1931, by attorney Ewing Everett of Miller & Chevalier in answer to a query as to whether Bignou ought to pay income tax in the United States. (Knoedler records, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, RI 2012-M-54, Correspondence, New York, 1931, Box 551. Hereafter cited as Knoedler records.) 24 Invoice dated March 31, 1933 (Knoedler records, correspondence, New York, 1933, Box 583). 25 For purchase, sale, and half share with Knoedler, see Paintings Sold, Reid & Lefevre records, Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, Tate Britain, London, TGA 2002/11, Box 283. Hereafter cited as Lefevre records. A letter dated October 15, 1929, from Bignou documents his acquisition of the painting from Alfred Gold (Lefevre records, Box 228). 26 By 1929–30 Bignou was buying artworks from Le Centaure in Brussels, Thannhauser in Berlin and Lucerne, as well as Paul Cassirer, Flechtheim, Alfred Gold, and Hugo Perls, in Berlin (Lefevre records, B180, F2). 27 On de Hauke, see Chauffour 2017. 28 de Hauke managed several Seligmann subsidiaries, namely, the International Contemporary Art Company, Inc. (1926–28), de Hauke and Co Inc. (1929–30), and Modern Paintings, Inc. (1931), and worked for Seligmann through the 1930s (see Jacques Seligmann & Co Records, Archives of American Art, Series 9, de Hauke papers, Boxes 382–416. Hereafter cited as “Seligmann records”). 29 Jacques Seligmann was already actively selling French art in New York by the First World War. J. P. Morgan was his client by 1897. 30 Memo dated February 2, 1928 (Seligmann records, B392, F3). 31 Correspondence between Germain Seligmann and Bignou, March 6 and 19, 1929; March 13, December 13, 24, 1930 (Seligmann records). 32 de Hauke to Bignou, January 27, 1930 (Seligmann records). By December only a London show in March 1931 still stood. 33 For instance, in 1912, when Jacques Seligmann bought the house the British collector Sir Richard Wallace, then his heir Sir John Murray Scott, owned at 2 rue Laffitte, and all its contents outright (eighteenth-century French decorative arts and paintings), Seligmann let Roland Knoedler have the paintings and drawings.However rivalry and resentment were never far: when Seligmann & Co purchased the Jacques Doucet collection in September 1937, M. Knoedler & Co was offered a half share, but Henschel turned it down as he deemed the “cubist and abstract pictures” not desirable nor sellable (Knoedler records, correspondence, November 9 and 16, 1937). He was subsequently bitter when Seligmann sold Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to MoMA in 1939 (Knoedler records, memo, December 8, 1939).

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34 L’ Art Moderne in Lucerne, Paul Vallotton in Lausanne, and G. Tanner in Zurich were Bernheim-Jeune branches in Switzerland. L’ Art moderne was liquidated and its stock sold at Hotel Drouot, June 20, 1935. 35 Franz Zatzenstein-Matthiesen opened Galerie Matthiesen in Berlin in 1923—where he exhibited Lautrec (1924), Daumier (1926), and Manet (1928)—and was based in London after 1933. 36 Knoedler records, New York correspondence, B15, F2 & F3 (Se 1934). 37 They acquired the gallery from the families of co-owners Georges Petit and Alfred Bergaud. See René Brecy, “Chronique des Arts,” L’Action française, July 6, 1930: 5; Journal des Finances 63, no. 47, November 21, 1930: 935; Dale 1931: 239. 38 The Petit Gallery (active 1846–1933), founded by Francis Petit (active 1846–77), was taken over at his death by his son Georges (1856–1921), who opened the luxurious Galeries Georges Petit on rue de Sèze in 1882. While selling the most successful Salon painters usually found at Boussod & Valadon, he also competed with DurandRuel by inviting the Impressionists to partake in the annual exhibitions of his “Société internationale de Peinture,” and held important auction sales (Chocquet in 1899; Degas in 1918). For a comprehensive list of Galeries Georges Petit exhibitions, see Sanchez 2011 (4 vols.). 39 Sanchez 2011, III: 129–34. 40 One example is Picasso’s Nude Standing by the Sea of 1929 (The Met), sourced by Bignou, co-owned by Reid & Lefevre and Knoedler, which was exhibited in “Cent ans de peinture française,” Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1930, no. 56; “Abstractions of Picasso,” Valentine Gallery, New York, 1931, no. 15; “Thirty Years of Pablo Picasso,” Reid & Lefevre, London, 1931, no. 31; “Exposition Picasso,” Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1932, no. 187; “Picasso Retrospective,” Kunsthaus Zürich, 1932, no. 187; then lent to “Cubism and Abstract Art,” MoMA, New York, 1936, no. 231; and “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism,” MoMA, 1936–37, no. 257 (as “Metamorphosis,” lent by Bignou Gallery, New York). 41 See Kuthy 1998: 60–1. 42 See Barbazanges archives; Cooper 1976: 21; Kuthy 1998: 82. 43 Barbazanges conceded full monopoly over Charles Despiau’s sculpture in Britain to the Independent Gallery (Barbazanges archives). 44 Joseph Brummer organized a Despiau exhibition in New York in November– December 1927 through Hodebert loans. There are several 1927–28 letters from Joseph Brummer (Barbazanges archives) regarding sales and additional commissions of Despiau bronzes, including the Washington DC collector Eugene Meyer’s wish to have a portrait of his wife done by Despiau. 45 Pierre Matisse, Henri Matisse’s son, briefly apprenticed with Hodebert then moved to New York in 1924, where he worked as a scout for Valentine Dudensing for several years. In 1931 he opened his own gallery in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street. Note that in 1928 the Valentine Gallery gave Lurçat his first exhibition in the United States, undoubtedly through Bignou. See also letter dated July 31, 1931, regarding Dufy works; correspondence of February 5 and 9, 1932 re. the Depression; January 24, 1933, re. the closing of Galeries G. Petit; May 5, 1934 re. Matisse debt on Lurçat and Dufy works (Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, The Morgan Library, New York, B93, F43; hereafter cited as PMGA). 46 Walter Schwarzenberg of Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels (Barbazanges archives). 47 Letter dated January 13, 1927, from McNeil Reid to Hodebert re. Berlin dealers Alfred Gold, Hugo Perls, and Francis Mathiessen. Also extant letters from

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L. W. Gutbier of Galerie Ernst Arnold of Dresden, May 22, 1925, and July 4 and 7, 1928; invoice to Gallery Flechtheim, Berlin, November 5, 1926; letter of January 10, 1928, about a Courbet exhibition in Berlin; “Comptes courants,” October 31, 1929 (Barbazanges archives). Letter from Vallotton, Lausanne, November 7, 1923; and Tanner, Zurich, January 8, 1925, and October 31, 1927 (Barbazanges archives). Hessel provided financial backing to Hodebert, made his stock available, and acted as consultant in exchange for a 10-percent cut on all sales. See contract dated April 30, 1919 (Barbazanges archives). See transfer of ownership of Galerie Barbazanges-Hodebert to Georges Bernheim, March 17, 1928, 500,000 francs for the premises and 700,000 francs for the gallery stock (Barbazanges archives). Keller bought African art from Guillaume for years. See Guillaume letters, 1925 and 1928, Barbazanges archives. Also evidence of transactions with Pierre Loeb, Berthe Weill, Leon Marseille, and Charles Vildrac. Letter from Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur, July 8, 1925 (Barbazanges archives). Herman Heilbuth, Copenhagen, list of works with 1921 vs 1924 prices. Letter from Gösta Olson, Svensk Franska Konstgalleriet, November 3, 1924. Christian Tetzen Lund, Copenhagen, appears in an undated list of creditors, associated with 200,000 francs, Bignou with 158,250; Barbazanges 20,000; Hessel, 30,554; G. Bernheim 130,000; de Coster 150,000; Laroche 154,200 (Barbazanges archives). Greenfeld 1987: 178–81. According to the current state of research at the Barnes Foundation, 143 objects were acquired through Paul Guillaume (until the latter and Barnes had a falling out), and roughly 80 through Bignou/Keller. I thank Robin Craren for kindly answering my questions. “Barnes Acquires Two Renoir Works,” New York Times, April 6, 1935: 11, announced his acquisition of Henriot Family (BF949) from the new Bignou Gallery at 32 East 57 Street, and Portrait of Jeanne Durand-Ruel (BF950) from Durand Ruel gallery at 12 East 57 St. See also “Art Notes: Two Cézanne Pictures,” New York Times, November 26, 1936: 32, re. Barnes’s acquisition of Les Sables rouges (BF218). They include Cézanne’s Léda and the Swan (BF36), The Farm at the Jas de Bouffan (BF188), The Drinker (BF189), Bibemus (BF218), Bathers at Rest (BF906), Still Life (BF910), Young Man and Skull (BF929), Large Bathers (BF934), Chestnut Tress (BF939), Four Bathers (BF951), and Bathers (BF1179); as well as Renoir’s Bathers in the Forest (BF901), Five Bathers (BF902), The Source (BF908), Young Woman with Rose (BF920), Claude Renoir (BF935), Woman with Fan (BF938), Bathers (BF945) Henriot Family (BF949), and Portrait of a Man (BF987), among others. Chester Dale typescript, p. 19, 1959 retype of 1953 version (Dale records, Archives of American Art, microfilm reel 3969). Chester Dale typescript, pp. 19 and 31, 1959 retype of 1953 version; idem. Bignou brokered these sales. In some cases he had no property interest but got a sales commission; in other cases he may have owned shares or owned the work outright. Founded in 1911 at 599 Fifth Avenue as part of the French Institute in the United States; located at 22 East 60 Street from 1926. The Museum of French Art featured Lautrec (1922), Redon (1922), “100 Years of French Portraits” (1928), “Portraits of Women” (1931), Picasso-Braque-Léger (1931), “Degas and his Tradition” (1931), “Renoir and his Tradition” (1931), Fantin-Latour (1932), and Derain-Vlaminck (1932). Maud Dale was awarded the Legion d’honneur in 1931 for promoting French art. (Maud Dale Files, Chester Dale Papers, Archives,

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National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Record Group 28.) Bignou’s role in this regard merits to be studied given that Parisian modernism was largely sourced through Bignou in New York then, especially where Maud and Chester Dale were concerned. 62 La Vie, insured for $17,000 when it was lent by Bignou to the 1932 Picasso retrospective, was sold through Reid & Lefevre to the Rhode Island School of Design for $22,500 in 1937. When RISD put it up for sale a few years later, it was purchased for $18,000 by Seligmann in 1944, and sold for $34,000 in 1945 to the Cleveland Museum. 63 Knoedler records, Correspondence, New York, 1931, Box 551. 64 Knoedler records, Correspondence, New York, 1932, Box 568. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 In a letter to Henschel of December 30, 1937, Bignou wrote: “I have naturally been much concerned about the Wall Street conditions, but having always been an optimistic about the eventual American situation, and as much as I regret the present market depression, I cannot help being sure of an eventual good outcome.” Knoedler records, Box 658. 68 Galeries Georges Petit closed on December 31, 1932, as per letter from Bignou to Pierre Matisse, January 24, 1933 (PMGA B93-F43). 69 Albert C. Barnes acquired the following Matisse paintings: BF890 through the Galeries Georges Petit from Marcel Kapferer, July 25, 1931; BF891 through Galeries Georges Petit from Bernheim-Jeune, July 25, 1931; BF892 through Galeries Georges Petit from Duncan Macdonald, July 25, 1931; BF894 through Pierre Loeb from Etienne Bignou, July 22, 1931; BF897 through Galeries Georges Petit from Bernheim-Jeune, November 19, 1931; BF898 from the Galeries Georges Petit, December 11, 1931; BF905 from Etienne Bignou, April 1, 1932; BF913 from Georges Keller, Galeries Georges Petit, June 1, 1932; BF914 from Bignou, July 12, 1932; BF916 from Bignou, January 6, 1933; BF955 through Bignou from Paul Rosenberg, June 15, 1936. 70 Henri Matisse, Galeries Georges Petit, June 16 to July 25, 1931 (150 works, catalogue prefaces by Bignou and J. & G. Bernheim-Jeune; curated by Bignou). It ran parallel to “Thirty Years of Picasso” at Reid & Lefevre, London, June 1931. Barr 1931 followed. A Matisse exhibition had previously taken place at Thannhauser’s in Berlin, February through March 1930. 71 Exposition Picasso, Galeries Georges Petit, June 16 to July 30, 1932 (250 works, catalogue by Charles Vrancken; selection of works by Picasso & Bignou; installation by Picasso). See Geelhaar 1993: 183–7; FitzGerald 1996: 194–6, 203–14; Fraquelli 2010: 77–93 (Paris), 94–101 (Zurich); Madeline 2017: 76–7, 91, 97, 107–9. The publication of the first volume of Zervos’s Picasso catalogue raisonné coincided with the exhibition.This was the first Picasso retrospective in France since the 1910 one at Vollard’s (no catalogue). The latter was followed in 1913 by four Picasso retrospectives in Germany made possible by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (see Force 2020). The 1932 retrospective followed “Thirty Years of Picasso” at Reid & Lefevre, London, June 1931 (catalogue preface by Maud Dale). 72 Barr 1939. Barr had held a Matisse retrospective in November through December 1931, in the wake of Matisse’s show at Galeries Georges Petit in June through July 1931. 73 Margaret Scolari Barr papers, MoMA Archives, Series II, F21. 74 Archives Musée Picasso, Paris, Correspondence, C14 (Bignou).

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75 Knoedler records, Box 551, correspondence with Bignou, January to May 1931 (re. Matisse); Box 568, April to May 1932 (re. Picasso). 76 Matisse in Basel: August 9 to September 15, 1931 (189 works). Picasso in Zurich: September 11 to October 30, 1932, extended to November 13, 1932 (266 works). The agent Carl Montag successfully petitioned Bignou and Picasso to send the show to Zurich; see correspondence between Montag and Kunsthaus Director Dr. W. Wartmann, February 1932, Kunsthaus archives. 77 Barr 1931. Barr held another Matisse retrospective in 1951. 78 See Bezzola 2010; Madeline 2017: 135, 164–9. 79 Dissolution de la Société Anonyme des Galeries Georges Petit, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, four sales in 1933: April 27, May 10, October 27–28, December 15. 80 London was a beacon of light for a while, with Paul Rosenberg opening a branch there in 1934. Honeyman wrote to Bignou, April 28, 1936: “London is the market of the world for French paintings … It is not at the moment necessary to bother with America, since they are buying so very little and paying small prices” (Lefevre records, B181, F1). By summer 1937, however, the London market suffered. 81 Often British collectors saved the day: one example is the 1937 sale of Cézanne’s Farm in Normandy (Courtauld Gallery) to Courtauld through Lefevre; another is the 1939 sale of Renoir’s Still Life with Peaches and Grapes (The Met) to Scottish collector William A. Cargill. 82 Cooper 1976: 21. See list titled “Vollard Collection” with cost prices, n.d. [1930], Lefevre records, B180, F2. Vollard sent thirteen paintings to the Bignou Gallery in New York on June 11, 1934, worth 950,000 francs. He sent fourteen artworks to Reid & Lefevre on July 6, 1936, worth 155,000 francs. Rabinow 2006: 296–7. Note that the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York had an arrangement with Vollard as well, as his agent in the United States. 83 Cooper 1976: 22. The extent of Vollard and Bignou’s partnership has been underestimated. On the resemblance of their photo albums see Isabelle Cahn, “The Vollard Archives,” in Rabinow 2006: 264, 268 n14. The albums in the Lefevre records resemble Bignou’s as well.Bignou’s photo albums have been dispersed: forty are at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and thirty-three are at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York. No other extant Bignou records are known, aside from a scattering in the archives cited here. 84 Vollard to Bignou, May 9, 1932, Album Bignou-Vollard, Musée d’Orsay archives, Paris, ODO 2006–10-1 & ODO 2006–10-2; hereafter “Album B-V.” 85 Album B-V (my translation). 86 Walter Pach, “We Do More than Our Part,” The Nation, November 15, 1933. 87 “Paris Letter,” New Yorker, October 25, 1933; “Vollard Paintings on the Way Here,” New York Sun, October 28; New York Evening Post, October 28; Herbert L. Mathews, “The Canny French Columbus of Modern Art,” New York Times Magazine, October 28, section 6: 11, 16; New York Herald Tribune, October 29; CAA’s Parnassus, October 5; Town & Country, November 1; Art News, November 4; New York Herald Tribune, November 7; Jewell, New York Times, November 7; McBride, New York Sun, November 11; Margaret Breunig, Evening Post, November 11; Mary Morsell, Art News, November 11; Newsweek, November 11; Jewell, “Gallic Avalanche,” New York Times, November 12; Pach, The Nation, November 15. For Detroit: Florence Davies, “The Important Events,” Detroit News, December 10; “Vollard Collection Exhibit,” Detroit Evening Times, December 12.

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88 “Conseiller du Commerce Extérieur de la France” appeared on Bignou’s business card and death notice in addition to “Expert près les Douanes Françaises,” and “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” (Musée Picasso archives, Paris, C14). Foreign Trade Advisors are volunteer company executives whose role is the international promotion of France’s economy, appointed since 1898 by the prime minister upon the minister of commerce’s recommendation. 89 See Knoedler records, Correspondence New York, 1933, B583. Barnes wrote the catalogue preface. 90 Transcript in Album B-V. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) took a photograph titled “Looking south from the Bignou Gallery on the 18th floor of 32 East 57th Street” in the series “Changing New York,” January 27, 1937. 94 For New York, Bignou and R&L shared 50 percent of the gross profit on pictures belonging to EB sold by R&L, on pictures belonging to R&L sold by EB, and on pictures belonging to R&L sold by R&L. R&L got 10 percent of the gross profit on pictures belonging to EB sold by EB (memo, January 15, 1936); agreement renewed until 1940, when MacDonald took over the directorship on behalf of Lefevre (Lefevre records, B182, F5&6). 95 Barnes is mentioned as buyer of Renoir’s Famille Henriot from Bignou’s first show (in New York Times, April 6, 1935: 11) and in connection with the show (March 13, 1935: 17). 96 Jewell, New York Times, March 4, 1935: 15, and March 10, 1935: X7. 97 “Cézanne and the Impressionists” (October–November 1935), Renoir (December 1935), “19th c Paintings” (January 1936), Cézanne (November–December 1936), Cézanne & Renoir (February 1937), “The Post-Impressionists” (March–April 1937), “19th c French Painters and Picasso” (April–May 1939), “19th c French Paintings” (March 1940), Cézanne (April 1940), “The Post-Impressionists” (October 1940), “French Masters of the Romantic Period” (November 1940), “English & French Landscapes by 19th c Painters” (January 1941), Renoir (March 1941), “Masterpieces of 19th c French Painters” (November 1942), group show (November 1943), French Landscape (February 1944). 98 Burns 2013, II: 497. 99 See “France with Modernistic Tapestries Points Another Way to Serve Art,” Art Digest, May 1, 1936: 8; Anne Hamilton Sayre, “A World Premiere of Tapestries from Beauvais and Aubusson Designed by Modern Painters of Paris,” Art News, April 4, 1936. 100 See “The Cézanne Exhibition,” New York Times, November 5, 1936: 25; John Kieran, “Sports of the Times,” New York Times, November 21, 1936: 13. See also Rewald 1989: 343 (only mention of Bignou). 101 “Paris Dealer Here: Discovered Cézanne,” New York Times, October 29, 1936: 9; “Ocean Travelers,” New York Times, November 11, 1936: 25; Jewell, “Americans,” New York Times, November 15, 1936: X9. (Vollard, Keller, and Bignou went to London together in July 1936, but Vollard’s first time was with Guillaume). 102 See Edward Larocque Tinker, “Modern Art and the Illustrated Book,” New York Times, June 14, 1936: BR 2, 14. 103 Chester Dale typescript of planned book narrating his art acquisitions, Dale records, AAA, page 44 of the 1959 retype of the 1953 version. On Dale’s collection, see Orfila 2011.

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104 Dormoy 1963: 157 (my translation). Vollard recounted the trip himself (Vollard 1937: 374–84) with no such bitterness, instead calling Bignou his “oncle d’Amérique” and stating that the latter decided and organized everything: “I was like a painting which an insurance company covers from nail to nail”—after clarifying that he would not have ventured on this trip otherwise. He went on to mention his impressions of Broadway, Harlem, the zoo, skyscrapers in general (poetically described as honeycombs with a drop of electricity in each cell) and the Rockefeller Center in particular, a movie, interviews, a New Yorker article, and a conference he gave at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, where he fell but didn’t get hurt—all with his signature sarcasm. 105 In his interview with WINS on November 10, 1936, Vollard said: “I am still under the spell of my visit to the Barnes foundation, where I saw so many of the paintings which I knew, defended, and loved, and which I had not seen since the turn of the century.” Greenfield 1987: 186. 106 Dormoy called Vollard a “collector with a taste for speculation” (Dormoy 1931: 112). The 1933 Knoedler exhibition was titled “Paintings from the Ambroise Vollard Collection.” MoMA held an exhibition titled “Impresario: Ambroise Vollard,” June 6 to September 6, 1977. See the title of Rabinow 2006; as well as Distel 1989: passim. (Although Vollard titled his memoir Souvenirs d'un marchand de tableaux in 1937.) See Georgel 2000: 21–6, according to whom a reaction against the unprincipled profiteers of the 1880s portrayed by Balzac and by Zola led to the art dealer’s redemption by becoming a collector—a virtual alter ego of Cousin Pons, saintly martyr to the love of art. The modern-art dealer commanded respectability and prestige from owning, displaying, and publishing a private collection. Durand-Ruel published his private collection in 1892; Bernheim-Jeune published its own in 1919; Paul Guillaume’s collection was featured in Feuilles volantes in 1927 and exhibited at Bernheim-Jeune in 1929, for instance. Another example is an exhibition organized by dealers showing dealers’ collections, namely, “Exposition d’œuvres des 19 et 20e siècles provenant de collections particulières,” organisée par le Syndicat des éditeurs d’art et négociants en tableaux modernes, Galerie La Renaissance, Paris, January 15–31, 1929. 107 Likewise, Paul Rosenberg unabashedly stated to Tériade: “I find a canvas beautiful when it sells” in Feuilles volantes, no. 9 (1927): 1. Furthermore, in answer to the question whether he had a personal collection, Rosenberg responded: “No, I hang canvases on my walls first because it looks smart and secondly to inspire confidence in my clients and I make them believe that I would never part with them at any cost”. 108 Letter to the author, January 24, 2018, Grande Chancellerie de la Légion d’Honneur, Paris. This was reported in Le Figaro, February 12, 1937: 4; and Le Journal, February 13, 1937, Carnet mondain: “Nous relevons avec plaisir dans la dernière promotion de la Légion d’honneur du ministère du commerce la nomination de M. Etienne Bignou, conseiller du commerce extérieur de la France, au titre de la propagande artistique française à l’étranger.” 109 See receipts for works sold by Vollard to Bignou in 1934–39, and acquisitions from Vollard’s estate through Martin Fabiani in January to February 1940 (Fonds Vollard, Musée d’Orsay, BMN MS 421, 3,1). Three of them resurfaced in an auction, Orangerie du château de Cheverny, June 5, 2005, Marguerite Bignou estate, nos. 55–8. 110 Dali was also photographed at Bignou Gallery with his Portrait of Picasso in 1947. The artist had a close rapport with Keller which led to sensational exhibitions, especially while Dali lived in New York from 1940 to 1948, but also had a show at

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Pioneers of the Global Art Market Reid & Lefevre, London, in June to July 1936, and New York shows at Julien Levy’s in the 1930s and Knoedler’s in the 1940s. Bignou’s eldest son opened Galerie Michel in December 1942 at 1 rue d’Argenson, Paris, 8e. In November 1939, Bignou requested an authorization from the British authorities to go to London, to arrange for MacDonald to take over the Bignou Gallery in New York. When France capitulated (armistice, June 22, 1940), Bignou was cut off, with one son in the army and another almost due to serve (see Lefevre records, B182, F5, & B183, F1). The records show that MacDonald was in charge in New York during the war. The Reid & Lefevre Gallery was at a virtual standstill from September 1939 to 1944 and its stock hidden away—a wise move as King Street was bombed in 1943. It reopened at the end of 1944 at 131 New Bond St., but McNeill Reid resigned as director in April 1947, and MacDonald died in November 1949.During the war Bignou had no access to his accounts at the Westminster Bank and the National Bank of Scotland in London, or the Chemical Bank & Trust in New York. In 1948, Keller partnered up with the Carroll Carstairs Gallery (11 East 57 Street), but Carroll Carstairs died the same year. Keller’s Carstairs Gallery was active 1949–63 (Roland Balay was partner from 1949 to 1955, when Balay became the head of Knoedler). After 1963, Keller worked as a private dealer. Kuthy 1998: 82 and passim. Bignou is mentioned in Cooper 1976 and briefly in Watson 1992: 212–13, but often omitted. For more information on his activities during the war years, see Force’s text on Bignou in the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA)’s Répertoire des Acteurs du Marché de l’Art à Paris sous l’Occupation. See Feliciano 1997: 58, 60, 79, 130. For a rectification of the record regarding the Vollard shipment, see Karrels 2015. Fabiani left with the artworks before Germany invaded France. See “Seizure of Art Termed Error,” The Ottawa Journal, October 11, 1940: 5, cited in Karrels 2015: 513. Nicholas 1994: 92–3, 425; Rabinow 2006: 259–62; Karrels 2015: 505–26. The Bernheim-Jeune gallery was aryanized, its stock liquidated, and Josse and Gaston Bernheim’s collections were looted. Nicholas 1994: 92, 125, 161, 286; Feliciano 1997: 73, 76–7, 79–85, 180–1. Gottfried Tanner was a cousin of the Bernheim-Jeunes, and director of the Zurich branch of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune from June 1919. During the Second World War, Tanner is said to have dealt with Alfred Daber, who traded in looted pictures with the Task Force Rosenberg. See OSS, ALIU, Preliminary Report, May 5, 1945. Bignou’s friendship with antisemitic and collaborationist author Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and his acquisition on May 29, 1943, of the latter’s manuscript of Voyage au bout de la nuit, also contributes to taint his name. Records of the Schenker delivery company in Monuments Man Charles Parkhurst’s papers, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. See also Yeide 2001: 274. In 1941: Corot, Le vieux port à Rouen, to the Folkwang museum in Essen. Boudin, Le Port de Rotterdam; Gauguin, Vase de fleurs; and Renoir, Guernesey, to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld. Renoir, Grande baigneuse, to the Stadtische museum Wuppertal. In 1942: Boudin, Plage de Trouville, to Krefeld. This amounted to a combined benefit of 1,565,000 francs. Archives of the Comité national interprofessionnel d’épuration, Archives nationales, F12-9629, and Archives of the Comités de Confiscation des Profits illicites, Archives de Paris, 112W34 (recommended seizure from Bignou: 3,606,028 francs worth of

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German-generated profits, plus a fine of 7,000,000 francs in December 1947; reduced to 1,312,000 francs and 2,533,759 francs, respectively, in June 1949. The total he eventually owed—3,845,759 francs in 1949 (instead of 10,606,028)—is roughly the equivalent of $120,000 today). 124 Eugen Bruschwiler was a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Hoffmann, who became an important buyer for Linz through personal influence of Martin Bormann. He was reported to have supervised the removal of many wagons of art objects from France during the occupation. (ALIU, Looted Art in Occupied Territories, Preliminary Report, May 5, 1945). Bignou’s original pass, signed by Felix Kuetgens in 1941 (Kunstschutz, Paris), was renewed in 1944 by Hermann Bunjes, director of the Deutsche Kunsthistorische Forschungsstaette in Paris, who served during the Occupation as Referent für Kunstschutz und Kultur under the German military command in Paris, was Goering’s first personal art agent in France, and was closely connected to the ERR. Bignou’s pass specified that he procured highly valuable paintings for German museums. 125 Lurçat, who joined the French Communist Resistance and whose adoptive son was killed by the Nazis, never withdrew his friendship from Bignou. 126 See Burrin 1997 and Gildea 2002. 127 Passenger lists show Bignou’s biannual trips in 1928 (February and October), 1931 (March and October), 1933 (March and October), 1934 (March and November), 1936 (March and October), and annual trips in 1930 (March), 1932 (November), and 1935 (October). Bignou and Keller sailed to New York together in October 1931, March 1933, March 1934, and November 1934. 128 Zervos 1927: 1 (my translation).

Bibliography Abin 1932. Cesar Abin. Leurs figures: 56 portraits d’artistes, critiques et marchands d’aujourd’hui. Preface by Maurice Raynal. Paris: Muller, 1932. Barr 1931. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Henri-Matisse: Retrospective Exhibition. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1931. Exhibition catalogue. Barr 1939. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1939. Exhibition catalogue. Bezzola 2010. Tobia Bezzola, ed. Picasso: His First Museum Exhibition, 1932. Zurich: Kunsthaus Zurich/Munich: Prestel, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. Burns 2013. Edward Burns, ed. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913–1946. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Burrin 1997. Philippe Burrin. La France à l’heure allemande, 1940–1944. Paris: SeuilPoints, 1997. Chauffour 2017. Sébastien Chauffour. “Selling French Modern Art on the American Market: César de Hauke as Agent of Jacques Seligmann & Co., 1925–1940.” In Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860–1940, edited by Lynn Catterson, 227–48. Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets 2. Leiden & Boston, MA: Brill, 2017. Cooper 1976. Douglas Cooper. “A Franco-Scottish Link with the Past.” In Alex Reid & Lefevre, 1926–1976, 2–26. London: Lefevre Gallery, 1976.

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Dale 1931. Maud Dale. “Amerika und Europa.” Kunst und Künstler (Berlin) 29 (1931): 239–44. Denizeau 1998. Gerard Denizeau and Simone Lurçat. Jean Lurçat: Catalogue raisonné, 1920–1965. Lausanne: Acatos, 1998. Distel 1989. Anne Distel. Les collectionneurs des Impressionnistes: amateurs et marchands. Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts, 1989. Dormoy 1931. Marie Dormoy. “Ambroise Vollard’s Private Collection.” Formes: Revue internationale des arts plastiques no. 17 (September 1931): 112–13. Dormoy 1963. Marie Dormoy. Souvenirs et portraits d’amis. Paris: Mercure de France, 1963. Faux 1962. Lurçat à haute voix, propos recueillis par Claude Faux. Paris: Julliard, 1962. Feliciano 1997. Hector Feliciano. The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art. New York: Basic Books, 1997. FitzGerald 1996. Michael C. FitzGerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. Force 2020. Christel H. Force. “Aux origines de la rencontre entre Cubisme et art nègre: Otto Feldmann, promoteur de Picasso en Allemagne avant 1914.” In Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, Vol. II: Berlin, edited by Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, 74–108. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Fraquelli 2010. Simonetta Fraquelli. “Picasso’s Retrospective at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris 1932: A Response to Matisse.” In Picasso: His First Museum Exhibition, 1932, edited by Tobia Bezzola, 94–101. Zurich: Kunsthaus Zurich/Munich: Prestel, 2010. Gee 1981. Malcolm Gee. Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting: Aspects of the Parisian Art Market between 1910 and 1930. New York: Garland Pub, 1981. Geelhaar 1993. Christian Geelhaar. Picasso: Wegbereiter und Förderer seines Aufstiegs 1899–1939. Zurich: Palladion, 1993. Georgel 2000. Pierre Georgel. “A New Player: The Dealer Collector.” In From Renoir to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie, edited by Pierre Georgel, 21–6. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts/Fort Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 2000. Gildea 2002. Robert Gildea. Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation of France, 1940–1945. London, Basingstoke and Oxford: Macmillan, 2002. Greenfeld 1987. Howard Greenfeld. The Devil and Dr. Barnes: Portrait of an American Art Collector. New York: Viking, 1987. Jensen 1994. Robert Jensen. Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Karrels 2015. Nancy Caron Karrels. “Reconstructing a Wartime Journey: The VollardFabiani Collection, 1940–1949.” International Journal of Cultural Property 22 (2015): 505–26. Kuthy 1998. Sandor Kuthy, ed. De Matisse à Dali: Le Legs Georges F. Keller au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Berne. Bern: Kunstmuseum, 1998. Exhibition catalogue. Laffaille 1972–7. Maurice Laffaille. Raoul Dufy: Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint. Geneva: Motte, 1972–7. Madeline 2017. Laurence Madeline, ed. Picasso 1932. Paris: Musée Picasso, 2017. Exhibition catalogue. Nicholas 1994. Lynn Nicholas. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

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Orfila 2011. Jorgelina Orfila. “Art Collecting in America during the Interwar Period: The Chester Dale Collection of Modern French Art.” Archives of American Art Journal 50, no. 1 of 2 (Spring 2011): 48–61. Rabinow 2006. Rebecca A. Rabinow, ed. Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant Garde. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006. Exhibition catalogue. Rewald 1989. John Rewald. Cezanne and America: Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics, 1891–1921. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Sanchez 2011. Pierre Sanchez. Les expositions de la Galerie Georges Petit, 1881–1934: répertoire des artistes et liste de leurs œuvres. Dijon: Echelle de Jacob, 2011. Sfakianaki 2015. Poppy Sfakianaki. “Promoting the Value(s) of Modernism: The Interviews of Tériade and Zervos with Art Dealers in Cahiers d’Art, 1927.” Visual Resources 31, no. 1–2 (2015): 75–90. Vollard 1937. Ambroise Vollard. Souvenirs d’un marchand de tableaux. Paris: Albin Michel, 1937, reprinted in 2007. Watson 1992. Peter Watson. From Manet to Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market. New York: Random House, 1992. Yeide 2001. Nancy H. Yeide, Konstantin Akinsha and Amy L. Walsh. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research. Washington, DC: AAM, 2001. Zervos 1927. Christian Zervos. “Nos Enquêtes: Entretien avec Etienne Bignou.” Feuilles volantes, supplement, Cahiers d’art no. 7–8 (1927): 1–2.

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Capricious Cohorts: René Gimpel’s Associates, Rivals, and Patrons Diana J. Kostyrko

The French antiquarian René Gimpel (1881–1945) first met the modernist designerbookbinder Rose Adler on July 23, 1930. Her friend, Ilian de Casa-Fuerte, a Spanish nobleman and Parisian writer, brought her to Gimpel’s residence at 16 rue Spontini, the superb former mansion (since destroyed) of the late couturier, collector, and philanthropist, Jacques Doucet (1853–1929). Adler, a protégée of his, was delighted to revisit the house’s splendor and she recorded that she felt Doucet’s presence there still. Gimpel, for his part, would discover a rejuvenating spirit in Adler which encouraged him to approach modern art and artists more inclusively. Their meeting was not recorded in his journal, but in hers, and we do not know the nature of the conversation which took place; however, it propelled Gimpel to a decision: he would have the modern art that he had recently acquired on behalf of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio fitted with bespoke frames designed by Bolette Natanson (1892– 1936) and Rose Adler (1890–1959), “whose acquaintance I have just made” he wrote, adding reflectively “an interesting character of whom I’ll mention more.”1 The Toledo project was a radical departure from his decades-long dealing in the French eighteenthcentury and medieval sculpture for which he was well known. Adler meanwhile was skeptical of his ability to change horses midstream. She mused in her journal: “Gimpel speaks of modern painting but for him this means Vuillard, Forain. He knows how to discern quality in these classic painters but he thinks himself daring, which in anyone else would be slightly comical but in him it is rather sweet, a little childlike.”2 Nevertheless she introduced him to her artistic circle, which included Georges Braque, Lucien Coutaud, Jean Lurçat, and the galeriste Jeanne Bucher among others.

Anatomy of a Profession Art merchants in modern history have largely been relegated to the status of agents in the service of great collectors but, as Raymonde Moulin has noted, dealers themselves held more nuanced views about their standing in the genealogy of the art world. She notes they regarded themselves as either antiquarians or pioneers; simple brokers

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or dynamic entrepreneurs; modest speculators or aristocrats of international trade.3 Parisian art dealers, decorative-arts merchants, auctioneers, and experts formed a community of constantly shifting allegiances. It was commonplace to find them attending each other’s end-of-season or estate auctions, also their marriages, funerals, and their children’s baptisms. And they intermarried; marriage was a strategic element of the networking process. The daughter of the renowned Viennese/Parisian art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer married the art dealer Eugène Fischof; Jules Lowengard married Esther Duveen, who later remarried another dealer, Jack Duveen; Henry Duveen married the daughter of the eminent Prussian/English silversmith, Beare Falcke, with whom the Duveen brothers had been associated since 1880; Elisabeth Wildenstein, Nathan’s daughter, married Louis Paraf, while Andrée Wildenstein, a daughter of Félix, married Lucien Demotte, to name a few. René Gimpel, of course, married Florence Duveen in 1912.4 René Gimpel had been groomed as an antiquarian from an early age by his father, Ernest Gimpel (1858–1907) [Figure 14.1], in tandem with Ernest’s friend, relative, and business partner, Nathan Wildenstein (1851–1934). Ernest’s dealing in the fine and decorative arts began in 1889 at 9 rue Lafayette in Paris. From here, in November 1898—in a coup later singled out by his son as a turning point in the business—he acquired the wealthy industrial administrator, Ernest Cronier (1840–1905), as a regular client. Concerning a Romney, which he sold to Cronier in May 1899 for 39,000 francs, Ernest wrote confidently to his son: “average profit but good future client.”5 Indeed, within a few years, as Cronier’s principal dealer, Gimpel sold him many important European pictures.6 But on December 4, 1905, following Cronier’s suicide, most of these artworks were dispersed at the auction at Galeries Georges Petit [Figure 14.2]. As an indication of the scale of interest in the collection, more than 3,000 people queued to preview it according to the Mercure de France. The estate sale’s success confirmed Gimpel professionally in Paris; by then he was also making his mark in New York in the name of the E. Gimpel & Wildenstein partnership. Ernest Gimpel sourced many of his pictures in London, not just Paris; by 1897 he was traveling across the Channel to attend auctions at Christie’s. Fluent in written and spoken English, he rubbed shoulders in not-unfriendly competition with his English equivalents, including Wertheimer, Partridge, Durlacher, Dowdeswell, and especially Colnaghi of Pall Mall. Following a market trend at the time, Gimpel sought pictures of the French or English eighteenth century, principally portraits of ladies. He also went to London to sell. His few, rare, hurriedly written letters from this period reveal, for instance, that he put a Drouais, Madame du Barry et son nègre Zamore [Figure 14.3], on consignment with the dix-huitième collector George Harland-Peck of 9 Belgrave Square.7 The same year (1899) he enrolled his son in the Royal College of Art, which acted as a finishing school for René Gimpel; it was where he immersed himself in the British appreciation of the arts, and honed his English. René’s letters to his parents in Paris reveal that the young student reveled in London’s lively art marketplace. He attended auctions and made the rounds of dealers, intermediaries and potential clients, reporting back to Ernest on sales trends and promising purchases. What was then a nascent connection with the London art trade would become a lifetime practice.

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Figure 14.1  Ernest and René Gimpel, with their dog Leprince, 1896. Courtesy © Gimpel Family Archives.

In mid-1902, when Ernest Gimpel and Nathan Wildenstein were making plans to extend their reach by opening a gallery in New York,8 Le Figaro published an article in which the paper’s arts correspondent identified the Parisian firms of Boussod et Valadon, Georges Petit, L-J. Paul Roux, Seligmann, Siot-Decauville, and Edouard Chappey as primarily responsible for inculcating and fashioning a taste for French fine and decorative art in the United States. The collectors singled out for mention as beneficiaries were Frederick Ames, a wealthy Massachusetts industrialist; Robert Graham Dun, Henry Marquand, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Isaac D. Fletcher, and George J. Gould in New York; William Elkins, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and Edward T. Stotesbury in Philadelphia; together with Potter Palmer of Chicago, William Slater of Norwich, Connecticut, James J. Hill of Saint Paul, Minnesota, Henry Walters of Baltimore, and John H. Ballantine of Newark.9

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Figure 14.2  Louis Sabattier, “La vente de la collection Cronier à la galerie Georges Petit,” L’Ilustration, December 9, 1905: 397. The auctioneer’s assistant is holding up Fragonard’s Billet doux (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which Wildenstein and Gimpel bought with Eugène Kraemer for 420,000 francs.

Figure 14.3 Artist unknown, presumed after Jean-Baptiste André Gauthier-Dagoty. Portrait of Madame du Barry and the Page Zamore, late eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, 39 × 31 cm. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. (See Color Plate 14.)

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While the writer acknowledged that in certain quarters there was dismay in France at so many masterpieces—especially those from revered French collections—having been translocated to New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, he expressed an opinion that this reflected a reconnaissance infiniment glorieuse (infinitely glorious acknowledgment) of the superiority of French art, past and present. In other words, each great work acquired by American millionaires and museums reinforced the hegemony of French culture. (This clarion call for French ascendancy and influence [le rayonnement français] was not an unusual sentiment among arts journalists.) Even while the author barely concealed a note of supercilious chauvinism, he celebrated North America as the ultimate destination for French luxury goods.

The Transatlantic Push Gimpel and Wildenstein concentrated on bringing the arts of the French eighteenth century to North America, leaving the Barbizon School and contemporary art to dealers such as the Messrs. Knoedler and Durand-Ruel who were long established in New York. In 1902, Ernest and René Gimpel sailed from Le Havre to open Galerie E. Gimpel & Wildenstein at 250 Fifth Avenue and West Twenty-Eighth Street. Among the pictures they transported across the Atlantic, which they hoped would forge the firm’s reputation, were Largillière’s Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Madame Claude Lambert de Thorigny, and Nattier’s Madame Bergeret de Frouville as Diana.10 These sumptuous portraits were the partnership’s first sales to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met); indeed they represented a new and daring collecting field for the museum, especially as French eighteenth-century pictures were not universally well received by American art critics. However, both the genre and the substantial price paid for the pictures ($70,000) generated excitement in art circles on both sides of the Atlantic, while the significance of these sales for the dealers was such that the portraits were featured as cameos on the Gimpel-and-Wildenstein letterhead. Encouraged by this success, the Gimpel team of father and son continued to return to America every year, as did a select group of French firms. Foreign merchants were not unconditionally accepted in the United States, however; René would describe America as “a difficult country, hostile to newcomers, of whom they are always so wary.”11 Ernest Gimpel concentrated on building a New York clientele in particular, but in cultivating the Montreal industrialist, Sir William Van Horne, who often conducted business in New York, Gimpel and his son would travel to Canada regularly; consequently Van Horne bought his first French eighteenth-century pictures from them.12 But, as a shrewd investor, the collector was not above playing dealers against one another as competition among the transatlantic merchants increased. In the process of buying Emanuel de Witte’s Intérieur d’église for $10,000 from E. Gimpel & Wildenstein (National Gallery of Canada), Van Horne wrote to René Gimpel: “We have recently had a good many hundreds of pictures offering in Montreal by representatives of Colnaghi’s, Knoedler’s, Tooth, Van Wisselingh, Wallace and Reid of Glasgow. Some of them have sold a good many pictures and I think the most of them have done fairly well.”13

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These entrepreneurs were quick to take advantage of the evolution of modern travel by conceiving the corridor of the Atlantic as a two-way conduit which would counteract the European off-season. They traveled at first by steamer—a punishing three-week journey—then more swiftly and graciously on the grand passenger liners out of Le Havre, Cherbourg, and Southampton. The travel itself was an occupational hazard (particularly in times of conflict) but it was a necessary ritual not entirely about arriving at a destination. By traveling first class the merchants were in a prime position to cultivate existing and potential clients on board. In the manner of migratory birds most left Europe for four to six months annually, thus it was inevitable that they would be acculturated both by their travel and by their North American residency. Cosmopolitanism—traditionally associated with diplomats, epicures, and dilettantes—also defined these transatlantic merchants. Some of those who emigrated became American citizens, while others married or eventually died in the United States. Among the British dealers were Henry Duveen, his nephew Charles Duveen, and Stevenson Scott and Edward Fowles of Scott & Fowles. Among the French dealers were Ernest Gimpel, Félix Wildenstein of Wildenstein & Co, Armand Lowengard of Duveen Bros., René and Germain Seligman of Jacques Seligmann & Co, Edouard Jonas, and Michel (known as Michael) Knoedler. Pierre Matisse and Paul Rosenberg would follow their example much later. A number of events would intervene with René Gimpel’s professional trajectory, eventually causing him to take the dramatic departure into dealing in the “moderns” and living artists. Firstly, when he was twenty-five, his father died unexpectedly in New York in 1907, altering the dynamic of the Gimpel–Wildenstein partnership. Initially this meant René traded a paternal relationship for a paternalistic one. He continued to operate the gallery in New York for another twelve years on a seasonal basis until, in October 1919, he felt confident enough to break with the house of Wildenstein in order to build an independent art dealership [Figure 14.4].14 Although they would occasionally share in a transaction, in essence Gimpel and the Wildensteins were now rivals. Despite this new-found independence René Gimpel’s natural inclination was to continue as before, as he revealed when he confided his future business strategy to Bernard Berenson, a long-time associate: You know that in my former “firm” I was concerned exclusively with the sale of great works. And free to be myself, I will continue that … When I left Wildenstein I was told I was mad to leave all the stock. I believe it was wise. The stock is a heavy burden that will kill us all; it consumes us with formidable interest, and fantastic fees which gnaw at us … We dealers have always made our fortune with one or two men; the other clients prevented us from moving forward because we bought in too high a proportion for them compared to the amount they buy. This second tier of client doesn’t interest me.15

Another letter to Berenson reveals that tension increased between himself and his brother-in-law Joseph Duveen, who became more autocratic after his father and uncle died. (Duveen’s typical answer to challenges to his authority was to take his opponent to court; and he was not above suing his own relatives.) The strain of maintaining

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Figure 14.4  Christian Duvivier, Studio portrait of René Gimpel in uniform, 1916 (detail). René Gimpel papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Reproduced with permission.

cordial relations when they were in the market for the same genre of artworks, and competing for the favor of desirable clients, was evident. In a bid to shore up his defenses against his more powerful yet strangely insecure rival, Gimpel aligned himself with another transatlantic dealer who had reason to resent Duveen: Georges Demotte (1877–1923). Demotte wrote to Gimpel of his latest troubles on February 16, 1922, which eventually led to a court case concerning the attribution of a champlevé enamel statuette of the Virgin which Demotte had sold to Michael Dreicer, and which Duveen had pronounced a fake. Demotte wrote: I took it very calmly; I proposed that he should choose two experts, I would choose two, and whatever the majority opinion of these four people I would endeavor to accept it. He flew into a rage, saying that I would have it believed that he was not competent … I want this business clarified and I will not allow Duveen more than any other person (I would go so far as to say that I permit

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Duveen even less so, because while I recognize his competence as a businessman I know his incompetence as a connoisseur) to dispute an object that I have sold, or furthermore to seek to impose his opinion in opposition to mine (because I will always accept a fair discussion).16

In reply, Gimpel cautioned Demotte not to expect friendship or even fair play from Joe Duveen. Gimpel’s own impasse with his brother-in-law meant that he would break their relationship permanently in March 1928 over some conflict concerning a client, Mary Frick Garrett Jacobs, and a Rembrandt Titus, the Artist’s Son (a picture which E. Gimpel & Wildenstein had originally sold to James Stillman of New York in June 1910, now at the Baltimore Museum of Art). By this time Gimpel had aligned himself with Herbert Silva White (1866–1932), who had been employed by the house of Duveen as an agent since 1917. White, a canny intermediary, reassured Gimpel that he was “by no means tied up with Duveen Bros,”17 and he added “I am more than delighted to hear that Sir Joseph is going to feel some rivals. At present his boast is that the only firm he fears is Knoedler’s in combination with P & D Colnaghi and he thinks he can always beat them. All the same he is beginning to also fear Wildenstein.”18

“The Known Part of a Life Is Often Misleading, a Disguise”19 The downturn which would become an economic crisis following the crash of 1929, and the ensuing Depression, is reflected in René Gimpel’s journal as early as 1926 where one can detect a change in tone, and when he casts his professional net wider. He began tentatively to deal in late-nineteenth-century, or “living,” artists, whose work was less expensive to buy and who were appreciated by a new generation of collectors. He began to take advice from artists such as Rose Adler, Marie Laurencin, and Robert Bonfils, as well as emerging galeristes such as Pierre Loeb of Galerie Pierre. As an example he bought three life-sized panels in 1926 by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes illustrating the childhood of Sainte Geneviève, studies for the mural in the Panthéon in Paris.20 In July 1928 René Gimpel began his patronage of the struggling School of Paris artist, Abraham Mintchine, and by June 1929 he owned fifty-four of his pictures, which made him possibly the single biggest owner of the artist’s works. A seismic shift in Gimpel’s acquisitions occurred on September 12, 1929, when he bought a portrait by the expatriate Lithuanian-Russian artist, Chaïm Soutine. He bought it for 32,000 francs (roughly US$12,450) from another Paris art dealer, an Austro-Hungarian émigré from Cracow, Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932). “It’s the portrait of a poetess, a Polish woman,” Gimpel wrote in his journal, adding exultantly: “It’s marvelous: a masterpiece.” The purchase of La Jeune Polonaise de Montparnasse (private collection), his first foray into the outlandish expressionistic technique of Soutine, was for himself; it was not acquired as stock. When Gimpel first met Zborowski (more familiarly, Zbo) and Soutine, at the opening of the Montparnasse dealer’s new gallery on rue de Seine some three years

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earlier, he noted: “A year ago [Soutine’s] canvases could not attract a buyer, now they sell in the tens of thousands [of francs], and they go up in value every day.”21 Zbo had told Gimpel—who captured their conversation—that the greatest artists of the generation after Derain, Matisse, and Picasso were two Jews: Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani. And Moïse Kisling, Zbo added as an afterthought. Gimpel was not partial to Kisling’s art but Zborowski’s philosophy intrigued him: “He sees in the Jewish people a renaissance of spirit, an evolution from a critical spirit to a creative spirit,” he wrote. From the time of his purchase of the Polonaise, Gimpel, Soutine, and Zborowski were united in mutual regard, the glue being financial speculation but also their Jewish ancestry and their innate history of Diaspora. Zbo, sensing in Gimpel a cautious if willing convert to modernism, introduced him to the sculptor André Lasserre, and the ill-fated painter Beron (whose actual name was Aron Haber). Promoting avant-gardism was not easy in 1929, even in Paris, especially for a foreigner. Zborowski alternately despaired of, and reveled in, the situation he had created for himself: “Witness the fiasco of my life and my business affairs,” he bemoaned to Gimpel: “I launched Utrillo; he’s a madman; I launched Modigliani: a madman; he died. I made Soutine; he’s a lunatic.”22 Zborowski had also “discovered” Beron, and was supporting him as he drifted in and out of mental asylums and sanatoriums. Gimpel, a romantic, became taken with the idea of the artist balancing on a knife-edge of brilliance and insanity: he bought two Berons and more Soutines from Zbo.23 This fertile relationship was short-lived, but Zborowski undeniably was a catalyst for change. Having reached this platform it was through the intervention of a long-term client, Florence Scott Libbey (1863–1938), a major patron of the Toledo Museum of Art, that René Gimpel would be commissioned as an authority for sourcing modern pictures for the museum. Between 1930 and 1932 he secured twenty-one contemporary works in Paris, including a wildly expressionistic Soutine “turkey” (Dead Fowl, The Museum of Modern Art).24 The Toledo contract ultimately was a hollow exercise for both parties, owing to the conservative taste of the trustees of the museum and Gimpel perhaps misreading, or overreaching, his brief. But, now convinced that the future lay with living artists, he formed a partnership with Alfredo Sidès (1882–1952) in 1935. It was agreed under contract that Gimpel would source contemporary art in Paris and London while Sidès would sell it in New York. An unconventional character of whom not much is known, Sidès was a good foil for Gimpel, he being a loyal supporter of the Paris avant-garde.25 Fredo Sidès and his wife sailed for New York on October 30, 1935, to open Maison Gimpel at Two East Fifty-Seventh Street. Meanwhile, Gimpel traveled to London to arrange with the dealers Ascher & Velker, a Dutch firm, to take a halfshare in a commissioned body of work of fifty flower watercolors by Jacob Epstein.26 On December 13, the inaugural exhibition of Maison Gimpel opened with an eclectic display of French art: eleven drawings by Fragonard, two sculptures by Rodin, numerous Puvis de Chavannes drawings, and the Sainte Geneviève panels The Legendary Saints of France (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) [Figure 14.5].27 In February 1936, Sidès showed works by Edmond Ceria, Coutaud, Gilles Esnault, Laurencin, Roland Oudot, Filippo de Pisis, Madeleine Quoirez, Alberto Savinio, Joachim Weingart, and Eugene Zak, with carpets woven by Marie Cuttoli after designs

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Figure 14.5  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Legendary Saints of France, gouache, central panel of triptych. Courtesy Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

by Hans Arp, Fernand Léger, Lurçat, Louis Marcoussis, Joan Miro, and Man Ray, followed in March by paintings by Emmanuel Gondouin. On April 14, Sidès mounted a heterogeneous exhibition entitled “From Watteau to Epstein,” in which the Epstein floral watercolors were featured with eight sculptures.28 After returning to Europe in June, Sidès was back in New York in November to set up a seminal retrospective of works by Pablo Gargallo and Albert Gleizes that opened on December 15, 1936.29 There was no contract with Gleizes, nor with Gargallo’s widow, but Gleizes was prepared to let Gimpel have his works on consignment for up to two years with three-monthly revisions; Gimpel was to take one-third commission on sales.30 This was Gleizes’s first exhibition in America and, with hopeful intent, he lent fifty-eight works which ranged chronologically from 1901 to 1936, many of which were shown for the first time.31 Solomon Guggenheim was an early patron of this exhibition, buying Portrait d’un médecin militaire, and Equestrienne (both Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum).32 A portion of the exhibits later traveled to the Arts Club of Chicago. This would be the last major exhibition held at the New York gallery, in spite of the fact that Gimpel had shipped more than 600 items from France. In April 1939, he and Sidès severed their business partnership in disagreement over how to proceed. It is difficult to know how these last exhibitions were received: perhaps not enthusiastically, as there is very little about them in the historical record. This lacuna leaves a huge gap, not only in the provenance record but concerning the transatlantic export of contemporary art. René Gimpel’s experiments with living artists, whether or not they achieved the desired result, meant that (if only briefly, and notwithstanding commercial imperatives) he graduated from a merchant beholden to capricious patrons’ whims to actively orchestrating a new dealer–client dialogue. But then, in a postscript to

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Fredo Sidès, he wrote (perhaps in a fit of insecurity): “We are going to mount a splendid exhibition of the French eighteenth-century, and I have decided to send over our finest French pictures … we must not forget to be dealers of the eighteenth century.”33

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7

8 9

Gimpel 2011: 613. Adler 2014: 31. Moulin 1987: 37. In spite of this beneficial family connection he remained with the house of Wildenstein. Correspondence, Ernest Gimpel, Paris, to René Gimpel, London, May 6,1899, Gimpel Family Archives. Among these purchases were some fine La Tour pastel portraits, including the comte and comtesse of Coventry (bought 1900); the Portrait of Georges-Frederic Schmidt le Graveur (March 26, 1903); and La Tour’s self-portrait, the version formerly in the collection of Marguerite, comtesse de Polignac (June 12, 1903). From the English school of portraiture there was Lawrence’s Julia, Lady Peel (1902), which he must have returned (Frick collection, New York); Romney’s Lady Hamilton as “Nature” (May 29, 1902, also Frick collection); and Reynolds’s Portrait of Robert Henley, Second Earl of Northington (April 29, 1902), now musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris. Among eighteenth-century French pastorales were included two Paters, Les Plaisirs champêtre and Le Bain (March 22, 1901), now Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City; Watteau’s L’Accordée du village (March 22, 1901), formerly the Cleveland Museum of Art; Le Concert italien (January 27, 1899), which Gimpel resold 1902/3 to Edward J. Berwind, New York, and which was donated to the Metropolitan in 1953 (deaccessioned in 1980 and consequently sold by Christie’s New York on March 20, 1981, no. 129, as School of Watteau—information courtesy Gretchen Wold, MMA, New York); Le Repos or Les Amants endormis (November 1, 1901), now private collection (advice courtesy Martin Eidelberg); and L’Alliance de la musique et de la comédie or Le Théâtre (June 1899; sold by Christie’s New York January 25, 2012, without this provenance). Additionally, there was Fragonard’s La Liseuse (1899), possibly acquired with Wildenstein (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC); Chardin’s La Joueuse d’osselets (1899) and Le Volant (December 1903), both Baltimore Museum of Art; and finally Nattier’s Portrait présumé de Mme Tocqué, sold Rémy Le Fur, Paris, November 21, 2018, no. 42. Correspondence, Ernest Gimpel, Paris, to René Gimpel, London, June 10, 1899. Ernest Gimpel bought this intriguing picture from the Gustave Mühlbacher sale on May 15, 1899, at Galeries Georges Petit for 3,020F, as attributed to Drouais. After Harland-Peck did not take up his option, Gimpel sold it to the Paris collector Calouste Gulbenkian on January 3, 1900, for £150. See Sampaio 2009: 108 (courtesy Maria de Fátima Vasconcelos, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian); and Conlin 2018: 333, n. 19. See Kostyrko 2017 for background to the two Parisian art dealers from Alsace. Valemont 1902: 7. Boussod and Valadon were cited for promoting the Barbizon School, and the work of van Marcke, Lhermitte, Mauve, Maris and Israels. Francis and Georges Petit, traditionally marchands of Barbizon, were credited with the dispersal of many esteemed collections such as Doria, San Donato, Pereire, Rosa

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10

11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Pioneers of the Global Art Market Bonheur, Meissonier, Roederer, Henry Véver, Pourtalès, Delessert, Oppenheim, and Moreau-Nélaton among others. Paul Roux provided discerning buyers with decorative arts from the French eighteenth century; and Seligmann was cited as having sold Marquand rare Limoges enamels, and Vanderbilt a series of tapestries after Boucher, while fine French mobiliers and objets went to Fletcher, Gould, Elkins, Walters, and Mitchell. The author’s list of dealers contained notable omissions, most significantly Charles Sedelmeyer. The Largillière (03.37.2) came from le comte André de Ganay’s collection, which was auctioned in Paris on June 4, 1903, where it attained the sum of 37,100F. The subject of the Nattier portrait (03.37.3) had long been identified as Madame de Maison Rouge, until April 2018 when the Metropolitan’s curators revised that provenance courtesy of advice from Ólafur Thorvaldsson. Gimpel 2011: 446. For instance, Van Horne bought a fine Greuze, Portrait of Madame Mercier, on January 25, 1905, for $30,000 (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), but the same year he rejected Bartolomeo Veneto’s Portrait of a Gentleman, presented to him as César Borgia (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Correspondence, William Van Horne, Montreal, to René Gimpel, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York, November 13, 1909; Van Horne Family Fonds (SC065), courtesy Marilyn Nazar, Art Gallery of Ontario. A catalyst for the move was that Nathan Wildenstein had brought his son, Lazare-Georges, into the Paris arm of the business, and promoted a cousin, Félix Wildenstein, into the New York office. Correspondence, René Gimpel, Grand Hotel, Cannes, to Bernard Berenson, Villa I Tatti, February 14, 1920; Archival documents courtesy Jocelyn Karlan and Ilaria Della Monica, Biblioteca Berenson, Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Gimpel had been corresponding with Berenson since 1909—with a significant break during the First World War—but their correspondence appears to have stopped altogether in 1931, when the Depression hit Gimpel hard and he was unable to buy, or sell, what Berenson was offering. Argent 2002: 196–7. The court case was never finalized owing to Demotte’s untimely death in a shooting accident. However, White was active enough to be on a retainer by at least 1931. Duveen Brothers Records, 1876–1981, Series II.E., 960015 (bx.384, f.2), Getty Research Institute. Correspondence, Herbert Silva White, Empire House, 175 Piccadilly, to René Gimpel, February 3, 1928. Gimpel Family Archives. Brookner 1995: 4. Gimpel 2011: 462. In July, Gimpel had offered these without success to one of his clients, Raymond Pitcairn of Bryn Athyn PA, for $250,000. Gimpel 2011: 459. Gimpel 2011: 575. As well as La Jeune Polonaise, the Soutines included Turkey, Fleurs dans un vase, Arbres à Auxerre, Paysage de Cannes, and Jeune femme en rouge. See Kostyrko 2017: 225–7 for details of the Toledo commission. Paul Rosenberg met Sidès through Gimpel circa October 1936, rather condescendingly describing their new partnership as opportunistic: see Brook 2001: 201. At that time Sidès and his wife, Consuelo Hatmaker-Nungesser-Sidès, whom he had married on October 7, 1934, held annual exhibitions of “art abstrait.” In

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26 27 28 29

30

31

32 33

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July 1939 Sidès would open a manifestation of Réalités nouvelles (New Realities), a movement he had invented in 1935 according to Rose Adler: see Adler 2014: 241. (It is unclear whether Gimpel introduced Adler to Sidès but it seems likely). Held at Galerie Charpentier, with Yvanhoé Rambosson, and comprising non-objective, constructivist, and neoplastic works ranging from 1912 to 1939, the retrospective featured the work of seventy artists, among them the Delaunays, Arp, Rudolf Bauer, Béothy, Chauvin, Duchamp-Villon, Georges Folmer, Gleizes, Herbin, Kandinsky, Rebay, and Valmier. For details of this seminal exhibition see Orgeval 2018: 119–44. Of Epstein he wrote disparagingly: “Money: he never ceases to speak of it.” Gimpel 2011: 678. I am indebted to Carol Togneri and Britta Traub for access to archival material in the Norton Simon Museum. The sculptures were Portrait of Ramsay MacDonald, Rima, Jeunesse, Peggy-Jean, Rose, Elsa, Portrait of Mr Weizman; and a portrait bust of Einstein. Gimpel had met Gleizes at a soirée given by Baroness Hilla Rebay on June 23, 1930. In general he found the Cubists “too intellectual, over-complicated, and too far removed from nature,” but he conceded that the great merit of the group was to have found a new way to represent volume. Gimpel 2011: 612. For Gargallo there were twenty-five works on exhibition, including Greta Garbo (lent by Consuelo and Fredo Sidès), one of seven versions of Urano (Museo Pablo Gargallo de Zaragoza), Arlequin, lent by Baron Robert de Rothschild; and a bronze version of Prophète as the highlight. An early streetscape that warrants mention is Le Marché d’Abbeville of 1903 (no. 2 in the 1937 Gimpel catalogue, generically entitled Paysage impressioniste). It was sold by Christie’s London June 22, 2012, no. 195 for £18,750/$29,250 without this provenance. Postwar a number of works from the Gimpel exhibition were shown again in New York at galerie Georgette Passedoit in 1949. Nos. 8 and 15 in the 1937 catalogue. I am indebted to Jacky Clements of the ANU, and Ralph Baylor of FARL, for access to the Gleizes, Gargallo, Puvis de Chavannes, and Garnier catalogues. Gimpel’s handwritten note to Sidès 4 février 1936 in MS notebook, Gimpel Family Archives.

Bibliography Adler 2014. Rose Adler. Journal: 1927–1959. Paris: Editions des Cendres, 2014. Argent 2002. Eloïse d’Argent. “René Gimpel: L’exemple d’un marchand de tableaux du début du xxième siècle. Stratégie commerciale, clientèle et choix artistiques.” Unpublished Honors thesis, University of Paris-Sorbonne, 2002. Brook 2001. Peter Brook. Albert Gleizes: For and Against the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. Brookner 1995. Anita Brookner. Incidents in the Rue Laugier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. Conlin 2018. Jonathan Conlin. “‘Renowned and Unknown’: Calouste Gulbenkian as Collector of Paintings.” Journal of the History of Collections 30, no. 2 (2018): 317–37. Gimpel 2011. René Gimpel. Journal d’un collectionneur: Marchand de tableaux. Paris: Editions Hermann, 2011.

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Kostyrko 2017. Diana J. Kostyrko. The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918–1939. Turnhout and London: Harvey Miller, 2017. Moulin 1987. Raymonde Moulin. The French Art Market: A Sociological View. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Orgeval 2018. Domitille d’Orgeval. “L’exposition Réalités nouvelles à la galerie Charpentier en 1939: Une préfiguration du salon des Réalités nouvelles.” In Les Artistes et leurs galeries: Paris–Berlin, 1900–1950: I Paris, edited by Hélène Ivanoff and Denise Vernerey-Laplace, 119–44. Rouen: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2018. Sampaio 2009. Luísa Sampaio, ed. Painting in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Lisbon and Milan: Museu Calouste Gulbenian/Skira, 2009. Valemont 1902. Valemont. Le Figaro. May 24, 1902, 7.

15

Valentine Dudensing and the Valentine Gallery: Selling the United States on the School of Paris Julia May Boddewyn

When the Valentine Gallery opened its doors in February 1926, presenting the titillating nudes of Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita in the artist’s inaugural US exhibition, the New York gallery was instantly hailed as an important venue for the latest artistic developments from Paris [Figure 15.1]. The founder and director, F. Valentine Dudensing (1892–1967), promised that his gallery would focus on “the best modern art obtainable.”1 During the gallery’s early years, he achieved this goal by presenting, in addition to Foujita, the first US exhibitions of Giorgio de Chirico and Joan Miró, the first US retrospective of Henri Matisse as well as an exhibition of the artist’s latest paintings, recent works by Raoul Dufy, and group shows of canvases by Georges Braque, André Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau. As Dudensing’s exhibition program developed and expanded during the 1930s he arranged the first New York showing of Chaïm Soutine’s paintings, exhibitions of paintings by Vasily Kandinsky and Maurice Utrillo, a small show of Paul Cézanne canvases, and, notably, seven solo exhibitions of Pablo Picasso—more than any other American gallery—including the first showing of Guernica in the United States.2 For two decades, assisted only by his wife, Bibi, in the day-to-day operation of the gallery, Dudensing sourced and imported, promoted, exhibited, and sold a significant number of the works that became the cornerstones of US museum collections. In opening a new gallery specializing in modern European art during the early decades of the twentieth century, a New York dealer faced numerous challenges. The market for modern art was gaining momentum and competing galleries made it difficult to acquire the finest works at reasonable prices. In addition to language barriers and currency fluctuations, Paris was a week’s journey away. With telephone calls prohibitively expensive, communication by mail and cable with dealers and artists required absolutely clear directives and an abundance of patience. International shipments frequently experienced complications and delays were unavoidable. The biggest challenge and the most important factor for a dealer to be successful in the United States was having exceptional and reliable European sources for artwork. The connections that Dudensing established, not only during his gallery’s infancy but throughout its lifetime, attest to the dealer’s business acumen as well as his eye for the finest examples of modern art.

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Figure 15.1  Carl Van Vechten, Valentine Dudensing. Photograph courtesy: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

When he opened the Valentine Gallery, Dudensing had already strategically signed on Pierre Matisse (1900–1989) as his agent in Paris. The two men had met in 1925, when the younger son of the artist came to New York intent on starting his career as an art dealer. Matisse arranged an exhibition of his father’s drawings and lithographs at Weyhe Gallery. This exhibition inspired Dudensing, who at the time worked at his father’s gallery, Dudensing Galleries, to hire Matisse to organize a group show of works by Braque, Derain, Matisse, and Marie Laurencin that same year.3 The success of this exhibition likely motivated Dudensing to open his own gallery. As a partner in the venture, Matisse agreed to spend nine months of the year in Europe scouting for artworks for Dudensing to sell in New York. If Matisse did not already have connections to particular dealers, artists, or collectors, his name certainly opened doors. These connections enabled him to supply Dudensing with choice examples

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of modern paintings that attracted the leading US collectors. By the end of the Valentine Gallery’s first year, Dudensing’s remarkable client list included Dr. Albert C. Barnes, Lillie P. Bliss, Stephen C. Clark, Chester Dale, A. E. Gallatin, Ferdinand Howald, T. Catesby Jones, and Duncan Phillips. All of these collectors either eventually started their own museums or donated works to local institutions. By doing so, their collections effectively created the canon for European modernism in the United States. Dudensing had other advantages that contributed to his gallery’s success, most notably that his family name was well established in the New York art world. His grandfather, Richard Dudensing (1833–99), who was trained as a steel engraver in Germany, came to New York to find work. An acclaimed portrait engraver and etcher, he built his reputation and, in 1881, opened a print shop called Richard Dudensing & Son. Richard’s younger son, Frank (1862–1940), apprenticed with his father and joined him in the family business. After his father’s death in 1899, Frank converted the print shop into an art gallery specializing in European and American watercolors. A masterful businessman and promoter, he organized exhibitions across the country of pieces from his inventory at venues—typically book stores or art supply shops—that displayed and sold the works on his behalf. By 1910, the gallery’s advertisements proclaimed that R. Dudensing & Son had the largest collection of watercolors in the country.4 The eldest of Frank’s three sons, Francis Valentine, was named after his father as well as his birthday, February fourteenth. After graduating from Dartmouth in the spring of 1913, Valentine returned to New York to work as a salesman at R. Dudensing & Son.5 The Armory Show had closed in New York a few months earlier and in the wake of the show’s success, European modernism energized collectors and dealers. That fall, the US market for modern art experienced a significant boon when the government lifted the import tax on artwork less than twenty years old. As a direct result of this economic incentive, galleries dedicated to contemporary European art began opening in New York. Four new galleries opened in 1914: Bourgeois, Brummer, Carroll, and Washington Square. The Montross Gallery that had shown American art since the late nineteenth century added avant-garde European art to its exhibition program. These galleries joined Alfred Stieglitz’s pioneering gallery 291. Contributing to the success of the US market after war was declared in August 1914, Parisian dealers began sending artwork to associates in New York because their own galleries had been forced to close. Valentine Dudensing spent twelve years at his father’s gallery where he learned the art business and observed the ascent of the modern-art market. In 1920, his father promoted him to manager and Valentine married Margaret “Bibi” Gross, an American artist who had studied in Paris. The couple spent their honeymoon in Europe; this summer sojourn became the first of their annual trips during which Valentine visited galleries, met with artists and dealers to arrange exhibitions, and bought works for inventory. Fluent in French, Dudensing was able to offer gallery and studio tours to his American clients who were visiting Paris. As manager of the recently renamed Dudensing Galleries, Valentine expanded his father’s conservative exhibition program beyond the Barbizon School to include works by Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Odilon Redon, and Alfred Sisley. In hiring Pierre Matisse to organize the exhibition of contemporary paintings in May 1925, Valentine went a step further and was rewarded for his efforts by the appreciative response of

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both the press and the collectors. Soon after the show closed, he and Matisse began talking about a partnership and by November, Valentine told his father that he was leaving to open his own gallery.6 Because of the quality of the works that he sourced, Pierre Matisse played a key role in establishing the reputation of the Valentine Gallery. He was responsible for the gallery’s early exhibitions of Foujita (1926), de Chirico (1928 and 1928–29), Miró (1930), and Picasso’s abstract paintings (1931), as well as both of the aforementioned Henri Matisse shows (1927 and 1929–30). Valentine oversaw Pierre Matisse’s selection of works and closely supervised his purchases of stock, much of which came from the Parisian galleries of Bernheim-Jeune, Etienne Bignou, Léonce Rosenberg, and Pierre Loeb. Paul Guillaume joined this list in 1927 and, by the following year, was the Valentine Gallery’s biggest supplier.7 Paul Guillaume had been trying to establish outposts in foreign cities for over a decade. Through his nascent dealings in African art, around 1911 he met Guillaume Apollinaire who introduced him to Picasso and his circle of artist friends, including de Chirico, Derain, and Modigliani. Paul Guillaume opened his first gallery in February 1914 and soon after meeting Marius de Zayas, director of 291, Guillaume suggested they establish a reciprocal artwork exchange between their galleries. Using works from the Parisian dealer’s inventory, de Zayas arranged important shows in New York of paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Braque, Derain, Laurencin, and Maurice de Vlaminck, and presented the groundbreaking first exhibition of African sculpture in the United States in late 1914, at 291.8 When he opened the Valentine Gallery, Dudensing joined modern-art dealers Joseph Brummer, Stephan Bourgeois, Paul Reinhardt, James N. Rosenberg (New Gallery), and Georges Wildenstein, whose galleries all showed modern European art. John Kraushaar, Walter Fearon, César de Hauke, and the Knoedler and Jacques Seligman Galleries were beginning to enter the market. Combined with the strength of the dollar against the French franc, the growing number of galleries in the field meant increased competition for the best pictures. Consequently, Dudensing’s connection to Guillaume and his superlative inventory proved critical. While Dudensing was in Paris during the summer of 1927, he met the French dealer and bought artwork for stock.9 The two men likely discussed the upcoming de Chirico exhibition for which Guillaume supplied a selection of paintings.10 When Dudensing returned to New York at the end of the summer, he enthusiastically wrote to Duncan Phillips, one of his biggest clients: Due to my very early arrival in Paris this year, I was very fortunate in finding some extremely important pictures … I believe I can say that the group of pictures I am bringing back is the best ever brought to America.11

One example from this exceptional trove was the Matisse painting Seated Odalisque (1926; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, [Figure 15.2]). Dudensing wrote to Pierre Matisse and proudly told the story about how rival dealer de Hauke saw the painting at the Valentine Gallery that fall and “went crazy and wondered where in hell we found it.”12

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Figure 15.2  Henri Matisse, Seated Odalisque, 1926. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (73 × 60 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (62.112). © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (See Color Plate 15.)

The de Chirico exhibition that opened in January 1928 had an equally powerful effect. While the show included a few examples of the artist’s early metaphysical paintings that are now highly prized, collectors’ focus at that time was on de Chirico’s recent work: the colorful, toy-like gladiators, horses, and nudes. In two reviews of the exhibition, Henry McBride dubbed the Valentine Gallery “a temple of modernism” and hailed de Chirico’s recent work that, in the critic’s opinion, made him “a master among the modernists.”13 The show was such a success that Dudensing hastily arranged a follow-up exhibition of the artist’s recent paintings, which opened a mere ten months later. By the start of 1929, Guillaume’s business was booming. He opened a branch of his gallery in London in partnership with Brandon Davis, a British collector and dealer.14 In late May, Guillaume’s collection went on display in Paris at the prestigious Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and he published a lavish catalogue to accompany the exhibition. Because he had been hinting that he might leave his collection to the French state, the show and catalogue likely served to introduce the works to the public.

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Unfortunately, the Depression interfered with Guillaume’s expansive plans. A year after his London gallery opened, word was out that his partner was in financial trouble.15 Guillaume suddenly declared that he was ready to sell his well-known and highly regarded African art collection.16 In early 1930, he sent seventy-four pieces from his collection to New York to be shown at the Valentine Gallery; the press confirmed that all were for sale.17 Recognizing the importance of the collection, Dudensing probably lobbied Guillaume for the chance to show the renowned pieces by offering to publish the fully illustrated catalogue that accompanied the exhibition. Around this time, Dudensing also persuaded Guillaume to sell him the Matisse painting Three Sisters (1917; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) that Dudensing then sold to Dr. Barnes, who already owned the other two works from the triptych. After Pierre Matisse left the partnership at the end of 1930 to open his own New York gallery, Dudensing depended more heavily on his relationship with Guillaume. With his London gallery closed by the end of October, Guillaume welcomed Dudensing’s business. Over the next few years, the New York dealer sold a handful of works from Guillaume’s inventory—important paintings by Derain, Matisse, and Rousseau—culminating with the 1934 sale of the Picasso, Melancholy Woman (1902; Detroit Institute of Art [Figure 15.3]). Dudensing’s client, Robert Tannahill, bought the blue period painting and later bequeathed it to the Detroit museum. This Picasso was the last work that Guillaume sold Dudensing before the French dealer’s untimely death on October 1, 1934, at the age of forty-two. Within a year, Guillaume’s inventory once again became an important supply source to the Valentine Gallery; in fact, Dudensing’s access to the works increased significantly. Juliette “Domenica” Guillaume, Paul’s 36-year-old widow who inherited his collection, began a campaign to exhibit and sell the works not long after her husband’s death.18 A shrewd business person, she understood the importance of maintaining the visibility of the works to enhance their value. Her initial motivation was to raise money to pay estate taxes, but she actively began loaning pieces to US museums and commercial galleries. Judging from the number of works that she sent to Dudensing, she apparently favored him above his competitors. Consequently, in November 1935, Dudensing presented Paintings by Maurice Utrillo, an exhibition of eighteen pieces from the Paul Guillaume collection.19 The French dealer had been an early promoter of Utrillo’s work and Dudensing pointed out to the press that the works on view “were chosen by [Guillaume] as the best obtainable for his collection.”20 That month, Dudensing’s ledgers recorded the first sales of Guillaume pictures since his death: two paintings each by Utrillo and PierreAuguste Renoir and four by Picasso. Domenica Guillaume subsequently sent a large shipment of paintings to the Valentine Gallery and she herself arrived in New York on January 4, 1936, along with Jean Walter (whom she would marry in 1938), and her longtime assistant, Hélène Leray.21 She announced her presence in New York in a series of advertisements in Art News, and also gave a statement to the magazine about this “first of several visits” during which she would be based in an elegant hotel near the galleries of Fifty-Seventh Street.22 Dudensing knew about Paul Guillaume’s plan to bequeath at least a portion of his collection to the French state; from experience, however, he also knew that the

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Figure 15.3  Pablo Picasso, Melancholy Woman, 1902. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 27 1/4 in. (100 × 69.2 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts (70.190). © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (See Color Plate 16.)

dealer was willing to part with his masterpieces. For example, in May 1931, Dudensing wrote to James Thrall Soby, an important client, in answer to Soby’s question about the availability of the Derain, Harlequin and Pierrot (c. 1924; Musée de l’Orangerie). Commissioned by Guillaume and completed soon after he became the artist’s sole representative in 1923, this painting was the undeniable centerpiece of the dealer’s “private collection.” Dudensing informed Soby that despite the fact that the painting was “going eventually to the Louvre. I know offers of $25[,000] and 30,000 have been made. There would be a slim chance to get it at $40,000 but that is doubtful.”23 After her husband’s death, Domenica Guillaume seems to have adopted his business model: everything in the collection was for sale at the right price. If a collector was unwilling to meet that price, so be it; the painting would remain in her collection.

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The year 1936 was the Valentine Gallery’s best to date, in large part because of the abundance of top-tier paintings consigned from Domenica Guillaume. In January, Dudensing presented an exhibition of ten masterpieces from the collection: two paintings each by Matisse: The Piano Lesson (1916; Museum of Modern Art, New York) and The Three Sisters (1917; Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris); Modigliani: Elvira Resting at a Table (1919; Saint Louis Art Museum) and The Beautiful Grocer (1918; Private collection); Derain: Harlequin with Guitar (1924; Musée de l’Orangerie) and an unidentified still life; Picasso: Large Nude with Drapery, 1921, and Woman with Tambourine, 1925 (both Musée de l’Orangerie); and Rousseau: Juniet’s Cart (1908; Musée de l’Orangerie) and Two Monkeys in the Jungle (1909; Private collection). One

Figure 15.4 Cover of Art News, January 11, 1936. Copyright © Artnews Media, LLC. Reproduced by permission.

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critic noted that seven of the paintings were making their New York debut; this fact had been emphasized by Dudensing who took pride in his gallery being the first US venue for an important work of art.24 The press noted the high prices and specifically cited the extraordinary price—$40,000—for the Rousseau, Juniet’s Cart [Figure 15.4].25 That same year the art market began showing strong signs of recovery after the Depression. With his business improving, Dudensing was able to rent the elegant townhouse at Sixteen East Fifty-Seventh Street, next door to the esteemed galleries of Knoedler and Durand-Ruel. Displaying Paul Guillaume’s masterpieces in this prime location further enhanced the Valentine Gallery’s status. For example, Matisse’s Bathers by a River (1909–17; Art Institute of Chicago), also originally destined for the Louvre, was installed in the gallery’s entryway. At nearly 9 × 13 feet, the extraordinary painting of four abstracted nudes made an impactful impression on visitors; critic Clement Greenberg later recalled that it hung in the same spot for a long time.26 Over the next few years, Dudensing presented at least a dozen exhibitions featuring masterpieces from the Guillaume Collection. Because Paul Guillaume had been an early supporter of Soutine, Dudensing selected works from the dealer’s choice holdings and organized the artist’s first New York exhibition. The show’s success led to two more: the first, held in May 1937, was deemed by critic Martha Davidson to be Soutine’s “most important American show” and the second—a paintings retrospective—opened two years later.27 Likewise, in 1940, Dudensing organized Twelve Portraits by Modigliani, comprised almost exclusively of paintings from the Guillaume collection. Dudensing sold two paintings during the show: Portrait of Jean Cocteau (1916; The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum); and Lola de Valence (1915; Metropolitan Museum of Art). He sold a third Guillaume painting from the exhibition, Jean de Rouveyre (1915; Private collection), several years later. Except for the Valentine Gallery’s sales records, now housed at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), records chronicling the business relationship between Domenica Guillaume and Valentine Dudensing remain undiscovered. Dudensing continued to present and sell works from the Guillaume Collection intermittently throughout the war years until he closed his gallery in the spring of 1947.28 His records list sales of over ninety works from Domenica Guillaume, almost half the total number of pictures she sold from the collection after her husband’s death.29 While exhibition catalogues and illustrated or descriptive reviews help identify the pieces that she sent to New York, unfortunately the ledgers lack the critical details needed to identify all of the Guillaume artworks that Dudensing sold, ranging from African sculpture to watercolors and paintings by Cézanne, Derain, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Renoir, and Soutine. The works that have been identified, however, offer clues about the formation of some of the first US collections of the School of Paris. The large Matisse, Bathers by the River, for example, did not sell while installed at the Valentine Gallery; Domenica Guillaume sold it to a US collector years later.30 On the other hand, Dudensing sold Periwinkles/Moroccan Garden (1912; MoMA), a smaller Matisse from the same period, to Joseph Pulitzer Jr. From Dudensing, Pulitzer also bought Picasso’s Woman in Yellow (1907; Private collection) and Modigliani’s Elvira Resting at a Table (mentioned above).

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The Modigliani was Pulitzer’s first serious art purchase made while he was a senior at Harvard; the painting originally hung in his room on campus.31 An equally adventurous collector, Walter P. Chrysler Jr., bought several Guillaume paintings from Dudensing, notably Matisse’s The Piano Lesson (1916; MoMA), another work known to have been on the French dealer’s shortlist for the Louvre.32 Today the iconic painting is a centerpiece of MoMA’s collection. Chrysler also acquired Picasso’s Half-Length Female Nude (1906; Art Institute of Chicago) and Nude with Arms Raised (1907; Private collection), a seminal painting linking Cubism to African art. Not only did Chrysler meticulously catalogue his vast collection but he generously loaned his pictures to gallery and museum exhibitions. The latter Picasso canvas was exhibited at least sixteen times in thirteen cities between 1939 and 1962. Solomon R. Guggenheim, a wealthy industrialist who had been building a collection of abstract art since 1929, bought two of Guillaume’s Analytic Cubist Picassos from Dudensing: Accordionist and Landscape at Céret (both 1911; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). Not long after he made these purchases in late 1936, Guggenheim announced the formation of a foundation for the “promotion and encouragement and education in art and the enlightenment of the public.”33 His Museum of Non-Objective Painting opened in 1939 where the Picassos were displayed alongside his impressive selection of works by Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Robert Delaunay. In a review published in 1928, Henry McBride recounted a recent visit to Paul Guillaume’s Paris gallery. There the critic met an unnamed member of “New York’s advance-guard,” and together they admired the masterpieces on display. One of the Americans (the implication being that this was McBride’s compatriot) turned to Guillaume and suggested that his collection should be purchased in its entirety and sent to New York. McBride recalled Guillaume’s reaction: “He smiled at us incredulously and unhumorously. The pictures, it seemed, were not for sale.”34 Guillaume would never know that the bulk of his collection was, in fact, sent to New York to be sold, much of it by Valentine Dudensing. Today Dudensing and the Valentine Gallery are largely unknown. Between 1926 and 1947, however, the gallery was recognized as a leading purveyor of the finest examples by the School of Paris. Over the years, Dudensing provided numerous opportunities for collectors, artists and art students, museum curators, critics, art dealers, and the public to walk in off the street and study iconic examples of European modernism. Though not all of the pictures that he exhibited found buyers in the United States, they informed and enlightened his audience while on display in his gallery. Dudensing’s legacy can be measured by the number of choice paintings he selected that now form the core of modern-art collections at museums across the United States. The Valentine Gallery had two fortunate bookends: Pierre Matisse introducing important connections and sourcing artwork at its outset, and seemingly unfettered access through Domenica Guillaume to the exemplary inventory of Paul Guillaume during the dozen years leading up to its closing. Dudensing is responsible for establishing and utilizing these entrées to the greatest examples of European modernism, which would have been meaningless without his discerning eye and unwavering conviction in the importance of the artists’ work.

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Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Letter from Dudensing to Henry McBride, February 1, 1926. Henry McBride Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Coll. no. YCAL Mss 31, Box 3, File no. 97. Picasso arranged to send his masterpiece, Guernica, along with around sixty studies, on a tour of the United States to raise funds for Spanish Refugees. From May 4 to June 1, 1939, the pieces were on view at the Valentine Gallery, the first stop on this tour. The group continued to venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, before returning to New York where they joined the Picasso retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in November. For more on Dudensing’s promotion of Picasso’s work in the United States, see Boddewyn 2006: 328–83. “Pierre Matisse presents an Exhibition of Modern French Paintings,” April 27 to May 30, 1925. New York Times 1910: SM14. While originally called Frank, Valentine switched to using his middle name to avoid confusion after he began working with his father. Letter from Dudensing to Matisse, November 14, 1925. Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 24. (Hereafter PMGA.) “Année 1928” [Inventory of total expenditures at Parisian galleries] PMGA, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 29. De Zayas 1996: 106, 120. Letter from Dudensing to Matisse, October 21, 1927. PMGA, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 27. Letter from Dudensing to Matisse, November 10, 1927. PMGA, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 27. Letter from Dudensing to Phillips, June 15, 1927. The Phillips Collection records, 1920–60; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Reel 1935 f440. Letter from Dudensing to Matisse, December 2, 1927. PMGA, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 27. McBride 1928A: 10; McBride 1928B: 353. For more on Giorgio de Chirico’s critical reception in the United States, see Braun 1996. Art News 1929: 15. Letter from Matisse to Dudensing, February 12, 1930. PMGA, MA 5020: Box 89, Folder 37. Sadly, within a year, on January 27, 1931, Davis died after a fall from a fifth-floor window in his London home. Musée de l’Orangerie website: http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/paulguillaume-and-african-art Art News 1930A: 13. Exhibition of Rare African Sculpture ran from March 24 to April 12, 1930 and Dudensing sold thirteen works during the show’s run. Information about the gallery’s sales is from the Valentine Gallery’s sales ledgers. (Valentine Dudensing Ledger Books, 1926–44; The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.) That November, a brief and contradictory article in Art News reported that Guillaume was “about to sell” his African art collection at the Hôtel Drouot but that no sale date had been set and the dealer was “in no hurry to part with his collection.” Art News 1930B: 9.

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18 Undated letter (Fall 1934) from James J. Sweeney to Domenica Guillaume mentions her offer to loan works to “African Negro Art,” the exhibition he was organizing at MoMA. (MoMA Exhibition History List: 39.2, MoMA Exhibition Records, MoMA Archives, New York.) For more on the disposition of the collection, see Georgel 2000: 73–83. 19 Art Digest 1935B: 13. 20 Art Digest 1935A: 20. 21 The 1938 marriage date is from “Domenica Walter’s Taste,” Musée de l’Orangerie website; other sources list 1941. http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/; Ellis Island Passenger Lists: http://libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger. 22 Art News 1936: 14. 23 Letter from Dudensing to Soby, May 22, 1931. James Thrall Soby Papers, MoMA Archives, New York, V.G.1. 24 Morsell 1936: 3. 25 Art Digest 1936: 4; Morsell 1936: 3, 6, 7. 26 Greenberg 1961: 233. According to Matisse’s biographer, Hilary Spurling, Guillaume had planned to give Bathers by the River to the Louvre. Spurling 2005: 285. In midDecember 1939, critic Edward Alden Jewell pointed out to his readers not to miss the painting which was hanging in the entrance of the Valentine Gallery. Jewell 1939: X11. By this point the war had begun so Dudensing likely had possession of the painting until after it was over. If so, he may have installed Bathers by the River at his new gallery at Fifty-Five East Fifty-Seventh Street where he was located from fall 1941 until spring 1948. Domenica Guillaume loaned the painting to the Matisse retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in April 1948. 27 Davidson 1937: 15. 28 While the Valentine Gallery closed in the spring of 1947, the Dudensings who lived in the apartment above the gallery remained at Fifty-Five East Fifty-Seventh Street for another year before they relocated to France. 29 “[Domenica] got rid of over two hundred works, mainly portraits by Modigliani, all of de Chirico’s paintings, some splendid Matisses and all of Picasso’s Cubist works. She also sold all the African art.” “Domenica Walter’s Taste,” Musée de l’Orangerie website. http://www.musee-orangerie.fr./ The collection, known as the GuillaumeWalter Collection, is now at the Musée de l’Orangerie. The works were sold to the state by Domenica Guillaume in two parts: in January 1959 and December 1963. 30 Matisse, Bathers by a River in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago: http:// www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/79307?search_no=11&index=1 31 Cohn 2012: 41. 32 Spurling 2005: 285. 33 “Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Timeline.” https://www.guggenheim.org/ history/foundation 34 McBride 1928B: 526–7.

Bibliography Art Digest 1935A. “A Notable Utrillo Show.” Art Digest 10, no. 3 (November 1, 1935): 20. Art Digest 1935B. “Utrillo’s Individualistic Art Revealed in Exhibit.” Art Digest 10, no. 4 (November 15, 1935): 13.

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Art Digest 1936. “‘Les Fauves’ Reunited in New York Exhibition.” Art Digest 10, no. 8 (January 15, 1936): 14. Art Institute of Chicago website. The Collection. http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/ Art News 1929. “Guillaume Opens London Gallery.” Art News 27, no. 17 (January 26, 1929): 15. Art News 1930A. “African Sculpture: Valentine Gallery.” Art News 28, no. 26 (March 29, 1930): 13. Art News 1930B. “Guillaume to Sell His Negro Art Collection.” Art News 29, no. 5 (November 1, 1930): 9. Art News 1936. “Madame Guillaume Now in New York for Brief Stay.” Art News 34, no. 15 (January 11, 1936): 14. Boddewyn 2006. Julia May Boddewyn. “Selected Chronology of Exhibitions, Auctions, and Magazine Reproductions, 1910–1957.” In Picasso and American Art, edited by Michael FitzGerald, 328–83. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2006. Exhibition catalogue. Braun 1996. Emily Braun, ed. Giorgio de Chirico and America. New York: Hunter College of the City University of New York/Rome: Fondazione Giorgio e Isa De Chirico/Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1996. Exhibition catalogue. Cohn 2012. Marjorie B. Cohn. Classic Modern: The Art Worlds of Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums/New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2012. Davidson 1937. Martha Davidson. “New Exhibitions of the Week: Soutine in His Most Important American Show.” Art News 35, no. 32 (May 8, 1937): 15. De Zayas 1996. Marius de Zayas and Francis M. Naumann, ed. How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Georgel 2000. Pierre Georgel. “Domenica at the Helm.” In From Renoir to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie, edited by Timothy Potts, 73–83. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2000. Exhibition catalogue. Greenberg 1961. Clement Greenberg. “The Late Thirties in New York.” In Art and Culture: Critical Essays, edited by Clement Greenberg, 230–5. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1961. Jewell 1939. Edward Alden Jewell. “In the Realm of Art: Events of the Holiday Season: European and American.” New York Times, December 18, 1939: X11. McBride 1928A. Henry McBride. “Giorgio de Chirico’s Art: Italian Takes His Place in the Front Rank of the Modernists.” New York Sun, January 28, 1928: 10. McBride 1928B. Henry McBride. “Modern Art.” The Dial: A Semi-monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information 5, no. 6 (December 1928): 525–8. Morsell 1936. Mary Morsell. “French Masters of XXth Century in Valentine Show.” Art News 34, no. 15 (January 11, 1936): 3, 6–7. New York Times 1910. Advertisement for R. Dudensing & Son. New York Times, February 6, 1910: SM14. Spurling 2005. Hilary Spurling. Matisse the Master, a Life of Matisse: The Conquest of Colour, 1909–1954. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

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Conclusion Veronique Chagnon-Burke

In 1961 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler told Francis Crémieux that most of his income had been generated through sales abroad thanks to a network of fellow art dealers.1 In this statement, the dealer put his finger on an essential characteristic of the late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century market for contemporary art produced in France. This pronouncement, intended to refer specifically to Kahnweiler’s own case, in fact touches on a broader truth which is the premise of this book as articulated by Christel Force in the introduction. The core of Force’s argument, which this book amply demonstrates, is that while Paris was the capital of the art world—roughly during the period 1850– 1950—transnational dealer networks shaped and sustained the modern-art market and were key to its success. As Force points out, by the mid-nineteenth century, because modern-art trends— from the Barbizon School on—challenged prevalent taste, they could not find their place in the traditional patronage system dominated by the official Salon. Given that French amateurs reacted timidly to artistic innovation, the art market took over, and art dealers had to rely mostly on foreign markets to sustain sales and support their artists.2 While most foreign collectors availed themselves of international travel, for Parisian dealers the key to penetrating the art market abroad was a strong network of professional alliances throughout continental Europe, Britain, and the United Sates.3 As the various chapters of this book show, the French market for contemporary art slowly evolved since the mid-nineteenth century, through various historical and economical upheavals, and grew into a complex ecosystem by the Second World War.4 Developing complex strategies in line with the business practices of their time, the most committed and ambitious dealers began working jointly and transnationally early on to support Parisian artists and promote modernism.5 As the hub of this network, Paris was to remain the capital of the market for Impressionism and other -isms until the 1940s, becoming more and more international as cultural tourism developed. This encompassed the universal appeal of Parisian art and literature, but also high fashion and the luxury industries, and attracted an ever-increasing number of foreign buyers.6 During this period, American collectors progressively took precedence over European ones and rose to the fore. The prestige of French culture on the one hand, and strong foreign currencies on the other hand, combined to create these new markets, until New York usurped the title after the Second World War.

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The chapters in this volume contribute to the ongoing discourse that challenges the central role of artists in the development of a market for modern art;7 they tell a more complete, balanced story by shedding light on the important role dealers played in the development and dissemination of modern and avant-garde art. Each chapter furthers our understanding of what appears, by the end of the book, as a complex transnational network of business relationships that forged the reputation of artists who are worldrenowned today. This important contribution to the history of the art market forces us to consider the art dealer not only as a gate-keeper between artist and collector, but as an active protagonist shaping and promoting modernism.8 As a whole, the chapters of this book reveal how these international connections enabled and shaped the professionalization of the art dealer; how they stimulated and strengthened the profession and contributed to its recognition.9 They point to the financial side of the art world; how sales not only supported an increasingly large number of artists but also covered dealers’ substantial professional expenses and overhead costs, including commissions paid to agents, scouts, and other peers; but also how this financial savvy extended to collectors.10 This book not only emphasizes the commercial interactions between the actors of the modern-art market but also stresses the congenial, collaborative spirit of their endeavors, whether they operated at an idealistic level or from a purely entrepreneurial standpoint.11 As demonstrated by Nicolas Green, modern-art dealing took some of its cues from modern business practices, and financial speculation found its cultural counterpart in the speculation in taste.12 Our protagonists were traders with various degrees of business savvy, who knew how to seal a deal, how to take advantage of shifts in currency exchange rates, and who had to contend with economic downturns. More specifically, as Force articulated, the professionalization of art dealing allowed for more effective commercial strategies: the commodification of art fostered artistic innovation and, more remarkably, led to a business model based on systemic cooperation rather than fierce competition, which allowed modern art to thrive internationally.13 These dealers’ success owes as much to their relationships with each other as to their collectors’ patronage. As active players in the production and dissemination of modern art, they relied on innovative business practices that are still at the center of our commercial art world today. Their legacy is measured by the number of artworks in public collections that hail from their galleries, that can be found today in museums worldwide.14 It also highlights some crucial market strategies, such as the valuation and validation of artworks, at the core of which lay attribution and authenticity. Already in the mid1850s, the poet and art critic Théophile Gautier recommended that new collectors buy contemporary paintings in order to circumvent forgeries and erroneous attributions, which were always on the amateur’s mind.15 One of the perks of building relationships with other dealer-experts was that it enabled them to form associations and to jointly validate the authenticity of artworks by adding more than one signature to a certificate of authenticity, which considerably increased trust and facilitated sales.16 Some of the characters discussed in these chapters are well known for their support of modern art, such as Paul Durand-Ruel, Ambroise Vollard, D-H Kahnweiler, and Paul Rosenberg, who are remembered as the discoverers and promoters of artists

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ranging from Monet and Cézanne to Braque and Picasso.17 They have been celebrated as heroic figures with their own hagiographies, but what is underlined here is that they did not act alone.18 This volume also brings to the fore less well-known protagonists such as Walther Halvorsen, Gösta Olson, Etienne Bignou, or Valentine Dudensing, among others, and shows the central role they played in raising the visibility of French art at an international level.19 The success of the modern-art market relied not only on the vision, dedication, and perseverance of some visionary dealers, but also on their social interactions and professional relationships—including dealers whose primary focus might not have been modernism.20 As Kahnweiler, J. K. Thannhauser, and Rosenberg exemplify, these relationships were not just the key to prosperity but also to survival. Despite many setbacks, their long-term business relationships enabled them to relaunch their careers when necessary.21 Their commitment was key: Kahnweiler stayed in the business from 1907 to his death in 1979, through many upheavals. Gösta Olson promoted French art during his entire career, from 1918 to 1966.22 From the 1850s to the twentieth century, the efforts of art dealers ranging from Paul Durant-Ruel to Pierre Matisse ensured that the taste for Parisian modernism ultimately dominated the international market. Their efforts were the blueprint for institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York and later iterations.23 Reading through these pages, an alternative history of modern art emerges where dealers did more than just sell paintings but forged a transatlantic art world (not global quite yet but unquestionably international), reinvented themselves as cultural entrepreneurs, and curated exhibitions of modern art before museum curators did.24 A landscape emerges where French as well as foreign dealers (such as Kahnweiler and Halvorsen in Paris, Thannhauser and Flechtheim in Germany, Reid & Lefevre in London, or Dudensing in New York) promoted contemporary art produced by an international cohort of artists in Paris,25 as well as African art which was inextricably intertwined with modern art.26 In other words, art dealers all over the world promoted the art of countless foreign artists residing in Paris (not just French artists), as well as art valued by Parisian artists. A notion of the market takes hold where the imperative to create value for modern art from scratch appears to be a tall order; the joint efforts of all the parties involved seem requisite; and in the end this art is regarded as having universal appeal. Jointly, these chapters also highlight the importance of collaboration through exhibitions: when Marius de Zayas organized a show at the Whitney Studio in 1923, he borrowed at least eleven African works from Paul Guillaume and a sampling of Picasso’s cubist works from the Paul Rosenberg gallery, thus underlining the formal ties between cubist painting and African sculpture.27 Such exhibitions were not always commercially successful, and sometimes art dealers ended up buying the works they borrowed (for their collection or gallery stock), but their primary motivation was not profit as much as disseminating the art they believed in. Looking back, these transnational dealer relationships went beyond the purely transactional: their collaborative work on exhibitions,28 their mutual loans and joint purchases, their publication of journals which promoted each other’s galleries, and their hiring of art critics to write catalogue prefaces were part of a concerted effort

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to promote the idea of modernism. They were not averse to the benefit of promoting their gallery of course, as when placing artworks in newly created museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York. All such efforts were cornerstones of the success of modern art.29 These promotional strategies may have yielded little return at first, but after the success of the Peau de l’ours sale in 1914, confirmed by the sale of the contents of Degas’s studio and collection in 1918, modern art was validated and it became clear that it represented a worthwhile investment.30 The new artmarket strategies turned contemporary art into a desirable commodity and generated demand.31 Traditional art history clearly benefits from expanding its main focus (namely, artists and their works) to include the history of the art market; that is, the role played by dealers and amateurs who are chiefly responsible for the development and triumph of modern art, paving the way for museum collections. For one, understanding how modern artists’ reputations were forged through sophisticated market strategies helps us to better understand the pervasiveness of contemporary art on the art market today. This volume gives us a better grasp of the complex interactions of players in the art world’s ecosystem, from art dealers to agents, critics, and auction houses. While this volume covers extensive ground, a lot of work remains to be done to fully explore the topic: other dealers—including pioneer women dealers—and their respective networks certainly deserve scrutiny. The systematic study of extant primary sources—dealer records especially, but also museum archives, auction house archives, as well as artist, critic, and collector papers—is bound to yield more information on these webs of relationships. We hope that this book will inspire other scholars across disciplines to add new perspectives on the fascinating history of the modern-art market.

Notes 1 2

See above, Chapter 5 by Vérane Tasseau on Kahnweiler. The successful alliance between modern art and the market can be traced back as early as the late 1840. For a discussion of these early developments, see ChagnonBurke 2012. 3 See above, introduction by Christel H. Force. 4 Ibid. 5 See above, Chapter 2 by Paolo Serafini on Adolphe Goupil and the American market in the period 1860–1920; Chapter 3 on Durand-Ruel by Jennifer Thompson; Chapter 4 on the Economics of Translocation by David Challis; and Chapter 12 on Reid & Lefevre by Frances Fowle. 6 Zalewski 2005: 80. 7 White and White 1993: 79. 8 Something Leo Castelli would remember as he established his dominance over the New York art world throughout the 1960s and 1970s; see Hulst 2007. 9 See above, Chapter 5 by Tasseau; Chapter 8 on the Thannhauser Galleries by Valerie Ender; and Chapter 10 on the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet by Christina Brandberg. 10 See above, Chapter 4 by Challis, and Chapter 13 on Etienne Bignou by Force.

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11 See above, Chapter 6 on art journals by Ambre Gauthier; Chapter 9 on Walther Halvorsen by Force; Chapter 11 on Paul Rosenberg by MaryKate Cleary and Chapter 13 on Bignou by Force. 12 Green 1989: 29. 13 See above, introduction by Christel H. Force. 14 Ibid. 15 Gautier 1858: 13. 16 See above, Introduction; Chapter 2 by Serafini; Chapter 8 by Ender; Chapter 9 by Force. 17 See above, Chapter 3 by Thompson; Chapter 5 by Tasseau; Chapter 11 by Cleary; Chapter 12 by Fowle; Chapter 13 by Force. 18 See Assouline 1989 and Assouline 2002. 19 See above, Chapter 9 on Halvorsen by Force; Chapter 10 on Olson’s Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet by Brandberg; Chapter 13 on Bignou by Force; Chapter 15 on Dudensing by Julia May Boddewyn. 20 See above, Chapter 14 on René Gimpel by Diana Kostyrko. 21 See above, Chapter 5 by Tasseau; Chapter 8 by Ender; and Chapter 11 by Cleary. 22 See above, Chapter 10 by Brandberg. 23 See Chagnon-Burke 2012: 39. 24 See above, Introduction by Force; Chapter 13 on Bignou by Force. 25 See above, Chapters 5, 8, 9, 12, 15. 26 See above, Chapter 7 on Paul Guillaume and Marius de Zayas by Yaëlle Biro. 27 See above, Chapter 7 by Biro. Marius de Zayas’s show was not the first such exhibition. The first occurred at Otto Feldmann’s Neue Galerie, Berlin, in 1913, as explained in Force 2020—further evidence that international cooperation between art dealers was the norm rather than the exception. 28 One of the strategies dealers used in their exhibitions was to include artworks they borrowed from the collectors they had sold them to, to advertise their desirability—a strategy Leo Castelli also used in the 1960s. Hulst 2007: 19. 29 Fitzgerald 1998: 204–26. 30 Dumas 1997: 263–9, 293–335; Fitzgerald 1998: 15–46. 31 Durand-Ruel Godfroy 2000.

Bibliography Assouline 1989. Pierre Assouline. L’Homme de l’art: D.-H. Kahnweiler, 1884–1979. Paris: Gallimard, 1989. Assouline 2002. Pierre Assouline. Grâce lui soit rendue: Paul-Durand Ruel, le marchand des Impressionnistes. Paris: Plon, 2002. Chagnon-Burke 2012. Véronique Chagnon-Burke. “Rue Laffitte: Looking at and Buying Contemporary Art in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Paris.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 31–46. http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/ summer12/veronique-chagnon-burke-looking-at-andbuying-contemporary-art-inmid-nineteenth-century-paris (Accessed December 9, 2019). Chong 2011. Derrick Chong. “The Emergence of Powerhouse Dealers in Contemporary Art.” In Globalization and Contemporary Art, edited by Jonathan Harris, 431–48. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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Cohen-Solal 2009. Annie Cohen-Solal. Leo Castelli et les siens. Paris: Gallimard, 2009. Dumas 1997. Ann Dumas, Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein and Gary Tinterow. The Private Collection of Edgar Degas. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. Exhibition catalogue. Durand-Ruel Godfroy 2000. Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy. “Paul Durand-Ruel’s Marketing Practices.” The Van Gogh Museum Journal (2000): 83–9. Fitzgerald 1998. Michael Fitzgerald. Making Modernism: Picasso and the Creation of the Market for Twentieth-Century Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Force 2020. Christel H. Force. “Aux origines de la rencontre entre Cubisme et ‘art nègre’: Otto Feldmann, promoteur de Picasso en Allemagne avant 1914.” In Les artistes et leurs galeries: Paris-Berlin, 1900–1950, edited by Denise Vernerey-Laplace and Hélène Ivanoff, 74–108. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2020. Gautier 1858. Théophile Gautier. “Rue Laffitte.” L’Artiste, nouvelle série 3 (January 3, 1858): 10–13. Green 1989. Nicholas Green. “Circuits of Production, Circuits of Consumption: The Case of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Art Dealing.” Art Journal 48, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 29–34. Hulst 2007. Titia Hulst. “The Leo Castelli Gallery.” Archives of American Art Journal 46, no. 3/4 (2007): 14–27. White and White 1993. Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White. Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965. Reprinted by University of Chicago Press, 1993. Zalewski 2005. Leanne Zalewski. “Alexandre Cabanel’s Portraits of the American ‘Aristocracy’ of the Early Gilded Age.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 4, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 78–95. http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring05/300–alexandrecabanels-portraits-of-the-american-aristocracy-of-the-early-gilded-age (accessed December 8, 2019).

Contributors Yaëlle Biro is Associate Curator of African Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She joined The Met in 2007 and has been a curator of African arts since 2010. She completed her dissertation in 2010 at the Sorbonne in Paris on African arts’ commercial networks during the first decades of the twentieth century (Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Dissertation Prize, 2011). Her exhibition “African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde” received the AAMC 2013 Outstanding Small Exhibition Prize. Among the most recent exhibitions she co-curated are “In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa” (2015–16) and “The Face of Dynasty: Royal Crests from Western Cameroon” (2017–18). In 2020, she co-organized the exhibition Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara. Her book Fabriquer le regard: Marchands, réseaux et objets d’art africains à l’aube du XXe siècle (Les Presses du Réel, 2018) received a special mention for an outstanding scholarly publication by International Prize for Tribal Art Books (PILAT). Julia May Boddewyn is an independent scholar who has worked in the New York art world for over thirty years and has been an independent researcher since 2015. She began studying the US market for modern European art in 1995 when, as a graduate student at Hunter College, CUNY, she contributed an essay titled “The First American Collectors of de Chirico” to the exhibition catalogue, De Chirico and America (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1996). She spent several years assembling an exhaustive chronology of Picasso exhibitions that took place in the United States between 1910 and 1957 for the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition catalogue Picasso and American Art (Yale University Press, 2006). She was a researcher on the 2014–15 Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Currently, she is a researcher at the Arshile Gorky Foundation working on the comprehensive catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work. Christina Brandberg is an independent scholar who worked at the art gallery Åmells Konsthandel in Stockholm from 1998 to 2002, then six years for the auction firm Bukowskis as a specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nordic and International Fine Art. She recently completed her PhD at Loughborough University in the UK with a dissertation titled “Henry Moore in the Nordic countries,” covering topics such as the market for international art in Stockholm in the 1950s and the use of Moore’s art as propaganda during the Cold War. She is currently working on the art market in Stockholm, especially the Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet (est. 1918), Konstsalongen Samlaren (est. 1943), and twentieth-century Swedish collections of international art.

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Véronique Chagnon-Burke is Academic Director of Christie’s Education New York. She is a graduate from the École du Louvre, holds a Licence en Histoire de l’Art, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), an MA in the History of Art from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has taught a wide range of subjects at Queens College, Parsons School of Design and Hunter College. Her positions have included work at the Museum of Modern Art, the College Art Association, and the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. A specialist in the history of nineteenth-century French landscape painting, her fields of expertise include art criticism and the art market and the role of women in the art world. Her publications include The Politicization of Nature: The Critical Reception of Barbizon Painting During the July Monarchy (2009), “Rue Laffitte: Looking at and Buying Contemporary Art in Mid-Nineteenth Century Paris” in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (2012) and Women Art Critics in the Nineteenth Century: Vanishing Acts, a collaborative anthology with Heather Jensen and Wendelin Guentner (2013). Most recently, she has organized academic conferences which bring together art history and art-market studies, such as “Celebrating Female Agency in the Art” in June 2018. She is founding member of the New York chapter of The International Art Market Studies Association (TIAMSA). David M. Challis is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Art History program at The University of Melbourne in Australia. His doctoral research examined the socioeconomic context and art historical consequences of the interwar translocation of French modernist art. His ongoing research interests include providing new art historical perspectives on the historical and philosophical underpinnings of the art market in addition to researching issues relating to the structure, operation and future developments of the contemporary art market in Australia and across the globe. He is the author of a recently published article ‘Rodin’s sculpture in Japan and the Economics of Translocation’ in the Journal for Art Market Studies and was awarded the 2020 Paul Mellon Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art. David returned to full time study at the University of Melbourne in 2013 after a successful twenty-three-year career in the Financial Markets Industry based in Australia and London. MaryKate Cleary is Postgraduate Researcher and Assistant Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. She is an art historian, lecturer, and provenance researcher specializing in modern and contemporary art, the history of the art market and cultural property issues in the Nazi Era. She is pursuing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh focusing on the Galerie Paul Rosenberg in the interwar era. As Adjunct Professor at New York University, MaryKate taught the first academic course at a US institution dedicated to Provenance Research. She has guest-lectured at Columbia University, Stanford University, The Courtauld Institute, Warwick University, Kingston University, the University of Zurich, Christie’s Education, and Sotheby’s Institute. She has held positions at The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Loss Register, Sotheby’s, artnet. com, and the Jewish Museum New York. She holds a BA in German Literature from Catholic University in Washington, DC, an MA from The Courtauld Institute, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Technische Universität Dresden.

Contributors

267

Valerie Nikola Ender is an independent scholar who is finishing her PhD at the University of Cologne about the fate of the Thannhauser galleries and their art collection during the Third Reich and postwar. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the University of Cologne, the Otto-Wolff-Stiftung Cologne, the Paul + Maria Kremer Stiftung Cologne, and the Kölner Gymnasial- and Stiftungsfonds. She was formerly employed as Research Associate at Venator & Hanstein Cologne; at LETTER Stiftung, Print and Sculpture Collection Cologne; at Galerie Jochen Hempel Leipzig; and at Antiquarian Bookseller Heribert Tenschert/Rudolf Borchardt Archiv, Switzerland. She specializes in modern and contemporary art, the history of collecting and trading, provenance research, and exile studies. Christel H. Force (aka Christel Hollevoet) is an independent scholar based in New York and Paris, formerly Associate Research Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2005–18). Previously she held positions at The Museum of Modern Art (1990–2005) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Force obtained an art history degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles; completed her MA at McGill University in Montreal; was a fellow of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (Curatorial); and received her PhD in 2001 from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her areas of expertise are Impressionist and modern art, the history of collecting, the historical art market, and Holocaust-era provenance. Force frequently contributes to international conferences and symposia; she is a founding member of TIAMSA; a trustee of Christie’s Education New York; and a Steering Committee member of the German/American Provenance Research Exchange Program for Museum Professionals (2017–19). Frances Fowle is Personal Chair of Nineteenth-Century Art, University of Edinburgh, and Senior Curator, French Art, National Galleries of Scotland. She is also senior Trustee of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, Board member of TIAMSA and Chair of the Association for Art History (AAH). Frances is a specialist in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with an emphasis on collecting and the art market. She is the author of Van Gogh’s Twin: the Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid 1854–1928 (2010) and she has curated and contributed to numerous international exhibitions, notably Degas and America: The Early Collectors (2001); Sisley: Poet of Impressionism (2002); Gauguin’s Vision (2005); Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors (2006); Impressionism and Scotland (2008); Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880–1910 (2012), American Impressionism: A New Vision 1880–1900 (2014), Inspiring Impressionism: Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh (2016) and Pin-Ups: ToulouseLautrec and the Art of Celebrity (2018). Ambre Gauthier is Director of the Marc Chagall Catalogue Raisonné Project in Paris. She holds a PhD in Art History from Université Paris X and a Master’s degree in Art history from the Ecole du Louvre. In 2010, she was entrusted with part of the inventory of the Roberto Matta estate, then worked at the Centre Pompidou on the inventory of Paul Destribats’s collection of art bulletins, co-authoring the reference work on this

268

Contributors

collection. Head of research and archives at the Comité Marc Chagall in Paris since 2011, she participates in the elaboration of exhibitions and publishes essays and books. In 2015, she curated the exhibition Marc Chagall: Le Triomphe de la Musique at the Cité de la Musique/Philharmonie in Paris. Between 2017 and 2019, she curated exhibitions for the Museum of Fine Arts of Montréal, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Tokyo Station Gallery, and the Macao Museum of Modern Art. She is currently Director of the Marc Chagall Catalogue raisonné project. Diana J. Kostyrko is Visiting Fellow at the Research School of Humanities and the Arts of the Australian National University (ANU). She was awarded a PhD in Art History from the ANU in 2007, following wide-ranging studies in the humanities and social sciences supported by an APA scholarship, ANU awards, and a Getty Library Research grant. As a cultural historian and provenance researcher her interest lies primarily with the transatlantic art dealers of the late nineteenth into the mid-twentieth century, and their influence on private and museum collections in North America. Her current research more specifically explores the significance of René Gimpel (1881–1945) as a Jewish art dealer during and after the Nazi occupation of France. Kostyrko is the author of The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918–1939, which was published with Harvey Miller/Brepols in December 2017, with assistance from the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Paolo Serafini has been teaching in the Art History Department at Sapienza Università in Rome since 2009, and holds the Chair of Art Market Studies since 2017. His focus is nineteenth-century painting (Luigi Nono catalogue raisonné, 2 vols., 2006; Antonietta Brandeis, 2010; Giacomo Favretto, 2010; Italian XIX Century Paintings in the Storage of the Hermitage Museum, 2011), art criticism and language (“The representative,” Word & Image 26, no. 4, 2010; L’Arte da leggere, 2011). Since 2013 he has been focusing on the art market both as a curator (La Maison Goupil, 2013–14) and as researcher at the Getty Research Institute for the project “An Art Market for America: Dealers, Collectors, Philanthropy and the Formation of American Museums” (“Archives for the History of the French Art Market, 1860–1920,” Getty Research Journal, no. 8, 2016: 109–34; “An inside View of the Print Market in Paris,” Getty Research Journal, no. 10, 2018: 207–24). Vérane Tasseau is an independent scholar and researcher for the Picasso Estate. She formerly worked at the Musée Picasso in Paris where she coordinated major exhibitions, including Matisse-Picasso (2001, Grand Palais, Paris) and Picasso Surreal (2005, Beyeler Foundation Basel). In 2003, she received a grant from MoMA to assist with the reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection and in 2006 to manage the research for the exhibition Georges Seurat: The Drawings. Since 2010, she is part-time researcher for the Picasso Estate in Paris and in parallel is currently completing a PhD on the Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler sales (following the sequestration of his gallery stock in 1914) at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne after beginning this research within the frame of the Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2014–16). She co-edited a special issue on Picasso’s working techniques for Cahiers d’Art (December 2015) and wrote in 2018 “Picasso: L’art en questions” (Hazan).

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269

Jennifer A. Thompson is Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting & Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She joined the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1999 and has played an essential role in interpreting, displaying, and developing the Museum’s collections of European painting and sculpture. She earned her MA and PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She has curated or co-curated many notable exhibitions, including The Impressionist’s Eye (2019), Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection (2017), Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting (2015), Van Gogh Up Close (2012), and Late Renoir (2010) and has written extensively on these topics. She is responsible for the collections and installations at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia and serves as Head of the European Painting & Sculpture Department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Index Boldface locators indicate figures; locators followed by “n.” indicate endnotes Abbott, Berenice 224 n.93 Abin, Cesar 201 Académie Julian 81 Académie Matisse 135–6, 149 n.4 Academy/academic. See French Academy/ academic painting Adler, Rose 231, 238, 243 n.25 African and Oceanic art 92–3, 95–6, 101–2, 103, 112, 113, 104–16, 221 n.51, 248, 250, 253–4, 255 nn.16– 18, 256 n.29, 261 Aftenposten 135, 151 n.24, 151 n.28 Agnew, Thomas – Thomas Agnew & Sons 15, 186, 188, 196 n.22 Agutte, Georgette 150 n.22 Alex Reid & Lefèvre Ltd. See Reid, Alexander; Reid, A.J. McNeill; Lefèvre, Ernest Albert Allan, James 192, 197 n.44 Allan, Margaret Dunn 197 n.44 Allard, Joseph 67, 218 n.6 Allard & Noel 31, 40 n.2 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence 49 American Art Association 47 American Art News 67, 69 n.10, 71 n.39, 202, 218 n.12 Ames, Frederick 233 Amiet, Cuno 206 Amsinck, Erdwin 50 Angell, Henry Clay 47 anti-German (anti-boche) sentiment 156 n.93 antiquarian (vs. modern-art dealer) / brocanteur 2–3, 11, 23 n.60, 94, 231–2 antisemitism 124, 176–7, 180, 226 n.120 Apollinaire, Guillaume 81, 92, 104–7, 110–11, 115 n.9, 115 n.12, 121, 139, 151 n.26, 151 n.35, 248

Armory Show. See exhibitions/New York, Chicago, Boston/Armory Arnold, Eduard 121 Arnold & Tripp 31, 32, 38, 40 n.2 Arnold, Ernst 221 n.47 Arp, Hans 240, 243 n.25 The Art Amateur 50 art fairs 18, 26 n.96 Art Looting Investigation Unit 215, 226 n.119, 227 n.124 art market during the German Occupation of France, 1940–45 67, 128, 156 n.93, 171, 180, 215–16, 226 nn.118–19, 227 n.124 Art News 224 n.87, 225 n.99, 250, 252, 255 n.14, 255 n.17, 256 n.22 Art of This Century 129 artification 102, 104 artist exhibition. See exhibitions; salons/ Salon. See also specific artist names artist retrospective 10, 23 nn.45–6, 43, 209, 223 n.77, 240, 243 n.25, 245, 253. See also specific artist names Ascher & Velker 239 Association of Scandinavian Artists 147 Atmore Pope, Alfred 45 auction sales (including Hôtel Drouot) 4–5, 8, 11–14, 22 n.42, 25 n.88, 39, 61, 62, 82–4, 88 n.30, 97 n.15, 105, 128, 153 n.48, 173, 177, 190, 205, 210, 220 n.34, 220 n.38, 223 n.79, 225 n.109, 232, 242 n.10, 262, 255 n.17 Aulard, Paul 34 avant-garde 6–7, 77–8, 80, 84, 96, 104, 110, 114, 116 n.37, 124, 135, 147, 161, 173, 175, 177, 197 n.41, 239, 247, 260 Avery, Samuel Putnam 34, 47, 49

Index Bague & Cie 31, 40 n.2 Balay, Roland 205, 226 n.113 Ball, Alex 127 Ballantine, John H. 233 Balzac, Honoré de 23 n.60, 225 n.106 Barbazanges, Henri 139, 220 n.43 Barbazanges-Hodebert, Galerie 145, 151 n.29, 188, 190, 205–6 Barbizon paintings/landscapes 2, 17, 34, 44, 47, 49, 235, 241 n.9, 247, 259 Barnes, Albert C. 26 n.103, 62, 64–6, 68, 69 n.20, 70 n.21, 70 n.25, 70 n.28, 92–3, 96, 104, 114, 171, 175–7, 181, 182 n.18, 191, 197 n.41, 205–6, 208, 211–13, 222 n.69, 224 n.89, 225 n.105, 224 n.95, 247, 250. See also museums/Barnes Foundation Barnsdall, Aline 204 Barr, Alfred H., Jr. 70 n.24, 180, 128, 209, 222 n.72, 223 n.77 Barr, Margaret Scolari 209 Basler, Adolphe 23 n.58 Bastid, Paul 213 Baudelaire, Charles 139 Bauer, Rudolf 243 n.25 Beaudin, André 164 Beaux-Arts, Galerie des 86 Becker, John – John Becker Gallery 203 Bell, Clive 175 Benjamin, Walter 95 Béothy, Etienne 243 n.25 Berenson, Bernard 50, 55 n.36, 236, 242 n.15 Berg, Yngve 167 Bergaud, Alfred 220 n.37 Bergen, Norway 143, 153 n.54 Berggruen, Heinz 26 n.101 Bergh, Richard 150 n.22, 160 Berlin, Germany 16, 26 n.96, 44–9, 53, 78, 83–4, 87, 95, 120–5, 127–9, 136, 141, 148, 205, 208 Bernadotte, Jean-Baptiste 151 n.34 Bernard, Émile 61, 69 n.12 Bernheim, Georges 141, 143, 153 n.56, 155 n.83, 159–60, 162, 188, 205–6, 218 n.6, 221 n.50, 221 n.53 Bernheim-Jeune, Galerie 9–13, 19, 21 n.8, 23 n.62, 25 n.84, 68, 69 n.13, 129 n.1, 136, 138, 141, 150 n.22, 151 n.23,

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153 n.48, 153 n.58, 160, 162, 164, 174, 187, 196 n.25, 205–6, 215, 220 n.34, 222 n.69, 222 n.70, 225 n.106, 226 nn.118–19, 248–9. See also Bignou, Etienne Bernheim-Jeune, Gaston (Bernheim de Villers) – Galerie BernheimJeune 6, 9–13, 19, 23 n.62, 69 n.5, 121, 126, 127, 136, 141, 143, 174, 180, 205, 208, 218 n.6, 222 n.70, 225 n.106, 226 n.118. See also Bernheim-Jeune, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Joseph (Josse) – Galerie Bernheim-Jeune 6, 69 n.5, 121, 126, 127, 143, 174, 205, 218 n.6, 225 n.106, 226 n.118. See also Bernheim-Jeune, Galerie Bernheim, Marcel 164 Bernoulli, Christoph 84 Bernstein, Carl and Felicie 53, 56 n.48 Beron, Aron Haber 239 Berwind, Edward J. 241 n.6 Bignou, Bernard 202 Bignou, Etienne 1, 10–12, 16, 26 n. 102, 71 n.48,182 n.18, 185–8, 190–1, 193–4, 195 nn.8–9, 195 n.17, 196 n.39, 197 n.40, 197 n.49, 198 n.51, 201–27, 208, 210, 211, 214, 217, 248, 261. See also Petit, Georges Bignou and Bernheim-Jeune 205–6, 215 Bignou and Knoedler 188, 194, 204–6, 209, 211–12, 219 n.22, 219 n.33, 220 n.40, 225 n.106, 226 n.110 Bignou and Reid & Lefevre 185–91, 193–4, 195 nn. 8–9, 195 n.17, 195 n.20, 196 n.39, 197 n.40, 197 n.49, 198 n.51, 202–6, 208–9, 212, 215, 220 n.40, 222 n.62, 222 nn.70– 1, 223 n.82, 226 n.110, 226 n.112 Bignou and Seligmann 204–6, 219 nn.28–9, 219 n.33, 222 n.62 Bignou and Vollard 201, 205–6, 209–13, 214, 215, 218 n.5, 222 n.71, 223 nn.82–7, 224 n.101, 225 nn.104–6, 225 n.109, 226 n.115 Bignou, New York gallery 62, 70 n.21, 212–15, 221 n.55, 223 n.82, 224 nn.93–5, 225 n.110, 226 n.112

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Bignou, Paris gallery 62, 188, 195 n.8, 202–8, 215–16, 218 n.11, 219 n.31, 221 n.53, 221 n.55, 223 n.81, 224 nn.93–5, 225 n.110, 226 n.112 Bignou, Michel – Galerie Michel 202–3, 215, 226 n.111 Blaffer, R. Lee 155 n.82 Blanche, Galerie. See Engwall Bliss, Lillie P. 203–4, 247 Bliss, Robert Woods 204 Bonfils, Robert 238 Bonheur, Rosa 241–2 n.9 Bonjean, Jacques 195 n.8, 218 n.12 Bonjean, Théodore – Galerie Bonjean 186, 195 n.8, 202, 218 n.11 Bonnard, Pierre 23 n.62, 138, 148, 150 n.22, 151 n.23, 153 n.52, 173, 211–12, 214–15 Bonnat, Léon 26 n.105 Borès, Francisco 163–4 Börjeson, Lena 147 Bormann, Martin 227 n.124 Boston, Massachusetts 44, 45, 47, 53–4, 67, 207, 235 Boucher, François 23 n.62, 140, 242 n.9 Boudin, Eugène 43, 47, 186, 203, 226 n.122 Bouguereau, William 5–6 Bourgeois, Stephan 247, 248 Boussod, Leon 24 n.64 Boussod, Valadon & Cie 3, 11, 31–2, 34, 38, 48, 67, 186, 220 n.38, 233, 241 n.9. See also Goupil & Cie Brakl, Franz Josef 129 n.1 Brame, Hector 13, 23 n.62, 218 n.6 Brancusi, Constantin 17, 105 Brandes, Edvard 149 n.3 Brandus, Edward 49 Braque, Georges 77–8, 80, 82, 84, 87, 87 n.3, 88 n.22, 94, 121, 136–7, 140, 143, 148, 151 n.35, 153 n.52, 155 n.89, 163, 173, 179, 179–80, 181 n.4, 193, 198 n.54, 202–3, 212, 217, 221 n.61, 231, 245–6, 248, 261 Brenner, Michael – Washington Square Gallery 14, 77, 80–1, 247. See also Coady Breton, André 26 n.103 Brown, Ernest – E. Brown & Phillips 25 n.84, 174

Brummer, Joseph – Brummer Gallery 14, 83, 89 n.33, 101, 103–4, 105, 206, 220 n.44, 247–8 Bruschwiler, Eugen 216, 227 n.124 Brussels, Belgium 15, 26 n.96, 45, 47–8, 54, 55 n.24, 219 n.26, 220 n.46 Bucher, Jeanne 84, 231 Buchholz Gallery 87, 129. See also Valentin, Curt Buenos Aires, Argentina. 67, 86, 119, 124–5, 125. See also Müller, Federico Bulletin de l’effort moderne 83, 94–5. See also dealer/journals; Rosenberg, Léonce Bunjes, Hermann 227 n.124 Burne-Jones, Edward 49 Burrell, William 185, 190, 191, 193, 196 nn.35–6, 196 n.39 Burty, Philippe 2 Burty, Frank (Haviland) 151 n.30 Cahiers d’Art 96, 155 n.89, 173, 181 n.5, 201. See also dealer/journals Cahiers d’Art, Galerie 96 Caillebotte, Gustave 19, 26 n.105 Campriani, Alceste 34 Cargill, William A. 223 n.81 Carlsund, Otto G. 162–3 Carnegie International 49 Carré, Louis 166 Carrière, Eugène 160 Carstairs, Carroll – Carroll Carstairs Gallery 226 n.113 cartels 15, 20 Cassatt, Mary 7–8, 17, 22 n.38, 44, 52–3, 55 n.46, 121, 188, 211 Cassirer, Bruno 47, 52, 84, 174 Cassirer, Paul 47, 78, 80, 84, 88 n.16, 119, 121, 124, 129 n.1, 136, 174, 219 n.26 Cassirer Gallery 25 n.84, 47, 52, 174, 218 n.5 Castelli, Leo 262 n.8, 263 n.28 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 226 n.120 Ceria, Edmond 239 Cézanne, Paul 6, 9, 18, 23 n.45, 23 n.46, 23 n.62, 53, 59–61, 60, 63–4, 66, 68, 69 nn.4–5, 69 nn.12–13, 70 n.24, 70 n.28, 79, 84, 93, 136, 143, 147–8, 149 n.3, 152 n.45, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 155 n.77,

Index 155 n.82, 162, 173, 175–6, 188, 196 n.25, 197 n.50, 202–3, 206–7, 211–13, 215, 218 n.7, 221 n.55, 221 n.56, 223 n.81, 224 n.97, 245, 253, 261 Chagall, Marc 17 Chambre syndicale des négociants en objets d’art, tableaux, et curiosités 2, 21 n.7 Chappey, Edouard 233 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Siméon 23 n.62, 241 n.6 Charpentier, Galerie 243 n.25 Chase, J. Eastman 47, 55 n.20 Chase, William Merritt 53 Chase gallery 47 Chicago, Illinois 45, 47–50, 67, 128, 176, 233, 235, 240, 255 n.2 Chintreuil, Antoine 39 Chrysler, Walter P., Jr. 253–4 Cincinnati, Ohio 47 Clair, René 95 Clark, Stephen C. 21 n.4, 70 n.24, 207, 247 Clarke, Liz 213 Clays, Paul-Jean 38, 41 n.19 Clifford, James 103 Coady, Robert – Washington Square Gallery 14, 77, 80–1. See also Brenner Cocteau, Jean 95, 139, 151 n.26, 253 Cole, J. Foxcroft 47, 53, 55 n.20 Coleman, Herbert 143, 153 n.54 Colle, Pierre 205–6, 209, 218 n.12 Colnaghi 16, 37, 205, 232, 235, 238 Comité de confiscation des profits illicites 215, 226 n.123 Comité national interprofessionnel d’épuration 215–16, 226 n.123 competition 3, 12–15, 17, 20, 25 n.85, 25 n.87, 32, 49, 66, 86, 129, 145, 152 n.46, 176, 188, 190, 203, 205, 220 n.38, 232, 236, 237, 245, 260. See also cartels; legal protection of competition; monopoly; oligopoly Cone, Claribel and Etta 21 n.4 Conseiller du Commerce Extérieur de la France 210, 224 n.88, 225 n.108 contemporary art 2–4, 10, 12–13, 17–18, 20, 26 n.105, 38–9, 49, 61, 67, 78, 83, 92–3, 104, 106, 128, 160, 163,

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173, 176–7, 201–2, 212, 219 n.28, 235, 239–40, 259–62 contracts. See dealer/contracts Cooper, Douglas 84, 89 n.42, 188, 195 n.9 Coquiot, Gustave 95 Corcoran, William W. 21 n.4 Corcos, Vittorio Matteo 36, 37 Corot, Camille 39, 44, 49, 52, 140, 142, 153 n.52, 173, 186, 188, 202, 207, 212, 226 n.122 Corporation des marchands d’art moderne 2, 14, 141, 217 Couper, Thomas 195 n.20 Courbet, Gustave 26 n.105, 39–40, 44, 142, 147, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 155 n.86, 162, 173, 176, 207, 221 n.47 Courtauld, Samuel 68, 70 n.25, 148, 156 n.94, 185, 188, 189, 190, 192–4, 196 nn. 24–5, 196 n.27, 203, 223 n.81. See also museums/Courtauld Institute Coutaud, Lucien 231, 239 Crillon Gallery 203 crisis/Danish Landmandsbanken crash (1922) 154 n.66 crisis/Kreuger crash of 1932 163 crisis/Panic of 1873 4, 7, 15, 48 crisis/stock market crash of 1882 4, 7, 15, 43 crisis/stock market crash of 1929 15, 62–3, 75, 83, 146, 163, 207, 238. See also Great Depression critics 3–8, 22 n.22, 50, 61, 92, 94, 96, 175, 176, 235, 254, 261, 262. See also dealer-critic system; specific critic names Cronier, Ernest 232, 234 Cross, Henri-Edmond 151 n.23, 160 Cubism/Cubist 6, 13, 20, 24 n.65, 60, 63, 75, 77–81, 83–7, 87 n.5, 94–6, 108, 114, 136, 164, 173, 180, 181 n.4, 220 n.33, 220 n.40, 243 n.29, 254, 256 n.29, 261 currency/exchange rate 10, 16, 25 n.89, 62–6, 69 n.19, 70 n.26, 139, 148, 164, 167–8, 217, 245, 260 Cuttoli, Marie 212, 239 da Vinci, Leonardo 17 Daber, Alfred 226 n.119

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Dagbladet 135, 151 n.24, 151 n.28 Dagens Nyheter 167 Dale, Chester 19, 21 n.4, 68, 70 n.25, 194, 204–7, 208, 212–13, 218 n.1, 221 n.57, 222 n.61, 224 n.103, 247 Dale, Maud 207, 208, 213, 218 n.1, 221–2 n.61, 222 n.71 Dali, Salvador 203, 206, 212–14, 225 n.110 Dalmau, Josep 78, 87 n.5 Daubigny, Charles 49, 188 Daumier, Honoré 50, 68, 93, 148, 160, 173, 186, 188, 202–3, 207, 220 n.35 Davey, George 218 n.6, 219 n.22 Davis, Brandon 89 n.42, 153 n.59, 249, 255 n.15 de Chirico, Giorgio 92–3, 96, 151 n.30, 245, 248–9, 255 n.13, 256 n.29 de Ganay, André 242 n.10 de Hauke, César M. 10–11, 23 n.62, 154 n.70, 204–5, 219 nn.27–8, 219 n.32, 248 de Hauke and Co. Inc. 204–5, 219 n.28 de la Chapelle, Jean Boby 164 de Maré, Rolf 149 n.3, 161, 169 n.19, 205 De Nittis, Giuseppe 34, 36 de Penne, Charles Olivier 32 de Pisis, Filippo 239 de Witte, Emanuel 235 de Zarate, Manuel Ortiz 151 n.30 de Zayas, Marius – Modern Gallery 2, 81, 92, 101–16, 112, 248, 261, 263 n.27. See also African and Oceanic art dealer 1–26, 259–60. See also specific dealer names as agent 1, 7–8, 10–11, 16, 19, 26 n.103, 32, 68, 78, 81, 84–5, 89 n.41, 135, 141, 143–5, 152 n.47, 159, 162, 171, 175, 177, 188, 190, 201, 204, 223 n.76, 223 n.82, 227 n.124, 231, 238, 246, 260, 262 alliances/partnerships (see dealer/ networks; oligopoly) as arbiter of taste 7, 10, 22 n.38, 38, 201, 205 and asymmetry of information 16, 32, 38–9 and authentication/authenticity 11, 24, 32, 38, 41 n.19, 108–9, 182 n.14, 260

as author of catalogue raisonné 12, 23–4 n.62 and economics of translocation 59–64, 66–8 as champion, facilitator, or defender of artists 3, 5–8, 12–13, 24 n.65, 83–4, 87, 95, 137, 194, 225 n.105 as collector 11, 19, 23 nn.53–4, 26 n.101, 55 n.32, 88 n.16, 92, 96, 97 n.3, 97 n.15, 106, 114, 119, 122, 127–9, 136, 143–4, 146–7, 160, 180, 207, 209, 211–12, 223 n.82, 225 nn.106–7, 226 n.118, 174, 213, 225 n.106, 249–51, 253–4, 255 n.17, 256 n.29 and competition (see competition) and contracts 12–15, 24 n.78, 25 n.87, 31–2, 35–7, 77, 80–2, 86, 88 n.24, 94, 97 n.18, 121, 141, 143, 153 nn.46–7, 153 n.58, 162–3, 175, 203, 221 n.49, 239–40 exclusive contract / exclusivity 12–14, 31–2, 35, 50, 77, 81, 86–7, 108, 121 ( see also monopoly; oligopoly) right of first refusal 31–2, 34 and dealer-centric model 61, 67 as discoverer (marchand découvreur) 12, 39, 50, 77, 92, 173, 186, 225 n.101, 239, 260 as disinterested amateur 11–12, 137 as entrepreneur 4, 10, 12–13, 20, 24 n.63, 24 n.65, 44, 59, 67, 173, 185–6, 188, 194, 201, 213, 232, 236, 260–1 as entrepreneurial promoter 6, 10, 12–13, 19 and exclusivity (see dealer/contracts) and exile 67, 82, 84, 94, 123, 128–9, 137–8, 148, 149 n.3, 180 as expert/connoisseur 12, 14, 22 n.42, 23 nn.60–2, 38, 40, 83, 94, 96, 101, 121, 130 n.23, 180, 186, 215, 217, 224 n.88, 232, 237–8, 260 and foreign peers 2, 14, 16, 25 n.84, 33, 75, 87, 218 n.5, 235, 239, 261 and gallery branches 2, 11, 16, 23 n.50, 34, 45–50, 83–4, 86, 107, 122–3, 130 n.29, 194, 204, 219 n.22, 220 n.34, 223 n.80, 226 n.119, 249

Index and gallery exhibitions/catalogues 2, 9, 11, 13–14, 23 n.45, 34 n.71, 25 n.87, 32, 38, 44, 45–54, 61, 67, 75, 77–87, 91–6, 101–14, 119–29, 135, 137–49, 159–68, 171, 173–4, 178–80, 185, 186–8, 190, 192–4, 201–14, 239–41, 245–54, 261 as gallery owner 10–11, 68, 80, 84, 101, 139, 162, 201, 220 n.37, 221 n.50 as ideologue/ideological dealer 12, 19, 20, 173, 260 and interviews 23 n.54, 24 n.65, 75, 89 n.42, 96, 129, 132 n.87, 173, 181 n.5, 201, 211, 213, 225 nn. 104–5 (see also Feuilles Volantes) and joint ownership 11, 12, 14–16, 34, 36, 82, 86, 140, 143, 148, 152 n.43, 152 n.46, 193, 204–5, 221 n.59 and journals 38, 52, 83, 91–6, 105, 107, 163, 173, 201, 238 as marchand en chambre 11, 23 n.58, 135, 149 n.2 and marriage 202, 218, 232 and modern-art 1–26, 126, 141, 185, 206 and networks 1–2, 12–18, 20, 25 n.87, 47, 68 (see also oligopoly) as patron (mécène) 4–5, 7, 12, 17, 137, 173, 213, 238 as primary dealer 2–3, 5, 7, 10, 12–14, 23 n.59, 32, 34, 53, 77, 82, 84, 94, 135–6, 138, 140–1, 143, 163, 175, 201–3, 209 as publisher (éditeur) 5, 8, 12–13, 24 n.62, 24 n.64, 33, 52, 61, 81, 84, 91–6, 107, 109, 110–11, 112, 113, 173, 190, 194, 209, 213, 225 n.106, 247, 249, 250 as scout 10–11, 16, 201, 203, 204, 206, 209, 220 n.45, 246, 260 and secondary market (see secondary market) as speculator 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 20, 24 n.74, 44, 176, 225 n.106, 232, 239, 260 (see also speculation) as types 10–13 dealer-critic system 3, 5, 7–8, 139, 151 n.26. See also critics Deberitz, Per 149 n.4

275

Degas, Edgar 23 n.62, 44, 46, 49–50, 53, 61, 69 n.5, 84, 121, 123, 124, 127, 129, 142, 148, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 161, 173–5, 188, 190, 192, 195 n.20, 196 n.21, 196 n.35, 196 n.37, 196 n.39, 197 n.46, 202–3, 211, 220 n.38, 221 n.61, 247, 262 Delacroix, Eugène 44, 49, 153 n.52, 160–1, 173 Delaroche, Paul 6 Delaunay, Robert 243 n.25, 254 Delessert, Edouard 242 n.9 Demotte, Georges 237–8, 242 n.16 Demotte, Lucien 232 Denis, Maurice 153 n.52 Denver, Colorado 48, 50, 52 Der Querschnitt 83, 95–6, 97 n.22. See also dealer/journals; Flechtheim Der Sturm gallery. See Walden Derain, André 77, 80–3, 88 n.22, 89 n.33, 92, 97 n.16, 121, 137–8, 148, 150 n.16, 150 n.22, 151 n.23, 155 n.87, 193, 197 n.40, 198 n.54, 202, 207, 211–12, 221 n.61, 239, 245–6, 248, 250–3 Der Blaue Reiter 79 Dermée, Paul 151 n.35 Despiau, Charles 220 nn.43–4 devaluation 63, 83, 148 Devree, Howard 212 Dewhurst, Wynford 189 diaspora of French modernism 16, 18, 25 n.88, 59. See also export market Die Brücke 79 Dior, Christian 195 n.8, 218 n.12 d’Oelsnitz, Hermann 67, 69 n.5 Doria, Armand 241 n.9 Dormoy, Marie 213, 225 n.104, 225 n.106 Doucet, Jacques 26 n.103, 219 n.33, 231 Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell Gallery 44, 232 Dragon, Galerie du. See Zervos Dreicer, Michael 237 Drouais, François-Hubert 232, 241 n.7 Drouot. See Hôtel Drouot; auction sales Druet, Eugène 136, 141, 162 Dubourg, Jacques 166 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond 243 n.25

276 Dudensing, Francis Valentine – Valentine Gallery 2, 11, 203, 205, 220 n.40, 220 n.45, 245–50, 246, 251–4, 255 n.2, 255 n.17, 256 n.26, 256 n.28, 261 Dudensing, Frank 247 Dudensing, Richard 247 Dufresne, Charles 198 n.54 Dufy, Raoul 150 n.22, 193, 203, 212, 217, 219 n.19, 220 n.45, 245 Dun, Robert Graham 233 Durand-Ruel, Charles 45, 52, 171, 174, 179 Durand-Ruel, Edmond 5, 11 Durand-Ruel, Georges 45 Durand-Ruel, Joseph 45, 49 Durand-Ruel, Paul 3–13, 15–16, 19–20, 23 n.62, 24 n.65, 24 n.72, 25 n.87, 38, 43, 43–56, 61, 64–8, 75, 92, 121, 136, 141, 144, 159–60, 162, 171, 174–6, 185, 187, 195 n.1, 196 n.31, 205, 212, 218 n.6, 220 n.38, 221 n.55, 225 n.106, 235, 253, 260–1. See also L’art dans les deux mondes Durand-Ruel Gallery 11, 48–50, 52–4, 64–5, 65, 66, 75, 136, 175, 179, 181, 221 n.55, 253 Duranty, Edmond 190 Duret, Théodore 22 n.22, 22 n.27, 142, 189, 207 Durlacher, George L. 232 Düsseldorf, Germany 78, 80, 83–5, 95, 97 n.22 Duthuit, Georges 155 n.89, 156 n.90 Duthuit, Marguerite (née Matisse) 150 n.22, 208 Duveen, Charles Joel 236 Duveen, Esther 232 Duveen, Florence 232 Duveen, Henry-Joseph 48, 126, 232, 236 Duveen, Jacques H., aka Jack 232 Duveen, Joseph Joel 126, 174, 232, 236–8 Duveen Galleries 126, 193, 219 n.22, 232, 236, 238 E. Gambart & Co. See Gambart E. Gimpel & Wildenstein 232, 235, 238 E. Le Roy & Cie. See Le Roy Eakins, Thomas 53

Index economy/economics 16–17, 59–71, 135. See also free market economy economic downturn 44, 54, 62, 84, 146–8, 194, 238, 260. See also crisis Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg / Task Force Rosenberg 128, 226 n.119 Einstein, Carl 109–10, 209 Eisenberg, Abram 21 n.4 El Greco 49 Elkins, William 233, 242 n.9 Eluard, Paul 26 n.103 Engwall, Gustaf – Galerie Blanche 159, 166 Ephrussi, Charles 53 Epstein, Jacob 239–40, 243 n.26 Erbslöh, Adolf 121 Erler, Fritz 120 Ernest Brown and Phillips. See Brown Esnault, Gilles 239 Ethnographica and curiosities 101, 105, 114 Eumorphopoulos, George 153 n.59 exclusivity. See dealer/contracts exhibitions 2–8, 10–11, 13, 14, 19, 22 n.21, 23 nn.45–6, 25–6 n.96, 32, 38, 47–9, 53, 61, 67, 77–8, 87 n.5, 91, 95, 97 n.3, 101, 107–9, 119, 121, 129 n.1, 138–40, 161, 173–4, 188, 197 n.50, 207, 209, 212, 243 n.25, 243 n.30, 245, 247, 249–50, 253, 261. See also Matisse exhibitions; Picasso exhibitions; salons/Salon exhibitions mentioned: Barcelona, Dalmau, Exposició d’art cubista (1912) 78, 87 n.5 Basel, Kunsthalle (1931) 209 Bergen, Bergens Kunstforening (1918) 143, 153 n.54 Berlin, Der Sturm (1910) 122 Berlin, Feldmann (1913) 78 Berlin, Grand Hotel Kaiserhof 48 Berlin, Gurlitt (1863) 44 Berlin, Gurlitt (1914) 136 Berlin, Matthiesen (1923) 220 n.35 Berlin, National Gallery (1896) 53 Berlin, Thannhauser (1928, 1930) 124 Brussels, Hôtel de la Poste (1872) 47–8 Brussels, Hôtel du Grand Miroir (1885) 55 n.24

Index Boston, Chase gallery (1888, 1891) 47 Boston, trade fair (1883) 44 Buenos Aires, F. Müller (1934) 67, 86, 124–5 Chicago, Arts Club 240 Chicago, Palmer House Hotel (1890) 49 Cologne, Feldmann (1913) 78 Cologne, Sonderbund (1912) 19, 78, 121, 149 n.3 Copenhagen, Danske Kunsthandel (1919) 143 Copenhagen, Fransk Genombrottskonst (1931) 147 Copenhagen, Royal Museum (1914) 149 n.3 Copenhagen, Young Norwegian Art (1911) 149 n.4 Denver, Brown’s Palace Hotel (1897) 50 Detroit, Arts and Craft Club 211 Düsseldorf, Flechtheim (1929) 85 Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum (1987) 78 Glasgow, Reid (1920–) 186 Gothenburg, Fransk Genombrottskonst (1931) 147 Gothenburg, Valand Art School (1918) 143 Hamburg, Hôtel de l’Europe 48 London, Agnew’s (1922) 188 London, Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell Gallery 44, 82 London, Grafton Galleries (1905) 67 London, Grafton, Manet and the PostImpressionists (1910) 19, 22 n.24, 67, 77, 193 London, Grafton, Second PostImpressionist Exhibition (1912) 19, 22 n.24, 67, 193 London, Knoedler’s (1923) 188, 190 London, Lefèvre Gallery / Reid and Lefèvre (1922–7) 188, 190–4, 203 London, Leicester Galleries (1919–25) 127, 143, 203 London, Reid and Lefèvre (Picasso, 1931) 203, 220 n.40 Merion, Barnes Foundation (1923 & 1936) 93, 97 n.10, 213

277 Munich, Moderne Galerie, Thannhauser (1909–13, 1922) 78, 80, 83, 120–3 New York, Chicago, Boston, Armory (1913) 18–19, 67, 80, 106, 121, 218 n.5, 247 New York, Art Center, Quinn Memorial (1926) 177 New York, Becker Gallery 203 New York, Bignou Gallery (1935–46) 212–13, 219 n.21 New York, Brummer Gallery (1922, 1927) 89 n.33, 220 n.44 New York, Buchholz Gallery (1945) 129 New York, Durand-Ruel apartment 50 New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries (1891, 1934) 52–3, 179 New York, Gimpel (1935, 1936) 239 New York, Knoedler (1928 to 1933) 188, 190, 194, 204–5, 210–12, 225 n.106 New York, Knoedler, Vollard collection (1933) 210–11 New York, The Met (1937) 155 n.77 New York, Modern Gallery, Exhibition of African Negro Sculpture (1916) 108–9 New York, MoMA (1934, 1936, 1939, 1977) 128, 209, 213, 220 n.40, 225 n.106, 255 n.18 New York, Negro Library Association (1918) 114 New York, Passedoit Gallery (1949) 243 n.31 New York, Stieglitz, Gallery 291 (1911, 1914) 80, 107–10, 248 New York, Valentine Gallery (1926–47) 203, 248–54 New York, Washington Square Gallery (1914) 80–1 New York, Weyhe Gallery (1925) 246 New York, Whitney Studio (1923) 114 Oslo, Fransk Genombrottskonst (1931) 147 Oslo, Kunstnerforbundet (1916 & 1918) 137–42, 151 n.36, 153 n.53, 168 n.9 Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus (1938) 148

278 Oslo, Foreningen Fransk Kunst (1921, 1923, 1928) 144–5 Paris, Impressionists (1874–86) 4–5, 7–8 Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune (1910, 1926, 1929) 69 n.13, 136, 225 n.106 Paris, Galerie Charpentier (1934) 242–3 n.25 Paris, Galerie P. Guillaume (1919, 1923) 92, 197 n.41 Paris, Galerie Kahnweiler (1908) 77 Paris, Galerie La Renaissance (1929) 225 n.106 Paris, Galerie L’Effort moderne (1921 & 1923) 94 Paris, Galeries G. Petit (1930–1932) 205–6, 208–9, 216, 220 n.38, 220 n.40, 222 n.71 Paris, Maison Watteau (1925) 147 Paris, Musée du Jeu de Paume (1937) 164 Paris, Musée du Louvre (1939) 128 Paris, Salon d’Antin (1916) 139, 151 n.32 Pittsburgh, Carnegie International (1896–) 49 Pittsburgh, Gillespie Art Gallery 49 Philadelphia, Crillon Art Gallery (1930) 203 Prague, Municipal House, Mánes Association (1923) 148 Rotterdam, Durand-Ruel loans (1883) 44 Stockholm, Fransk Genombrottskonst (1931) 147 Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet (1918, 1921, 1953) 83, 160–3, 162, 165 Tokyo & Osaka, Exhibition of French Contemporary Art (1922–27) 67 Zurich, Kunsthaus (1932) 209, 220 n.40, 223 n.76 exile. See dealer/exile expert. See dealer/expert export market 2, 17, 25 n.88, 59, 61, 67, 75, 159, 201, 240. See also diaspora Fabiani, Martin 215, 225 n.109, 226 n.116 Fantin-Latour, Henri 188, 207, 221 n.61

Index Farcy, Pierre-André 26 n.105 Faure, Jean-Baptiste 196 n.31 Fauvism/Fauvist/Fauves 6, 13, 77, 79, 135, 193 Fearon, Walter 248 Feilchenfeldt, Marianne 2 Feilchenfeldt, Walter 23 n.62, 120, 174 Feldmann, Otto – Rheinische Kunsalon / Neue Galerie 14, 78, 121, 263 n.27 Fels, Florent 95 Fénéon, Félix 11, 68, 78, 160, 168 n.5 Feuilles volantes 23 n.54, 24 n.65, 24 n.75, 96, 201, 211, 225 nn.106–7. See also dealer/journals Field, Marshall 207 financial crisis 4, 15, 48, 59, 62–3, 67, 75, 146, 148, 238. See also crisis; economic downturn Fischel Adler & Schwartz 34 Fischof, Eugène 232 flamman 161, 167 Flechtheim, Alfred – Flechtheim galleries 10–11, 14, 78–80, 79, 82–6, 85, 88 n.16, 91, 95–6, 97 n.22, 97 n.26, 122, 124, 148, 174, 181 n.5, 181 n.12, 201, 205, 209, 219 n.26, 221 n.47, 261. See also Der Querschnitt; Omnibus Flechtheim & Kahnweiler gallery 83, 85. See also Kahnweiler, Gustav Fletcher, Isaac D. 233, 242 n.9 Folmer, Georges 243 n.25 Forain, Jean-Louis 50, 231 Forchheimer, Hans 82 Foreign Trade Advisor. See Conseiller du commerce extérieur de la France Foujita, Léonard-Tsuguharu 245, 248 Fowles, Edward 236 Fragonard, Jean-Honoré 23 n.62, 234, 239, 241 n.6 Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) 15, 44, 46 free market economy 4–5, 8, 13, 14, 17 French, Daniel Chester 53 French Academy/academic painting 2–8, 17, 20, 44, 53 French Gallery 46, 174, 186, 195 n.11. See also Wallis Frick, Henry Clay 49, 219 n.22 Friesz, Othon 138, 150 n.22, 193

Index Fry, Roger 21 n.15, 22 n.24, 26 n.99, 26 n.107, 67, 175, 193. See also opifact/ opificer Galeries Georges Petit. See Petit, Georges; Bignou, Etienne Gallatin, A. E. 247 Gambart, Ernest – E. Gambart & Co. 5, 12, 15–16, 185, 186, 195 nn.11–12 Gargallo, Pablo 240, 243 n.30, 243 n.32 Gasquet, Joachim 61 Gauguin, Paul 23 n.62, 79, 124, 127, 142, 148, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 173, 191, 193, 197 n.47, 197 n.50, 203, 207, 212, 215, 226 n.122 Gauthier-Dagoty, Jean-Baptiste André 234 Gautier, Théophile 260 Gericault, Théodore 153 n.52 German Occupation. See art market during the German Occupation of France Gersaint, Edmé F. 5, 11, 17, 23 n.59, 23 n.62 Gide, André 95 Gillespie Galleries 49, 52 Gimpel, Ernest 10, 232, 233, 234, 235–6, 241 n.7. See also E. Gimpel & Wildenstein Gimpel, René 126, 174, 180, 231–2, 233, 234–6, 237, 238–43 Giroux, Alphonse 5, 11 Glasgow, Scotland 185–6, 188, 190, 192–4, 195 n.8, 196 nn.21–2, 196 n.36, 197 n.44, 202–3, 216, 235 Gleizes, Albert 78, 95, 138, 150 n.22, 240, 243 n.25, 243 n.29, 243 n.32 global art market 18, 20, 26 n.96, 54, 60, 67, 175, 194, 261 Godon, Louise. See Leiris Goering, Hermann 227 n.124 Gold, Alfred 145, 149 n.3, 154 n.70, 204, 219 nn.25–6, 220 n.47 Goltz, Hans – Galerie Neue Kunst 14, 78 Gondouin, Emmanuel 240 Gothenburg, Sweden 140, 143, 147, 152 nn.38–9, 153 n.54 Gould, George J. 233, 242 n.9 Goupil, Adolphe 11–12, 15–16, 24 n.64, 25 n.87, 31–6, 75, 185, 262 n.5

279

Goupil & Cie 13, 16, 31–6, 75, 185. See also Boussod, Valadon & Cie; Rittner & Goupil Gourgaud, Napoleon and Eva 143, 144, 178 Gow, Harrison & Co. 188 Gow, Leonard 188, 193, 195 n.20, 196 n.21 Grafton Galleries 22 n.24, 67, 77, 121, 218 n.5 Grande, Severin 149 n.4 Grassat 82, 89 n.31 Graupe, Paul 84 Great Depression 62–3, 75, 83, 86, 147, 163, 179, 205, 207–9, 213, 220 n.45, 222 n.67, 238, 242 n.15, 250, 253. See also crisis Greuze, Jean-Baptiste 242 n.12 Gris, Juan 77, 79, 80, 82, 84–5, 87, 87 n.5, 94–5, 140, 151 n.35, 163–4, 207 Gross, Margaret “Bibi” (Mrs. F. V. Dudensing) 245, 247 Grosz, Georges 84 Guggenheim, Peggy 129 Guggenheim, Solomon R. 240, 254. See also museums/Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation Guillaume, Domenica (Juliette) 250–4, 255 n.18, 256 n.26, 256 n.29 Guillaume, Paul 10–12, 23 n.54, 26 n.103, 68, 89 n.41, 91–3, 97 n.3, 97 n.10, 97 n.13, 101–16, 113, 138, 174, 181 n.5, 182 n.18, 197 n.41, 201, 205–6, 221 n.51, 221 n.54, 224 n.101, 225 n.106, 248–50, 253–4, 255 n.17, 256 n.26, 261. See also African and Oceanic art; Les Arts à Paris Guillaume-Walter Collection 256 n.29. See also Walter Guillaumin, Armand 173 Gulbenkian, Calouste 234, 241 n.7 Gurlitt, Fritz 44, 47, 136, 149 n.8 Gutbier, L. W. 221 n.47 Habermann, Hugo 120 Hagelstange, Alfred 78 Hallowell, Sara Tyson 48, 52–3, 55 n.26 Hals, Franz 49 Halvorsen, Walther 2, 11, 135–56, 142, 145, 146, 159–61, 168 n.5, 261 Hamburg, Germany 46–50, 52, 101

280 Hansen, Wilhelm 145–6, 154 n.66 Harland-Peck, George 232, 241 n.7 Harpignies, Henry 32 Harriman, Averell 63 Harriman, Marie 63, 129 Hassam, Childe 53 Hastings, Beatrice 138 Haute Époque, Galerie 94, 171. See also L’Effort Moderne, Galerie; Rosenberg, Léonce Havemeyer, Henry O. and Louisine 19, 21 n.4, 46, 52, 155 n.83, 174–5 Hayden, Henri 164 Hedberg, Tor 147 Heiberg, Jean 135, 137–8, 147, 149 n.4, 151 n.28 Heilbut, Emil 50, 52 Heilbuth, Herman 221 n.53 Helbing, Hugo 88 n.16 Henschel, Charles R. 204, 207–9, 219 n.22, 219 n.33, 222 n.67. See also Knoedler, Michel Herbin, Auguste 94, 164, 243 n.25 Hessel, Jos 12, 64, 68, 141, 152 n.45, 162, 164, 174, 201, 205–6, 218 n.6, 221 n.49 Heuschling, Andrée (aka Catherine Hessling) 143, 145, 154 n.64 Hill, James J. 45, 233 Hodebert, Louis César 205, 206, 218 n.6, 220 nn.44–5, 220 n.47, 221 n.49. See also Barbazanges-Hodebert Hoffmann, Heinrich 227 n.124 Honeyman, Tom 186–7, 223 n.80 Hoogendijk, Cornelis 64, 68, 176 Hoppe, Ragnar 147, 156 n.90 Hôtel Drouot 8, 12, 14, 22 n.42, 61, 82, 84, 88 n.30, 97 n.15, 210, 220 n.34, 223 n.79, 255 n.17. See also auction sales Hourquebie, Mr. 47 Howald, Ferdinand 247 Hutchinson, Charles 49 Huxley, Aldous 95 Huyghe, René 128 Impressionism/Impressionist 2–8, 13, 16–20, 21 n.9, 26 n.105, 43–56, 67, 84, 119–21, 136, 171, 173, 176,

Index 185–98, 202–3, 220 n.38, 224 n.97, 243 n.31, 259 Independent Gallery 206, 220 n.43 inflation 15, 25 n.85, 62–3 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 23 n.62, 26 n.105, 147, 173 Institut d’études des questions juives 180 International Contemporary Art Company, Inc. 219 n.28. See also de Hauke international gold standard 63, 70 nn.26–7 international trade 20, 181, 232 interview. See dealer/interview invaluable/priceless artworks 7, 18–20 Isabey, Jean-Baptiste 52 Jacob, Max 81, 87 n.5, 106, 121, 151 n.31, 151 n.35, 205 Jacobs, Mary Frick Garrett 238 Jacquart, galerie 166 Jacques Seligmann & Co. See Seligmann, Jacques Jamot, Paul 147, 149 n.3 Jawlensky, Alexej von 121 Jewell, Edward Alden 179–80, 212, 223 n.87, 224 n.96, 224 n.101, 256 n.26 Johnson, John G. 174 Jonas, Edouard 126, 236 Jones, T. Catesby 247 Joyant, Maurice 24 n.64 Junyer i Vidal, Sebastià 9 Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry – Galerie Kahnweiler – Galerie Simon – Galerie Louise Leiris 6, 8, 9–14, 19–20, 24 n.65, 24 n.71, 75–89, 76, 79, 94–5, 97 n.15, 119–22, 124, 126, 130 n.19, 136–8, 148, 163–4, 165, 166–7, 181 n.5, 182 n.12, 201, 222 n.71, 259–61. See also Simon, Galerie; Leiris Kahnweiler, Gustav 77, 82–4, 86, 89 n.45. See also Flechtheim & Kahnweiler gallery Kandinsky, Wassily 121–2, 243 n.25, 245, 254 Kanoldt, Alexander 121 Kapferer, Marcel 222 n.69

Index Keller, Georges F. 26 n.103, 62, 70 n.21, 188, 190, 194, 206, 208, 209, 212, 214–15, 221 n.51, 221 n.54, 222 n.69, 224–5 n.101, 226 n.113, 227 n.126. See also Bignou Kermadec, Eugène de 164 Kessler, Harry 54 Keynes, John Maynard 153 n.59 Kisling, Moïse 151 n.30, 239 Klavenes, Anton 147 Klee, Paul 26 n.101 Kluxen, Franz 122 Knoedler, Michel/Michael – M. Knoedler & Co. 11, 16, 31, 33, 34, 36, 38, 41 nn.14–15, 41 n.19, 47, 49, 155 n.82, 174, 188, 190, 194, 195 n.3, 196 n.23, 196 n.27, 204–6, 209, 211–12, 219 n.22, 219 n.25, 220 n.40, 225 n.106, 226 n.110, 226 n.113, 235–6, 238, 248, 253. See also Bignou, Etienne Knoedler, Roland 10, 219 n.33 Kokoschka, Oskar 205 König, Hertha 122 Konody, P.G. 193, 198 n.53 Konstrevy 163. See also Olson, Gösta Konstsalongen Samlaren. See Widlund Krag, Peter 147, 149 n.10, 155 n.88 Kramar, Vincenc 122 Kraushaar, John 203, 205, 248 Kristiania. See Oslo Krogh, Per 135 Kubin, Alfred 121 Kuetgens, Felix 227 n.124 Kunst und Künstler 52 Kunstnerforbundet. See Norwegian Artists Association, Kristiania La Fresnaye, Roger de 23 n.62, 137–8, 148, 150 n.22, 205, 207 La Renaissance 147, 172 La Renaissance, Galerie 225 n.106 La Société des Beaux Arts (Alex. Reid) 186 La Tour, Maurice Quentin de 241 n.6 Lancret, Nicolas 23 n.62 Langaard, Johan H. 140, 152 n.40 Largillière, Nicolas de 235, 242 n.10 L’Art dans les deux mondes 52 L’art moderne, galerie 205, 220 n.34

281

Lascaux, Elie 164 Lasserre, André 239 Laughton, Charles 155 n.78 Laurencin, Marie 78, 173, 175, 190, 197 n.40, 238–9, 246, 248 Laurens, Henri 87, 94, 148, 155 n.89, 163 Lawrence, Thomas 241 n.6 Lawson-Johnston, Peter 129 Le Centaure, Galerie 219 n.26, 220 n.46. See also Schwarzenberg Lefèvre, Ernest Albert – Lefèvre Gallery – Alex Reid & Lefèvre 185–91, 193–4, 195 n.2, 195 n.9, 195 n.12, 202, 203, 218 nn.16–17, 223 n.81, 223 n.83, 224 n.94. See also Reid, Alexander; Reid, A.J. McNeill; Bignou, Etienne Lefèvre, Léon Henri – L. H. Lefèvre & Son 37, 186, 195 n.2, 195 n.12, 197 n.40, 197 n.48, 198 n.51. See also Pilgeram & Léon Lefèvre L’Effort Moderne, Galerie 94, 171–3. See also Rosenberg, Léonce legal protection of competition 15, 25 n.85. See also competition Léger, Fernand 77, 80, 82, 84, 87, 87 n.5, 94–5, 137, 138, 148, 150 n.22, 163, 166, 167, 173, 180, 202, 212, 222 n.61, 240 Légion d’honneur 54, 148, 156 n.96, 213, 221 n.61, 224 n.88, 225 n.108 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm 78 Leicester Galleries 94, 127, 143, 148, 153 n.59, 174, 203 Leiris, Louise (née Godon) 75, 79, 82, 87, 163, 166–7. See also Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry Lépine, Stanislas 186 Lepke, Rudolph 47 Leray, Hélène (Mme Guillaume Leray) 127, 250 Le Roy, E. – E. Le Roy & Cie 38, 41 n.19 Les Arts à Paris 92–3, 95, 96 n.1, 97 n.8, 97 n.23, 107. See also dealer/journals; Guillaume, Paul Level, André 11, 97 n.3 Lévy-Hermanos, Maurice 164 Lewis, Percy Wyndham 191 Lhermitte, Léon Augustin 241 n.9 Lhote, André 78, 150 n.22, 161

282

Index

Libbey, Florence Scott 239 Liebermann, Max 52–3, 56 n.48, 120 Linde, Max 53 Linde, Ulf 159 Lipchitz, Jacques 92 Locke, Alain 114 Loeb, Pierre – Galerie Pierre 126, 127, 174, 221 n.51, 222 n.69, 238, 248 London, UK 1, 15–17, 46, 48, 54, 55 n.18, 67, 77, 84, 85, 89 n.42, 94, 107, 121, 127, 139, 143, 148, 153 n.59, 174, 185–94, 203–6, 208, 216, 223 n.80, 226 n.112, 232 Lorrain, Claude 49 Lowengard, Armand 236 Lowengard, Jules 232 Lucas, George A. 21 n.4, 53 Lurçat, Jean 202–4, 212, 217, 218 n.1, 219 n.21, 220 n.45, 227 n.125, 231, 240 M. Knoedler & Co. See Knoedler, Michel MacDonald, Duncan 194, 203, 208, 212, 215, 218 n.16, 222 n.69, 222 n.94, 226 n.112. See also Bignou; Lefèvre; Reid Maeght, Aimé 166 Manchester, UK 15, 143 Manet, Édouard 23 n.62, 44, 50, 51, 53, 56 n.48, 56 n.50, 68, 84, 121, 126, 136, 142–3, 147, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 155 n.83, 173, 182 n.14, 188–90, 196 n.27, 196 n.37, 197 n.50, 203, 207, 220 n.35 Manguin 143, 153 n.52 Manolo (Manuel Martinez Hugué) 80, 85 Manzi, Michel 24 n.64 Marc, Franz 122 Marcoussis, Louis 240 Marinetti, F. T. 95 Marks, Montague 53 Marquand, Henry 233, 242 n.9 Marquet, Albert 138–9, 143, 145, 150 n.22, 154 n.63 Marseille, Leon 221 n.51 Martinet, Louis 5 Marval, Jacqueline 150 n.22 Marx, Florene and Samuel A. 207, 214

Masson, André 85–6 Matthiesen, Franz Zatzenstein (aka Francis) – Galerie Matthiesen 16, 205, 220 n.35, 220 n.47 Matisse, Henri 9, 18, 23 n.62, 77, 92–3, 121, 124, 135–41, 142, 142–3, 144, 145, 146, 146–56, 161, 175, 179, 190, 193–4, 197 n.40, 198 n.54, 202–3, 205, 207–8, 208, 209, 210, 212, 214, 220 n.45, 222 nn.69–70, 239, 245–8, 249, 250, 252–3, 256 n. 26, 256 nn.29–30, 256 nn.29–30 Matisse exhibitions at Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (1910) 136 in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo (1924) 145 at Durand-Ruel, New York (1934) 179, 179 at Georges Petit, Paris (1931) 205–6, 208, 209, 210, 222 n.70, 222 n.72 at Gurlitt, Berlin (1914) 136, 149 n.8 at Kunsthalle Basel (1931) 209, 223 n.76 at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (1916) 137–40 at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo (1918) 142 at Lefèvre, London (1920s) 203 at Leicester Galleries, London (1919) 142, 153 n.59 at MoMA, New York (1931) 209, 222 n.70, 222 n.72 at MoMA, New York (1951) 223 n.77 at Philadelphia Museum of Art (1948) 256 n.26 at Pierre Matisse, New York (1925) 255 n.3 at Thannhauser, Berlin (1930) 124, 222 n.70 at Valentine Gallery, New York (1927, 1929–30, 1936) 245, 248, 252 at Weyhe Gallery 246 Matisse, Marguerite. See Duthuit Matisse, Pierre – Pierre Matisse Gallery 11, 26 n.101, 62, 69 n.20, 206, 208,

Index 220 n.45, 222 n.68, 223 n.82, 236, 246–8, 250, 254, 255 n.3, 255 n.6, 261 Matsukata, Kojiro 70 n.25, 145 Mayor, Fred H. – Mayor Gallery 84–6, 89 n.41 McBride, Henry 223 n.87, 249, 254, 254 n.1, 255 n.13, 256 n.34 McIlhenny, Henry P. 156 n.94 McInnes, William 188, 193, 195 n.20, 196 n.21 McLean, Thomas 37, 47 Meier-Graefe, Julius 22 n.22, 47, 175, 182 n.14 Meissonier, Ernest 242 n.9 Mellon, Paul 219 n.22 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Paul 86, 89 n.47, 125 Messer, Thomas M. 129 Metzinger, Jean 78, 94, 150 n.22, 151 n.35, 164 Meyer, Eugene 220 n.44 Meyer-Riefstahl, Rudolf 119, 121 Michel, Galerie. See Bignou, Michel Miethke, Hugo Othmar – Galerie Miethke 218 n.5 Millet, Jean-François 44, 49 Mintchine, Abraham 238 Miró, Joan 207, 214, 240, 245, 248 Mitchell, S. Weir 233, 242 n.9 Modern Gallery. See de Zayas Modern Paintings, Inc. 219 n.28. See de Hauke Moderne Galerie. See Thannhauser, Heinrich modernism/modern art 1–20, 21 n.9, 59, 61, 63–4, 67–8, 69 n.8, 75, 80, 84, 86–7, 91–4, 101, 104–11, 114, 119, 122, 124, 126, 128–9, 135, 137, 139, 141, 148, 151 n.30, 159, 161, 163–4, 166, 168, 173, 175–6, 181, 185, 194, 201–2, 204–8, 212, 218, 222 n.61, 231, 239, 245, 247–9, 254, 259–60 Modigliani, Amedeo 17, 92–3, 138, 151 n.24, 151 n.30, 203, 207, 212, 239, 245, 248, 252–3, 256 n.29 Moholy-Nagy, László 254 Mondrian, Piet 94

283

Monet, Claude 9, 23 n.62, 24 n.72, 26 n.105, 43, 44–5, 48, 48–50, 52–4, 54 n.17, 121, 143, 153 n.52, 160, 162, 173, 188, 193, 196 n.25, 196 n.27, 197 n.46, 197 n.50, 261 monopoly 3–4, 12–14, 20, 24 n.63, 25 n.85, 32, 36, 77, 190, 220 n.43 Montag, Carl 215, 223 n.76 Montaignac, Isidore 38 Montgomerie & Workman 197 n.45 Montross Gallery 247 Moore, George 189 Moreau, Gustave 26 n.105 Moreau-Nélaton 242 n.9 Morgan, J. P. 219 n.29 Morisot, Berthe 23 n.62, 44, 143, 153 n.52, 188, 197 n.50 Motzau, Ragnar 150 n.22 Mowinckel, Anita 154 n.62 Mühlbacher, Gustave 241 n.7 Müller, Federico C. – Galeria Federico Müller 86, 119, 124–5, 125, 130 n.39, 131 n.42 Munich, Germany 78, 80, 88 n.16, 119–22, 123–7 Munro, Thomas 93, 97 n.13 Münter, Gabriele 121 museums in general: 10, 18–20, 24 n.62, 26 nn.101–2, 26 n.105, 102, 125, 135, 179, 247, 260 specific museums: Art Institute of Chicago 50, 55 n.33, 128, 148, 207, 253–4, 256 n.30 Baltimore Museum of Art 149 n.8, 238, 241 n.6 Barnes Foundation, Merion/ Philadelphia 60, 65–6, 68, 70 n.28, 92–3, 97 n.8, 97 n.10, 154 n.69, 194, 212–13, 218 n.7, 221 n.54, 225 nn.104–5, 250 Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich 80, 126 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh 49 Cleveland Museum of Art 207, 222 n.62, 241 n.6 Courtauld Institute of Art, London 121, 154 n.74, 189, 196 n.25, 203, 223 n. 81

284

Index

Detroit Institute of Arts 127, 250, 251 Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass. 207 Folkwang Museum, Essen 26 n.105, 78, 226 n.122 Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo 56 n.50 Gemeentemuseum, The Hague 80 Getty Research Institute 31, 168 n.5, 166, 167 Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden 140, 152 nn.38–9 Guggenheim Museum, New York 86, 122, 126, 129, 147–8, 155 n.81, 240, 254 Indianapolis Museum of Art 34, 36, 63 Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld 226 n.122 Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow 188, 196 n.21 Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth 126, 147 Kunsthalle, Basel 209 Kunsthaus, Zurich 209, 220 n.40, 223 n.76 Kunstmuseum, Basel 80 Kunstmuseum, Bern 129 Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf 78 Liljevach Konsthall, Stockholm 148 Louvre, Paris 26 n.105, 126–8, 251, 253–4, 256 n.26 Ludwig Museum, Cologne 86 Moderna Museet, Stockholm 141, 142, 159, 168 n.1 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (The Met) 18–19, 26 n.99, 26 n.101, 46, 51, 80, 103, 122, 148, 149 n.5, 154 n.69, 155 n.77, 155 n.88, 174, 193, 203–4, 207, 220 n.40, 223 n.81, 234, 235, 241 n.6, 242 n.10, 248, 249, 253 Musée d’Art Moderne, Troyes 138 Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris 26 n.105 Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris 26 n.105, 251–2, 256 n.29 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes 34 Musée d’Orsay, Paris 60, 223 n.83 Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris 26 n.105, 164

Musée du Luxembourg, Paris 26 n.105 Musée National d’Art Moderne (MNAM), Paris 26 n.105, 143, 144, 150 n.22, 154 n.62, 172 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires 124 Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid 213 Museo Pablo Gargallo, Zaragoza 243 n.30 Museum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo 26 n.105 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 207 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 147, 155 n.82 Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal 242 n.12 Museum of French Art, New York 207, 221 nn.60–1 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York 18, 26 n.105, 80, 86, 128, 141, 150 n.22, 155 n.78, 169 n.19, 178–80, 204, 207, 209, 211, 213–14, 219 n.33, 220 n.40, 225 n.106, 239, 252–4, 255 n.2, 255 n.18, 261–2 Narodni Galerie, Prague 148 National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 193, 198 n.52, 198 n.54, 203 National Gallery, Berlin 53 National Gallery, London 190, 193, 196 n.27, 202 National Gallery, Oslo 138, 144, 146–7, 149 n.3, 149 n.10, 150 n.22 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 19, 204, 207–8, 226 n.121, 241 n.6, 242 n.12 National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 215, 235 National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen 152 n.40 National Museum of Sweden, Stockholm 140–1, 150 n.22, 154 n.68, 160–2 National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo 149 n.5 Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City 193, 241 n.6 Neue Pinakothek, Munich 121

Index Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena 239, 240 Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen 145, 154 n.68 Philadelphia Museum of Art 48, 80, 148, 156 n.94, 174, 189, 256 n.26 Princeton University Art Museum 253 Qatar Museums 194 Rhode Island School of Design, Providence 207, 222 n.62 Royal Museum, Copenhagen 149 n.3, 149 n.10 Saint Louis Art Museum 252 Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass. 206 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York 26 n.101, 86, 122, 126, 129, 147, 148, 155 n.81, 240, 254 Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart 147, 155 n.88 Stadtische museum, Wuppertal 226 n.122 Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 140–1, 148, 153 n.48, 154 n.69 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 127–8, 131 n.70 Tate, London 148, 193–4 Tikanoja Art Museum, Vaasa 140 Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio 127, 231, 239, 242 n.24 Victoria and Albert Museum, London 151 n.33 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond 194 Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne 78 Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn. 88 n.27 Mustad, Christian and Hafdan 147 Nardus, Leo 173 Natanson, Bolette 231 Nathan-Dreyfus, Martha 131 n.63 National Academy of Design, New York 47 National Arts and Crafts School, Kristiania 135 Nattier, Jean-Marc 235, 241 n.6, 242 n.10

285

Nazi Germany / National-Socialist regime 78, 86, 119, 126, 132 n.84, 156 n.93, 180, 215, 227 n.125 Neue Galerie, Berlin 78, 263 n.27. See also Feldmann Neue Kunst, Galerie 78. See Goltz, Hans Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) 121 New Burlington Galleries 148 New York, N.Y. 1, 7, 14–16, 18, 31, 34, 36, 45–7, 50, 52–4, 62–5, 67, 80–1, 83, 86–7, 92, 101–14, 119, 121–2, 125–9, 148, 149 n.3, 171, 174–80, 190, 194, 201, 203–27, 232–6, 238–41, 245–56, 259–62 Norwegian Artists Association, Kristiania 138–9, 141, 143, 151 n.36, 168 n.9 Norwegian Foreningen Fransk Kunst 144–5 Occupation. See art market during the German Occupation of France oligopoly 3, 12–17, 25 n.83 Olson, Gösta – Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet 2, 83, 87, 89 n.34, 143, 152 n.47, 153 n.53, 159–69, 162, 165, 221 n.53, 261 Omnibus 96, 97 n.26. See also dealer/ journals; Flechtheim opifact/opificer 21 n.15, 26 n.107. See also Fry Oslo, Norway 135, 137–41, 143, 146–50, 152, 154–5, 160–1, 168 n.9, 168 n.11 Osthaus, Karl Ernst 78 Oudot, Roland 239 Ozenfant, Amédée 94, 212 Pach, Walter 140, 210, 223 n.86, 223 n.87 Paine II, Robert Treat 207 Palmer, Potter and Bertha 21 nn.3–4, 49, 52, 233 Pan 52, 55 n.43 Paraf, Louis 232 Paris, Capital of the Art World 1, 2, 17–18, 59, 61, 135, 259 Partridge, Frank 232 Pascin, Jules 23 n.62, 78, 212 Pasini, Alberto 32–4, 33, 35, 41 n.12 Pater, Jean-Baptiste 241 n.6

286

Index

Pauli, Georg 161–2, 167 Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act 61 Pellar, Hans 120 Pellerin, Auguste 60, 121, 136 Peploe, Samuel J. 218 n.2 Peploe, Willy 218 n.2 Perdriat, Hélène 150 n.22 Perls, Hugo 122, 219 n.26, 220 n.47 Perls, Käte 2 Perls, Klaus 23 n.62, 26 n.101 Petit, Francis 7, 13, 15, 220 n.38, 241 n.9 Petit, Georges – Galeries Georges Petit 3, 11–12, 38, 68, 86, 174, 185–6, 201, 205–6, 208, 208–9, 210, 216, 218 n.5, 220 nn.37–8, 220 n.40, 220–1 n.45, 222 nn.68–72, 223 n.79, 232–3, 234, 241 n.7, 241 n.9. See also Bignou, Etienne Pétridès, Paul 126, 127 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 45, 53, 55 n.18, 64–5, 92, 156 n.94, 174–5, 190, 203, 233–5, 256 n.26 Phillips, Duncan 21 n.4, 63, 207, 247–8, 255 n.11 Picabia, Francis 89 n.44, 92, 94, 106, 164 Picasso, Pablo 9, 9, 14, 17–18, 23 n.62, 24 n.71, 70 n.24, 77–87, 94, 105, 107, 114, 120, 121–4, 125, 126, 128–9, 130 n.19, 130 n.23, 136–40, 148, 150 n.22, 151 n.24, 151 nn.30–1, 151 n.33, 151 n.35, 151 n.37, 154 n.74, 155 n.89, 161, 163–4, 166, 167, 173, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181 n.4, 182 n.12, 193–4, 198 n.54, 202–4, 206–9, 212–13, 215, 217, 219 n.33, 220 n.40, 222 n.62, 222 nn.70–1, 223 nn.75–6, 224 n.97, 239, 245, 248, 250, 251, 252–4, 255 n.2, 256 n.29, 261 Picasso exhibitions at Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, “Braque, Picasso, Matisse” (1934) 179, 179–80 at Federico Müller, Buenos Aires (1934) 86, 124–5, 125, 130 n.39 at Georges Petit, Paris (1932) 206, 208–9, 222 n.62, 222 n.71

at Kunsthaus Zurich (1932) 209, 223 n.76, 223 n. 78 at Leicester Galleries, London (1921) 94 at MoMA, New York (1939) 128, 209, 255 n.2 in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, “Braque, Laurens, Matisse” (1937) 155 n.89 at Reid & Lefevre, London (1931) 222 nn.70–1 at Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery (1911) 80–1 at Svensk Franska Konstgalleriet, Stockholm (1953) 166, 167 at Thannhauser’s, Munich (1913 & 1922) 83, 122–3, 222 n.71 at Valentine Gallery, New York (1931) 248 at Valentine Gallery, New York (1939) 245, 255 n.2 at Vollard’s, Paris (1901 and 1910) 24 n.71, 222 n.71 at Whitney Studio, New York (1923) 114 at Washington Square Gallery, New York (1914) 81 Pierre, Galerie. See Loeb Pilgeram, F.G. 186 Pilgeram & Léon Lefèvre 195 n.12 Pineus, Conrad 140, 152 n.39 Pissarro, Camille 43–5, 47, 49–50, 53–4, 55 n.29, 121, 143, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 160–1, 188, 197 n.50, 247 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 48–9, 52 Poiret, Paul 95, 138–9, 151 n.23 Polignac, Marguerite, comtesse de 241 n.6 Pope, Alfred Atmore 45, 54 n.8 Post-Impressionism/Post-Impressionist 2–3, 6, 13, 18–19, 21 n.9, 22 n.24, 67, 77–8, 84, 171, 173, 185, 190, 193, 195 n.15, 202–3, 224 n.97 Prague, Czech Republic 148 primary market. See dealer/primary dealer prints 5, 12, 24 n.64, 33, 53, 81, 96 n.1, 107, 126, 153 n.49, 163, 194, 209, 247. See also dealer/publisher; reproductions Prozor, Greta 143, 146, 152 n.42, 154 n.62

Index Pulitzer, Joseph, Jr. 253 purchasing power 10, 16, 18, 63–4, 66, 68, 70 n.27, 204 Putz, Leo 120 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre 49, 174, 238–9, 240, 243 n.32 Puy, Jean 143, 153 n.52 Quinn, John 14, 26 n.103, 50, 55 n.13, 55 n.36, 81–2, 148, 171, 176–7, 181 Quoirez, Madeleine 239 Rambosson, Yvanhoé 243 n.25 Ray, Man 240 Raynal, Maurice 94 Rebay, Baroness Hilla 243 n.25, 243 n.29 Reber, Gottlieb Friedrich 63, 70 n.24, 148 Redon, Odilon 143, 153 n.52, 162, 202–3, 205, 207, 221, 221 n.61, 247 Reid, A. J. McNeill – Reid & Lefèvre 185–98, 187, 202–3, 206, 208, 220 n.47, 226 n.112, 235. See also Bignou, Etienne Reid, Alexander – Alex. Reid – La Société des Beaux Arts – Alex Reid & Lefèvre Ltd 174, 185, 186, 192, 196 n.22, 202, 235. See also Lefèvre, Ernest; Bignou, Etienne Reid & Lefevre 16, 185–98, 203–6, 209, 212, 215, 218 n.2, 218 n.8, 218 n.17, 219 n.25, 220 n.40, 222 n.62, 222 nn.70–1, 223 n.82, 226 n.110, 226 n.112, 261 Reid, Whitelaw 53 Reinhardt, Paul – Reinhardt Galleries 86, 248 Reinhardt-Smith, Louise 155 n.78 Reinhart, Oskar 145, 149 n.3, 221 n.52 Rembrandt van Rijn 23 n.62, 49, 238 Renoir, Claude 143, 154 n.65, 221 n.56 Renoir, Jean 154 n.64 Renoir, Pierre 143, 146 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste 23 n.62, 43–4, 49–50, 62, 121, 140, 142–5, 145, 146, 147–8, 152 n.45, 153 n.52, 154 nn.64–5, 154 n.74, 155 n.77, 155 n.79, 161, 162, 173, 175, 188, 191, 192, 196 n.27, 197 n.46, 197 n.50, 202–3, 206–7, 211–12, 215, 221

287

n.56, 223 n.81, 224 n.95, 224 n.97, 226 n.122, 250, 253 Renou, Maurice 205 reproductions 5, 24 n.64, 33, 92–3, 96, 142, 162, 218 n.5. See also prints Resistance – Ceux de la Résistance 216 retrospective. See artist retrospective Reverdy, Pierre 94, 151 n.35 Revold, Axel 135, 149 n.4 Reynolds, Joshua 241 n.6 Rheinische Kunstsalon. See Feldmann Rittner, Henry 24 n.64 Rittner & Goupil 5 Rivera, Diego 94 Rivière, Georges 61, 69 n.12 Roché, Henri-Pierre 26 n.103, 177 Rockefeller, Abby Aldrich 207 Rodin, Auguste 26 n.105, 161, 239 Röell, David Cornelis 128 Roger, Susanne 164 Rohe, Maximilian Karl 121 Romdahl, Axel 147, 152 n.39 Römer, Paul 124, 130 n.29 Rosenberg, Alexandre 156 n.91, 171, 180, 181 n.2 Rosenberg, James N. 248 Rosenberg, Léonce 10, 12, 82–3, 89 n.44, 91, 94–6, 97 n.18, 126, 127, 141, 164, 171, 177, 181 nn.3–5, 201, 248. See also Bulletin de L’Effort moderne; L’Effort moderne, Galerie Rosenberg, Paul 6, 10–12, 14, 16, 23 n.62, 24 n.71, 24 n.75, 64, 67, 68, 82–4, 86, 94, 114, 119, 123–4, 126, 127, 128, 140–1, 143, 145–8, 152 n.40, 152 n.43, 152–3 nn.46–7, 155 n.77, 156 n.94, 159–60, 162–4, 171–82, 172, 177, 178, 179, 188, 190, 194, 195 n.17, 196 n.32, 201, 205, 209, 218 n.6, 222 n.69, 223 n.80, 225 n.107, 236, 242 n.25, 260–1 Rosenberg & Helft 11 Rosengart, Siegfried – Galerie Rosengart 87, 123–5, 130 n.29 Rothschild, Robert de 243 n.30 Rouault, Georges 191, 197 n.40, 211–13 Rousseau, Henri (Le Douanier) 105, 143, 148, 153 n.52, 203, 207, 211, 245, 250, 252

288

Index

Rousseau, Theodore 49, 153 n.52 Roussel, Ker-Xavier 153 n.52 Roux, Paul 164, 233, 242 n.9 Rubens, Peter Paul 140 Rump, Johannes 152 n.40, 153 n.48 Rupf, Hermann 82 Russell, John Peter 127 Ryerson, Martin 49 Sabattier, Louis 234 Sadler, Michael 153 n.59, 193 Sagen, Tryggve 136, 145–7, 149 n.10, 155 n.86 Sagot, Clovis 10, 152 n.37 Salmon, André 23 n.58, 138–9, 151 n.26, 151 nn.31–2 Salon d’Automne 5, 23 n.46 Salon de la Rose + Croix 22 n.20 Salon de la Société des artistes français 5 Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts 5 Salon de l’art nouveau 22 n.20 Salon de l’Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs 22 n.20 Salon des Indépendants 5, 77 Salon des Refusés 5 Salon d’Hiver 22 n.20 salons/Salon 3–5, 7, 10, 12, 19, 22 n.20, 23 n.46, 33–4, 53, 77–8, 92, 136, 218 n.5, 220 n.38, 259 Salons system 3, 7–8 Sandberg, Einar 135 Savinio, Alberto 239 Scandinavian market 15, 75, 135–49, 159–69 Schaus, William 47 Schenker transport company 215, 226 n.121 Schoeller, André 126, 127, 218 n.6 Schönmeyer 160 School of Paris 17, 26 n.101, 175, 238, 246, 253–4 Schwarzenberg, Walter – Galerie Le Centaure 219 n.26, 220 n.46 Scott, John Murray 219 n.33 Scott, Stevenson 236 Scott & Fowles 236 Sears, Sarah Choate 52

secondary market 2–3, 12–13, 84, 143, 173, 202 Sedelmeyer, Charles 232, 242 n.9 Seligman, René 236 Seligmann, Arnold 126 Seligmann or Seligman, Germain – Jacques Seligmann & Co. 23 n.62, 128, 155 n.77, 204–5, 219 n.28, 219 n.31, 236. See also Seligmann, Jacques; Bignou, Etienne Seligmann, Jacques – Jacques Seligmann & Co. 10–11, 16, 25 n.84, 69 n.19, 86, 126, 128–9, 154 n.70, 155 n.77, 155 nn.79–83, 180, 204–6, 219 nn.28–9, 219 n.33, 222 n.62, 233, 236, 242 n.9, 248. See also Bignou, Etienne sequester/séquestre de guerre 75, 82–4, 94, 97 n.15, 180 Settanni, Luigi 213 Seurat, Georges 23 n.62, 68, 143, 148, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 161, 169 n.19, 173, 177, 194, 202–7, 212, 218 n.7 Severini, Gino 151 n.30, 164 Sharkey, Margaret 212 Shchukin, Sergei 143, 153 n.54 Sheeler, Charles 111 Sicard, Pierre 212 Sidès, Fredo 239–41, 242–3 n.25, 243 n.30, 243 n.33 Signac, Paul 151 n.23 Simon, André 82 Simon, Galerie 82–3, 85, 85, 87, 122, 126, 164. See also Kahnweiler, DanielHenry Siot-Decauville 233 Sisley, Alfred 23 n.62, 43–4, 49, 53, 84, 121, 153 n.52, 160, 188, 197 n.50, 247 Sjöberg, Yves 151 n.33 Slater, William 233 Soby, James Thrall 251, 256 n.23 Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Düsseldorf 78, 121, 151 n.36. See also exhibitions/ Cologne/Sonderbund Sørensen, Henrik 135, 137, 140, 149 n.4, 150 n.15, 152 n.39 Soulier, Père 11

Index Soutine, Chaïm 23 n.62, 68, 92–3, 97 n.8, 212, 238–9, 242 n.23, 245, 253 Spaulding, John T. 205 Spaulding, Russell 52 speculation 5, 6, 8, 12–13, 20, 24 n.74, 44, 176, 225 n.106, 232, 239, 260. See also dealer/speculator Spencer Churchill, Lord Ivor 203 Stang, Jørgen Breder 144, 146–7, 149 n.3, 150 n.22, 154 n.70, 154 n.74 Stanton, Theodore 53 Steen, Jan 49 Stein, Gertrude 81, 92, 121, 136, 152 n.37, 212 Stein, Leo 92, 136, 152 n.37 Stein, Michael and Sarah 136–7, 140, 149 n.8, 149–50 n.11, 151–2 n.37 Stenman, Gösta 140 Stieglitz, Alfred – 291 Gallery 26 n.101, 80–1, 92, 104, 107–10, 247 Stillman, James 52, 238 Stockholm, Sweden 83, 87, 140–3, 146, 148, 150 n.22, 152 n.47, 153 n.54, 154 n.68, 155 n.89, 159–69 Storoge, Henri 216 Stotesbury, Edward T. 233 Stransky, Josef 129, 176, 182 n.23 Suermondt, Edwin 88 n.16, 122 Sullivan, Cornelius J. 206 Susse, Nicolas and Victor 5 Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet. See Olson Swane, Leo 147, 156 n.90 Sweeney, James Johson 255 n.18 Syndicat des éditeurs d’art et négociants en tableaux modernes 2, 14, 21 n.7, 25 n.84, 126, 127, 141, 218 n.6 Tabarant, Adolphe 23 n.62 Tanguy, Père 10–11, 23 n.53 Tannahill, Robert 127, 250 Tanner, Gottfried – Galerie Tanner 215, 220 n.34, 221 n.48, 226 n.119 Taylor, Walter 153 n.59 taxes (import, export, exit, income, estate) 48, 61, 106, 126, 219 n.23, 247, 250 Tedesco Frères 31–2, 40 n.2 Tempelaere, Gustave and Jean 187 Teniers, David 49

289

Tériade, E. (Efstratios Eleftheriadis) 24 n.65, 173, 181 n.5, 201, 225 n.107 Tetzen-Lund, Christian 136, 141, 146, 149 n.3, 149 n.10, 153 n.48, 154 nn.68–9, 155 n.88, 221 n.53 Thannhauser, Heinrich – Moderne Galerie 2, 14, 75, 78, 80, 83, 119–32, 123, 127, 136, 148, 155 n.79, 155 nn.81–3, 156 n.93, 174, 181 n.12, 219 n.26, 222 n.70 Thannhauser, Heinz 124, 126, 128, 130 n.30 Thannhauser, Hilde 129, 130 n.22 Thannhauser, Justin K. – Thannhauser galleries 25 n.84, 26 n.101, 68, 75, 78, 80, 83, 86–7, 89 n.47, 119, 120, 123, 120–32, 127, 141, 148, 155 n.79, 155 nn.81–3, 156 n.93, 181 n.12, 219 n.26, 222 n.70, 261 Thannhauser, Käte 125–6, 129 Thannhauser, Michel 124–5, 129, 130 n.30 Thiis, Jens 144, 146–7, 149 n.3 Thomson, Anne 48, 55 n.18 Thomson, David Croal 186 Thomson, Frank 48, 52 Throrbjörnsen, Simon 147 Togores, José de 85 Tooth, Arthur – Tooth & Sons 25 n.84, 37, 49, 235 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 23 n.62, 140, 142, 153 n.52, 173, 191, 193, 197 n.47, 207, 220 n.35, 221 n.61 transatlantic crossings/ocean liners 45, 216, 236 Ile-de-France 210, 211, 213, 216 Journal de bord de la Compagnie générale transtlatique 210 translocation 59–61, 64, 66–8. See also diaspora; export market transnational trade network(s) 1, 3, 13–18, 20, 25 nn.84–5, 25 n.87, 31, 36–7, 40, 46–7, 52, 62, 68, 75, 78, 80–1, 87, 93, 96, 101, 104, 107, 111, 114, 124–5, 128, 129 n.1, 141, 143, 147, 151 n.36, 153 n.56, 168, 171, 174–5, 185, 188–90, 194, 195 n.8, 195 n.12, 201, 203–6, 209, 215–16, 218 n.12, 218 n.16, 223 n.83, 226 n.113, 232, 235–6, 239–40, 242 n.25, 246, 248–50, 259–60, 262. See also dealer/networks

290

Index

Troyon, Constant 38, 49, 52 Tschudi, Hugo von 22 n.22, 53, 56 n.48, 121 Turner, Percy 68 Twachtman, John Henry 53 Tyson, Carroll S., Jr. 190 291 gallery. See Stieglitz Uhde, Fritz von 120 Uhde, Wilhelm 11, 77, 79, 80, 82, 88 n.16, 121 Umlauff, J.F.G. 101–2, 102 Utrillo, Maurice 190, 198 n.54, 202–3, 212, 245, 250 Valadon, René 24 n.64. See aslo Boussod, Valadon & Cie Valadon, Suzanne 206 Valentin, Curt – Buchholz Gallery 87, 119, 124, 129, 205 Valentine Gallery. See Dudensing, Francis Valentine Valloton, Félix 143, 150 n.22, 153 n.52 Vallotton, Paul 220 n.34, 221 n.48 Valmier, Georges 94, 243 n.25 Valtat, Louis 143, 153 n.52 Van Dyck, Anthony 49 Van Gigch 49 Van Gogh, Theo 3, 6, 11, 17, 24 n.64 van Gogh, Vincent 18, 93, 123, 124, 127, 129 n.1, 143, 148, 153 n.52, 154 n.74, 161, 173, 176, 186, 191, 193, 196 n.31, 197 n.42, 197 nn.48–9, 203–4, 207, 212 Van Horne, William 235, 242 nn.12–13 Van Vechten, Carl 212, 246 Van Wisselingh, E.J. 235 Vanderbilt, Cornelius 233, 242 n.9 Vanloo, Carle 49 Vildrac, Charles 221 n.51 Villon, Jacques 137, 150 n.22 Vlaminck, Maurice de 77, 79, 80, 82–3, 89 n.33, 121, 148, 150 n.22, 151 n.30, 190, 193, 197 n.40, 221 n.61, 248 Vollard, Ambroise 9–13, 19, 23 n.45, 23 n.62, 24 n.65, 24 n.71, 61, 81, 92, 95, 119, 122, 136, 148, 155 n.82, 201, 205–6, 209–13, 211, 214, 215,

218 n.5, 222 n.71, 223 nn.82–4, 223 n.87, 225 n.101, 225 nn.104–6, 225 n.109, 226 n.115, 260. See also Bignou, Etienne Vollard, Lucien 215 Vollon, Antoine 32 Vömel, Alex 84 Vrancken, Charles 218 n.13, 222 n.71 Vrancken, Germaine 202 Vuillard, Edouard 143, 153 n.52, 160, 190, 192, 197 n.40, 207, 231 Wade II, Jeptha H. 45 Walden, Herwarth – Der Sturm 122 Wallace, Richard 17, 219 n.33, 235 Wallis, Henry – Wallis & Son 33, 46–7, 174, 186. See also French Gallery Walter, Jean 250 Walters, Henry 21 n.4, 233, 242 n.9 Washington, D.C. 45, 63, 176, 220 n.44 Washington Square Gallery. See Brenner; Coady Wassilief, Marie 151 n.35 Watson, David 49 Watteau, Jean-Antoine 17, 23 n.59, 49 Weill, Berthe 10, 69 n.5, 151 n.24, 181 n.5, 201, 221 n.51 Weingart, Joachim 239 Weir, J. Alden 53 Werefkin, Marianne von 121 Werenskiold, Erik 137–8, 147, 150 n.18 Wertheim, Maurice 207 Wertheimer, Asher 232 Weyhe, Erhard – Weyhe Gallery 246 Wheeler, Monroe 213 Whistler, James Abbott McNeil 49, 187 White, Herbert Silva 238, 242 nn.17–18 Whitney Studio 114, 261 Widlund, Agnes – Konstsalongen Samlaren 159 Wildenstein, Andrée 232 Wildenstein, Daniel 23 n.62, 127 Wildenstein, Elisabeth 232 Wildenstein, Félix 174, 176–7, 182 n.24, 232, 236, 242 n.14 Wildenstein, Georges 23 n.62, 86, 124, 128, 171, 174, 180, 190, 196 n.32, 242 n.14, 248

Index Wildenstein, Nathan 10–11, 16, 86, 174, 232–3, 235, 242 n.14 Wildenstein & Co. 174–6, 236 Wilstach, William P. 53 Workman, Elizabeth Russell 185, 191–4, 192 Workman, Robert Alfred 192, 197 n.44, 203 World War I (1914–18) 10, 24 n.71, 47, 63, 67, 75, 75, 78, 82, 86, 94, 104, 106, 122, 137, 146, 152 n.44, 162, 164, 171, 173, 180, 187, 192, 205, 219 n.22, 219 n.29, 242 n.15 World War II (1939–45) 15, 17, 63–4, 75, 128, 164, 226 n.119, 259

291

Wüster, Adolf 215–16 Wylie, Robert 53 Yerkes, Charles Tyson 49 Zak, Eugene 239 Zatzenstein. See Matthiesen Zayas. See de Zayas Zborowski, Léopold (Zbo) 238–9 Zervos, Christian – Galerie du Dragon 23 n.62, 24 n.75, 96, 201–2, 216, 219 n.18, 222 n.71 Ziem, Felix 32 Zola, Emile 13, 22 n.27, 218 n.5, 225 n.106 Zorn, Anders 49

292

293

294

Plate 1  Caricature of Etienne Bignou by Cesar Abin from the latter’s book Leurs Figures: 56 portraits d’artistes, critiques et marchands d’aujourdhui. Paris: Muller, 1932.

Plate 2  Pablo Picasso, Sebastià Junyer i Vidal Calls on Durand-Ruel. Paris, 1904. Ink, and colored pencils on paper, 22 × 16 cm. Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Sebastià Junyer i Vidal, 1966 (70.807). Photography, Gasull Fotografia. Last sheet of a six-page comic-strip-style account of Picasso’s trip from Barcelona to Paris in 1904, accompanied by his friend Junyer. It depicts an imaginary encounter with Durand-Ruel where the latter hands a bag of money to Junyer in exchange for a painting—likely a dream shared by countless artists who flocked to the French capital. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Plate 3  Alberto Pasini, Visite à la mosquée, private collection. Reprinted by permission of Enzo Savoai.

Plate 4  Giuseppe De Nittis, Route de Naples à Brindisi, 1872. Oil on canvas, 27 × 52 cm. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Collection of R. Eno. Courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.

Plate 5  Edgar Degas, The Dancing Class, c. 1870. Oil on wood, 7 3/4 × 10 5/8 in. (19.7 × 27 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.184). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Plate 6 Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Morning Fog, 1901. Oil on canvas, 25 7/8 × 39 7/16 in. (65.7 × 100.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Anne Thomson in memory of her father, Frank Thomson, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth Clarke Thomson (1954–66-6). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives.

Plate 7 Edouard Manet, Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1830–1906) at Bellevue, 1880. Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 × 23 3/4 in. (80.6 × 60.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 (1997.391.4). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Plate 8  Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1892–95. Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm. Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (BF 13). The Barnes Foundation Archives, Merion, PA. Reprinted with permission.

Plate 9  Twentieth-century translocation of Paul Cézanne’s thirty-seven Montagne SainteVictoire paintings. Source: data from Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, http://www.cezannecatalogue. com/catalogue/index.php (Accessed September 14, 2018).

Plate 10  Appreciation of the United States dollar, English pound, Australian pound, Japanese yen, and Argentinian peso against the French franc, 1916–40. Values shown as multiple increases against the franc. Source: data from FRASER®, Federal Reserve Archives, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis.

Plate 11  Cézanne acquisitions by Barnes per year against United States dollar appreciation, 1916–40. Left hand axis: number of Cézannes acquired. Right hand axis: multiple increases in the US dollar against the franc. Sources: data from FRASER®, Federal Reserve Archives, Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis; and Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman, and David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, http://www. cezannecatalogue.com/collections/ (Accessed July 1, 2018).

Plate 12 Henri Matisse. Paysage marocain, Acanthes, 1912. Oil on canvas, 115 × 80 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Gift of Walther Halvorsen, 1917. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Plate 13  Henri Matisse. Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges, 1914. Oil on canvas, 147 × 97 cm. Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. Legs Baronne Eva Gourgaud, 1965. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Plate 14  Artist unknown, presumed after Jean-Baptiste André Gauthier-Dagoty. Portrait of Madame du Barry and the Page Zamore, late eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, 39 × 31 cm. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.

Plate 15  Henri Matisse, Seated Odalisque, 1926. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (73 × 60 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (62.112). © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Plate 16  Pablo Picasso, Melancholy Woman, 1902. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 27 1/4 in. (100 × 69.2 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts (70.190). © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.