Paul Rosenberg (art dealer)
Paul Rosenberg | |
---|---|
Born | Paris, France | 29 December 1881
Died | 29 June 1959 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France | (aged 77)
Occupation | Art dealer |
Years active | 1898–1959 |
Known for | Representative/dealer for numerous impressionist/post-impressionist artists including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso |
Children | Alexandre, Micheline |
Parent(s) | Alexandre Rosenberg Mathilde Jellinek |
Relatives | Léonce Rosenberg (Brother) Anne Sinclair (Granddaughter) |
Paul Rosenberg (29 December 1881 – 29 June 1959) was a French art dealer. He represented Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. Both Paul and his brother Léonce Rosenberg were among the world's major dealers of modern art.
Career
The younger son of Jewish antiques dealer Alexandre Rosenberg, Paul and his elder brother
Paris: 1911–1940
Léonce became a noted champion of
Paul's stock included pieces by all of the classical and contemporary French and major European artists, and latterly American artists, including: Marsden Hartley; Max Weber; Abraham Rattner; Karl Knaths; Harvey Weiss; Oronzio Maldarelli; Nicolas de Staël; Graham Sutherland; Kenneth Armitage; and Giacomo Manzù. The result was that from 1920, Paul Rosenberg's company was widely acknowledged to be the most active and influential gallery in the world.[1][3]
With the early artist relationships, like Kahnweiler had, Rosenberg gave the artists financial security by agreeing to buy their works on the basis of an exclusive contract. Rosenberg lent Picasso money after his honeymoon with the ballerina
By 1935 along his brother-in-law
In the late 1930s, Rosenberg, alert to signs of an approaching war, began quietly moving his collection out of continental Europe to the London branch and to storage in America (via the
In July 1940, Nazi
New York: 1940–1959
Rosenberg, his wife, his daughter Micheline and her husband Joseph Robert Schwartz,
From this base post-war, Rosenberg managed to reclaim and re-purchase a number of pieces from his pre-war collection, but these represented less than half of the works he had lost.[1][3][5] After the end of hostilities, he personally traveled to Paris to hear the tales of the family chauffeur Louis, who told of the coming of ERR trucks not long after the family had departed.[5] On this first trip, Rosenberg managed to regain the 1918 Picasso portrait of his wife and daughter—one of three—renamed by Göring Mother and Child—from a small museum in Paris.[5]
Rosenberg later regained a number of pieces after their confiscation by the US Army. In 1953, an exhibition of 89 pieces from Rosenberg's personal and private post-war collection were displayed at MoMA.[3][10] These included Nude Reclining by the Sea (1868) by Gustave Courbet, which was taken on 5 September 1941 by the ERR in a raid on Rosenberg's bank vault in Bordeaux together with another 162 of his paintings. The Courbet was cataloged at the Jeu de Paume in December 1941. It was later recovered from Göring's personal collection and repatriated to Rosenberg in New York. Rosenberg sold it in April 1953 to the New York collector Louis E. Stern, who donated it in 1964 to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[11]
He also purchased the
Alexandre joined his father in New York in 1946 and became a partner in 1952. After the death of his father in 1959 in Neuilly-sur-Seine,[12] Alexandre became the company's principal. In 1962 Alexandre was a co-founder and first President of the Art Dealers Association of America, remaining one of the association's permanent board members throughout his life. He also served as an adviser to both the American Government and the Internal Revenue Service on matters pertaining to art works. After Alexandre's premature death in 1987 in London from an aneurysm, while attending the reunion of the US Army Second Armored Division,[5] his wife Elaine took over the business. Following the death of Micheline in 2007, the family agreed to donate their grandfather's archives to MoMA, which held a supporting exhibition of the collection in 2010.[1][3][6]
Art collection recovery
Because the Nazis banned so-called "degenerate art" from entering Germany, art so designated in France was looted and held in what became known as the "Martyr's Room" at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris.[13] Much of Rosenberg's professional and personal collection was branded as "degenerate art" and thereby fell under the mandate of the Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art. Following Joseph Goebbels personal directive to sell these degenerate works for foreign currency to fund the building of the Führermuseum and the wider war effort, Hermann Göring appointed a series of ERR-approved dealers to liquidate these assets. Göring instructed them to give him the proceeds, with which he intended to grow his personal art collection.[3] With much of this looted art sold onwards via Switzerland, Rosenberg's collection was scattered across Europe.
Today, some 70 of his paintings are missing, including the large
In June 1940, via the
In the mid-1950s, Rosenberg lost a French lawsuit that he started to recover a Matisse in the south of France, after the judge decreed the masterpiece belonged to the defendant, Rosenberg's own family kin.[5] After the death of Paul, the family agreed under Alexandre to continue to try to recover the family art works. Consequently, in 1971 they bought back the Degas Deux Danseuses for far below its worth.[5]
In December 1987, while reading at the
His granddaughter is TV journalist Anne Sinclair, host of political shows and the former wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.[15][16] In October 1997, Rosenberg's heirs filed suit in United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, Seattle, to recover the painting Odalisque (1927 or 1928) by Matisse from the Seattle Art Museum, the first lawsuit against an American museum concerning ownership of art looted by Nazis during World War II.[17] Then museum director Mimi Gardner Gates brokered an 11th hour settlement that returned the artwork, after which the museum sued the gallery which had sold it the painting in the 1950s.[18] As the sole heir to her parents' estate, after the death of her mother Micheline in 2007, Sinclair sold the painting at auction, raising in excess of $33m.[2] In the same year she also donated the 1918 Picasso painting of her grandmother and mother to the Musée Picasso in Paris.[2]
Recent developments
In 2012, German tax authorities found pieces from Rosenberg's collection in an apartment owned by Cornelius Gurlitt, son of 1930s German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, in Schwabing, Munich. Over 1,500 pieces were recovered with an estimated value of up to €1bn, including Portrait of a Woman by Matisse that Rosenberg had left behind after fleeing Paris.[19] Gurlitt's collection was sent to a secure warehouse in Garching. Authorities are presently cataloging the works, researching their pre-war owners, and any surviving relatives.[20][21]
In 2012, the Rosenberg family identified Profil bleu devant la cheminée (Woman in Blue in Front of Fireplace; 1937), a Matisse painting that was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941,
In May 2015, Marinello also recovered, for the Rosenberg heirs, Portrait of a Seated Woman by Henri Matisse, which had been found in the Munich home of Cornelius Gurlitt.[19][24]
In popular culture
Rosenberg is played by
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h "The Paul Rosenberg Archives A Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg". moma.org.
- ^ a b c d e McElwaine, Sandra (26 May 2011). "Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Rich Wife". The Daily Beast.
- ^ ISBN 978-0465041916.
- ^ "Picasso painting fetches record $106m at auction". BBC News. 2010-05-05. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Masterpiece plunder as Paul Rosenberg fled Europe in 1940, the nazis snatched his priceless art holdings. The search for the treasure is carried on by his descendants.. - NY Da..." Daily News. New York.
- ^ a b "MoMA.org - Paul Rosenberg and Company: From France to America". moma.org.
- ^ "Helft/Loevi/Rosenberg". sousamendesfoundation.org. Archived from the original on 2013-11-09.
- ^ a b c d Hector Feliciano (1998). "The Lost Museum". Bonjour Paris. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ "Rosenberg Opens". Art Digest. 16: 6–9. 15 November 1941.
- ^ "Art: Dealer's Choice". Time Magazine. December 7, 1953.
- ^ Philadelphia Museum of Art. "Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections : Provenance". philamuseum.org.
- ^ "Paul Rosenberg, Art Dealer, Dies". The New York Times. July 1, 1959.
- ^ Feliciano, Hector (1998). "The Lost Museum". Bonjour Paris. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ Cohen, Patricia and Mashberg, Tom. Family, ‘Not Willing to Forget,’ Pursues Art It Lost to Nazis, The New York Times, April 27, 2013, p. A1; published online April 26, 2013. Retrieved April 27, 2013.
- ^ Backing Her Man With Impressive Resources, The New York Times, May 21, 2011.
- ^ "DSK, Anne Sinclair Have Reportedly Separated". Huffington Post. 28 June 2012.
- ^ Felicia R. Lee (June 16, 1999), Seattle Museum to Return Looted Work, The New York Times.
- ^ "SAM to Return Matisse Odalisque to Rosenbergs". Association of Art Museum Directors. June 14, 1999. Archived from the original on October 1, 2006. Retrieved 2006-09-08.
- ^ a b "Gurlitt's Matisse is confirmed to be looted 'Nazi art'". BBC News. 12 June 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
- ^ "Fahnder entdecken 1500 Werke von Picasso, Chagall und weiteren Künstlern". Focus. 3 November 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
- ^ "Nazi looted art 'found in Munich'". BBC News. 3 November 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
- ^ Tom Mashberg (April 5, 2013), Family Seeks Return of a Matisse Seized by the Nazis, The New York Times
- ^ "Nazi looted Matisse work returned by Norwegian gallery". BBC News. 21 March 2014.
- ^ Melissa Eddy, May 15, 2015. Matisse From Gurlitt Collection Is Returned to Jewish Art Dealer’s Heirs, The New York Times
External links
- The Paul Rosenberg Archives at Museum of Modern Art Archives
- Rosenberg collection exhibition, 2010
- The Havemeyer Family Papers relating to Art Collecting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives. Paul Rosenberg acted as an art collecting advisor and buying agent for the Havemeyer family. This archival collection includes correspondence written between Rosenberg, Louisine Havemeyer and Théodore Duret.