Art Dealers in the 20th Century

The 2nd-cycle and 3rd-cycle Contemporary Art students took part in these lectures and, under the guidance of Thomas Schlesser, doctor of art history and author of several books, wrote articles on these dealers and their environment. We are publishing five of these articles here.

Following the success last year of the lectures devoted to Paul Durand-Ruel, Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Pierre Matisse, and Aimé Maeght, we are pleased to announce that the series devoted to the great art dealers will continue this fall. The first lecture, on September 29 at 19:00, will be devoted to Denise René, who will be in conversation with Jean-Paul Ameline, chief curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou, and will recount her career, her battles, and the many artists she has supported. As places are limited, registration is required. Please contact Boris Grebille by email (b.grebille@iesa.fr)

Durand Ruel and the Barbizon School

In 1830, Jean-Marie Désiré Durand and Marie-Ferdinande Ruel took over the Ruel family stationery shop. In addition to selling artists' supplies, they gradually specialized in collecting contemporary works. Jean-Marie Durand became particularly interested in English school painting, under the influence of three friends: Alfred Marsaud (watercolorist), Claude Schroth (collector of Constable and Bonington), and John Arrowsmith (a dealer who introduced English painting to France).

The Durand-Ruels played a decisive role in spreading new artistic concepts and were among the first to champion the work of the Barbizon school, which broke with the classical school. These artists painted landscape in a wild and primitive manner, influenced by artists of the English school. Through their painting, they strove to defend a French heritage.

It is somewhat despite himself that Jean-Marie Durand truly became a dealer in contemporary art. Theodore Rousseau, being in a rather catastrophic financial situation, asked Jean-Marie Durand to support him at auctions. The latter bought all his available canvases in order to devote a solo exhibition to him. This was the start of a long collaboration between the Durand-Ruels and the Barbizon artists.

"No matter what they [the public, the press, and the dealers] do, they will not kill your true quality: the love of art and the defense of artists before their death. In the future, this will be your glory." Auguste Renoir, November 1885.

The Franco-Prussian War forced Paul into exile in England in order to continue his activity as a dealer and collector. He opened a gallery on New Bond Street where he organized a series of exhibitions of modern French artists (Corot, Dupré, Rousseau, etc.). Paul Durand-Ruel, a pioneer among dealers abroad, gave the Barbizon school the opportunity to enter foreign collections, particularly in England, Scotland, and the Netherlands.

In the United States, collectors such as Rockefeller took an interest in Paul Durand-Ruel’s collections and invested in the Barbizon school (Theodore Rousseau – Chestnut Alley, valued at 300 000 francs).

His policy of supporting the market value of the Barbizon school did not stop there. The French economic situation, weakened by the war, allowed him to buy back works from French collectors in order to resell them more profitably abroad.

His commitment thus reveals the full richness of Paul Durand-Ruel’s personality. Admittedly, because of his upbringing and family heritage, it was difficult for him to shake off his old-fashioned taste. But in the end he devoted his life to discovering new artistic movements, continuing and passing on his father’s modernist vision.

Susan Pierce - Nadège Tatrinh

One Market, Two Dealers

Paul Durand-Ruel called Georges Petit his "hated rival," and rightly so. Indeed, these two men competed for the favors of the Impressionist artists for many years. In an era when the market was growing, a climate of free competition appeared with this new generation of dealers. Durand-Ruel even went so far as to pay artists a monthly allowance in exchange for exclusivity over their output. He advocated this exclusivity through informal agreements. However, this clause was often undermined by his competitors, notably Georges Petit.

Sisley is a good example of the ambiguity of artists' exclusivity toward Durand-Ruel. Recall that in 1874, Paul ran into significant material difficulties and financially abandoned the Impressionists. Two years later, he came close to ruin. It was only in 1880 that Durand-Ruel once again pledged his support to the painter (as well as to the other Impressionist artists). Despite this, in the following years, Sisley was the subject of numerous exhibitions at Georges Petit’s. In 1891, dissatisfied with Durand-Ruel, Sisley decided to sell his works from then on to other dealers, including Georges Petit. Durand-Ruel was thus forced to buy Sisley paintings through his competitor. This reversal of the situation was a great victory for Petit, who delighted in getting ahead of his rival.

What drove some artists to go see the competitor? First, Durand-Ruel’s inconsistency compared with Georges Petit’s financial stability. The lack of regular support is partly explained by the speculation system in which Durand-Ruel went into debt to anticipate demand. Paul was the first dealer to play on these art market phenomena. He was a discoverer, whereas Petit was rather a distributor of painters who already had a certain reputation. As a result, the real risk-taking was done by Durand-Ruel. But the fluctuations in his means meant that, at times, artists found themselves destitute and looked for another dealer to represent them. Let us also mention the lack of moral support during Durand-Ruel’s departure for the United States. In 1886, James F. Sutton and the American Art Association invited Paul to take part in an exhibition in New York. This led to a first success for the Impressionists, but one that found no echo in Paris. The result: in May 1887, during Durand-Ruel’s absence, Petit organized the Exposition Internationale, which brought together Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro.

In this context of competition, how to choose one over the other? One particularity that distinguishes these two dealers is the relationship they had with artists. There is an affectionate, even protective side to Paul toward his artists. Indeed, the painters he championed often became close friends, such as Claude Monet. Georges Petit, by contrast, played on a climate of financial seduction, with a prosperity that attracted painters like Sisley to exhibit in his gallery. Pierre Assouline describes at Petit’s a "large gallery of 25 by 15 meters… decorated with marble and red fabric… Ready to do anything to lure his competitor’s discoveries to his own place." Petit even went as far as considering conspiring against Durand-Ruel with other dealers who wanted to bring down his business. But these rumors of a plot only show that it took far more to bring down one of the greatest dealers in the history of art.

Florencia Chernajovsky - Alice Sanchez

Kahnweiler Against Abstraction

"From great loves comes the strength to hate." These few words are enough to describe the "Pope" of modern painting that Daniel Henry Kahnweiler was. Often considered the greatest art dealer of his century, because of his decisive role in the birth and life of the Cubist movement, he also stood out for his deep and undisguised aversion to abstraction. "PPA," or "Peinture Prétendument Abstraite" (supposedly abstract painting), is how Kahnweiler designated this art that he loathed: "Abstraction not only distorted Cubism by falsifying its meaning, it also turned the best-intentioned people away from true painting." To understand his approach, you have to know that Kahnweiler was a Kantian. He believed in the universal character of the sense of "beauty" and defined the "beautiful" as being so in principle, without purpose and without concept.

For Kahnweiler, painting conveys a personal reading. The creation of a new language through signs marks the genius of a great painter. Yet abstract painting, which does not rely on signs, gives nothing to read: it is "a pure calligraphy that failed to become a true writing with a meaning of its own." Another of his positions on art is that "a non-figurative painting is nonsense." In other words, art would only be realized in figuration. "Its function is to account for the visible world and to recreate the outer world. To misunderstand this truth is to inevitably commit oneself to decoration. A trade, certainly, but not that of the painter." Beyond even these technical considerations, Kahnweiler expects painting to arouse a deep reaction in the one who looks: emotion must not be spontaneous and immediate. Impact and meaning are measured over time. Yet he noted at the Paris Biennale in 1959, and again at the Venice Biennale in 1966, that no viewer revolts or is scandalized in front of abstraction: "an amusement park called Biennale where children have a wild time…"!

What exasperates him even more is the timidity of the critics and art dealers of the time, as he considers it not a question of choice but of selection. An authentic art dealer is marked by his ability to refuse and reject, not by his indulgences. That is why he gradually established himself as the only art critic able to build himself against the art market and against the State that endorses abstraction. Faced with this widespread cowardice of dealers and critics, he took the place of criticism by declaring: "The State has no taste."

In his view, abstract art is academic; an art that uses forms taken from elsewhere, either by using them in the wrong sense or by stripping them of all meaning. The best proof that this art is academic and official, he sees in the fact that the State protects it, and that governments organize and fund these exhibitions. In his eyes, 19th-century academic paintings and abstract paintings are therefore equivalent, since they have in common that they were pampered by the State. Only hindsight can separate the wheat from the chaff.

Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, or how an avant-garde dealer became hostile to the avant-garde of the next generation… It is difficult, or on the contrary childishly easy, to understand this aversion to abstraction that would characterize him: the generational conflict did not spare him. For Kahnweiler was the man of one generation. "And he will understand the next generation all the less the more closely he has embraced the first" (André Fermigier). Thus, the man who called for revolt against the fathers of art history finds himself, in turn, overtaken by the new concepts of abstract art…

Paul ALVERNHE - Christine TARPIN

"With Kahnweiler, it is Picasso who leaves us once again" L’Humanité-Dimanche, January 17, 1979

Turning a commercial success into a moral success was the aim of one of the most emblematic dealers of the 20th century, Daniel-Heinrich Kahnweiler (1884-1979). A defender of revolutionary ideas for the art of his time, and this despite all the criticism he suffered in his youth, he was, from the very first stirrings of Cubism, its fervent champion. That is also why he tied, as a corollary, his destiny as a dealer to that of Pablo Picasso.

For more than 50 years, Kahnweiler and the Spanish painter built a relationship based on trust and on the desire to promote art as perpetual invention. Two seekers thus found each other and revealed themselves to one another, thanks to a work that would mark a turning point in the history of Art, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

In early summer 1907, only a few months after opening his gallery, Kahnweiler wondered whether his choice to be an art dealer had not been sheer folly. His friend Uhde suggested he go see a canvas in the studio of Picasso, who was then going through a period of great solitude. The fruit of his latest research, "the philosophical brothel," was not approved by his comrades (whether Braque, Derain, or Apollinaire). Misunderstood, perhaps. Yet when Kahnweiler saw this canvas, he understood. This first meeting would be decisive for both men, and for the advent of Cubism: this movement broke with the tradition of painting as an illusion of reality. It freed itself from perspective, introduced multiple points of view from various angles, and focused on the search for solidity and density in reaction to the Impressionists' pursuit of light and atmospheric effects. A bursting apart of volumes, an extreme geometrization of the forms of the painting, which became autonomous structures. A revolution.

• What Kahnweiler hunted for in a work was novelty. He wanted to be the dealer of the artists of his time, those who were the reflection of his generation. This implies constant research and risk-taking in the work of painting. Picasso, three years his senior, embodied this idea in his view. Kahnweiler did not like those who stood still on their achievements. He remains the first person to have grasped Picasso’s genius; he would support him in his moments of doubt and push him in his research until he extracted the very essence of the Cubist approach, which makes it possible to grasp the masterpiece dimension of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In a sense, it is thanks to Kahnweiler that we appreciate Picasso’s work at its true value. This man, who was both filter and screen of the world for the artist, remains our best interpreter
• However, several points of contention must nuance this picture. Indeed, Picasso and Kahnweiler went through cold periods. This is perhaps partly due to their great difference in character and to the possessiveness Kahnweiler showed toward his artists. Fickle, Picasso played many tricks on Kahnweiler by selling directly to collectors or to other dealers. It must be said that Kahnweiler was not Picasso’s first dealer; Ambroise Vollard exhibited him during his Blue and Rose periods, and during Kahnweiler’s two exiles during the world wars. Picasso took a long time to truly grant exclusivity to his dealer, and in the end this coincided with the moment when his fame had grown so much that it was far easier to rely entirely on him to handle the incessant project proposals, the problem of forgeries circulating on the market at the time, and the organization of exhibitions all over the world. Before that, Picasso did not show Kahnweiler unfailing loyalty, unlike Juan Gris
• Finally, while Kahnweiler would defend Cubism body and soul, he would not let go of his criticisms of certain periods of Picasso. The Blue period, the naturalist period, the portraits of Olga, and more generally the 20s period do not, for Kahnweiler, reflect the genius of the Spanish master
• Ever-evolving, Picasso would play with everything: "Art is a lie." This is one of the traits that may set him apart from Kahnweiler, who would always see in his art an autobiographical expression rather than a mere game. And it is precisely for this reason that he would not support the artist’s least revolutionary periods. Ultimately, then, it is this dealer’s irreproachable ethics that would forge a quality relationship with Picasso. Kahnweiler would thus be an intelligent admirer of the artist and his most faithful interlocutor.

Alya Sebti - Flora Katz

Vollard: Portraits of a Dealer

"The most beautiful woman in the world has never had her portrait painted, drawn, or engraved more often than Vollard," Picasso claimed with humor, but far more than a simple model, it is first of all the portrait of a friend that Cézanne, Picasso, Renoir, and Bonnard paint. Each makes the sitter their own and transposes him into their own style, thereby revealing different facets of his personality. But soon all are confronted with the same problem: Vollard, who suffers from narcolepsy, falls asleep during the posing sessions.

This has a knack for irritating Cézanne. His hot-tempered nature makes the 115 sittings painful and anxiety-inducing. An extreme nervousness emanates from this portrait, held at the Musée de la Ville de Paris. The depiction is frontal and hieratic; one feels a certain tension. The eyes are two black gaping holes that strip the sitter of all expressiveness.

"The culmination of art is the figure," asserts Cézanne. Picasso shares this idea.

In 1910, Picasso produced a series of portraits of figures from the art world. Vollard passes through the prism of nascent Cubism. In this canvas, held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, we find the fragmentation of the figure. Moreover, Picasso, who did not wish to tip into abstraction, lets the viewer clearly identify the subject. The presentation is frontal, centered, half-length, which is traditional. Indeed, Picasso had come out of the Academy and knew the art of portraiture. The background and the figure merge, which gives Vollard a massive appearance. But beyond the formal aspect, there is also an impression of floating caused by the multiple views of the sitter. Here again the gaze, the "mirror of the soul," is extinguished. With his eyelids closed, Vollard seems deep in introspection, meditating, recharging. To overcome the problem of him falling asleep, Picasso chose to work from a photo, and spent months on this portrait.

While Picasso freezes his sitter in a certain classicism, Renoir plays with him, staging him. In the 1908 portrait held at the Courtauld Institute Galleries in London, Renoir depicts Vollard contemplating a statuette by Maillol, lost in thought, gazing into the distance; it is his quality as a dealer-expert that is highlighted, but also that of a passionate man whose inspiration comes directly from art.

"Bravo, you’re the one who’s going to pose!" Renoir said one day on seeing Vollard turn up at his home in a toreador costume. This 1917 portrait belongs to the collection of the Nippon Television Network Corporation in Tokyo. At the time it was painted, Renoir was old and ill. His rheumatism prevented him from painting as he wished. Vollard was then a mature man, his hair and beard turned gray. He cuts a fine figure in his costume, stands very straight, and engages the viewer with his frank gaze. This canvas gives off great comic force. The painter mixes irony and assurance. Indeed, Vollard laughs at himself, he looks ridiculous, squeezed into his costume, but one nonetheless senses great vigor, conveyed in particular by the gaze. It is the only portrait in which self-mockery can be glimpsed, whereas we know from his writings that the dealer was very critical of his own work. Once again a sense of strength emerges: like a toreador, the dealer fights in the arena of art.

Even though Renoir painted several portraits of Vollard, Bonnard very quickly became his favorite portraitist. He painted him at least seven times. He depicts the dealer in intimacy: these are portraits without protocol, like stolen photos of peaceful moments in which Vollard is simply a man. There is no staging as with Renoir but informal and personal moments. In the 1904 portrait held at the Musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris, Vollard is in the painter’s studio, a place usually hidden, reserved for close friends.

In the 1924 portrait held at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the dealer is surrounded by the works of the artists he champions. Seated in a relaxed manner, a certain weariness shows on his face. Bonnard uses the cat to keep his sitter awake.

To conclude, highlighting these portraits makes it possible to grasp the dealer’s personality through the artists' eyes; but it also reveals the degree of intimacy the artists shared with Vollard. The more paintings there are, the stronger the friendship. The gaze, emphasized in each of the canvases, becomes the dealer’s attribute. It is the tool that allows him to judge and exercise his critical mind. The significant absence of a gaze, the dealer’s state of always being close to dozing off, or even in the arms of Morpheus, constantly brings Vollard back to the world of reverie and dreams and gives him a romantic side.

Emmanuelle Gauthey