Pioneers of the Global Art Market

Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850-1950

Christel H. Force, Christel H. Force

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501342783
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

By the turn of the twentieth century, Paris was the capital of the art world. While this is usually understood to mean that Paris was the center of art production and trading, this book examines a phenomenon that has received little attention thus far: Paris-based dealers relied on an ever-expanding international network of peers. Many of the city's galleries capitalized on foreign collectors' interest by expanding globally and proactively cultivating transnational alliances. If the French capital drew artists from around the world-from Cassatt to Picasso-the contemporary-art market was international in scope. Art dealers deliberately tapped into a growing pool of discerning collectors in northern and eastern Europe, the UK, and the USA. International trade was rendered not just desirable but necessary by the devastating effects of wars, revolutions, currency devaluation and market crashes which stalled collecting in Europe. Pioneers of the Global Art Market assembles original scholarship based on a close inspection of and fresh perspective on extant dealer records. It caters to an amplified curiosity concerning the emergence and workings of our unprecedented contemporary-centric and global art market. This anthology fills a significant gap in the expanding field of art market studies by addressing how, initially, contemporary art, which is now known as historical modernism, made its way into collections: who validated what by promoting and selling it, where, and how. It includes unpublished material, concrete examples, bibliographical and archival references, and should appeal to academics, curators, educators, dealers, collectors, artists and art lovers alike. It celebrates the modern art dealer as transnational impresario, the global reach of the modern-art market, and the impact of traders on the history of collecting, and ultimately on the history of art.

1

- 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, 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 mid-nineteenth 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?

“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 Salon-approved 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.

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 career-building 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...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction - Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950
• 2 Parisian Dealers and the American Market, 1860–1920
• 3 Old and New Worlds: Durand-Ruel and the International Market for Impressionism
• 4 Moving Mountains: Paris-Based Dealers and the Economics of Translocation
• 5 Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s International Partnerships, 1907–1937
• 6 Promoting Modernism in the 1920s: The Art Journals of Paul Guillaume, Léonce Rosenberg, and Alfred Flechtheim
• 7 Paul Guillaume, Marius de Zayas, and African Arts: A Transatlantic Partnership, 1914–1923
• 8 The Thannhauser Galleries: Forming International Alliances in an Era of Change
• 9 “A Viking Sailing over the Savage Sea, Far, Far to the North”: Walther Halvorsen
• 10 When French Dealers “Turned Their Eyes toward Scandinavia”: The Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in Stockholm
• 11 The Galerie Paul Rosenberg and the American Market in the Interwar Era
• 12 International Dealer Networks and the Market for Impressionism in London and Glasgow: Etienne Bignou, A.J. McNeill Reid, and Ernest Lefèvre
• 13 Etienne Bignou: The Gallery as Antechamber of the Museum
• 14 Capricious Cohorts: René Gimpel’s Associates, Rivals, and Patrons
• 15 Valentine Dudensing and the Valentine Gallery: Selling the United States on the School of Paris
• 16 Conclusion
• Contributors
• Index
• Imprint