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80-586: The son of an antique dealer Alexandre Rosenberg and brother of the gallery owner Paul Rosenberg (21 rue de la Boétie, Paris), Léonce Rosenberg attended the Lycée Rollin in Paris followed by commercial training in Antwerp and London as well as travels to Berlin, Vienna and New York. Léonce Rosenberg took the opportunity to visit galleries and museums to broaden his artistic knowledge and appreciation, and to develop contacts in

160-413: A grand tour via London, Berlin, Vienna and New York to acquire experience and contacts. During the tour, Paul bought two van Gogh drawings and a Manet portrait for $ 220, which he had transported to his father's gallery and sold onwards at a profit. From 1906 on, the brothers worked as partners within the business. When their father retired, they became directors. Having established their own networks,

240-518: A Seated Woman by Henri Matisse, which had been found in the Munich home of Cornelius Gurlitt . Rosenberg is played by Will Keen in the 2018 television series Genius , which focuses on the life and art of Pablo Picasso. Wilhelm Uhde Wilhelm Uhde (28 October 1874, Friedeberg , Province of Brandenburg (now Poland) – 17 August 1947, Paris ) was a German art collector, dealer, author, and critic, an early collector of modernist painting, and

320-612: A Woman by Matisse that Rosenberg had left behind after fleeing Paris. 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. 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

400-587: A branch in Bond Street , London, to enable them to engage with more Americans. Noted clients included museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (of which Rosenberg was an early supporter and donor), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art . His private clients included Alfred H. Barr, Jr. , Chester Dale , Douglas Dillon , and Marjorie and Duncan Phillips , who through purchases from Rosenberg created much of

480-450: A continuing importance for art historians in another way, however - through his letters. Rosenberg corresponded frequently - during certain periods, daily - with his artists. And against the odds this correspondence, along with business papers, gallery inventory records and the like, are now held in various public archives, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and especially

560-424: A force within avant garde art, in the face of claims to the contrary by hostile critics. According to art historian Christopher Green , "this was an astonishingly complete demonstration that Cubism had not only continued between 1914 and 1917, having survived the war, but was still developing in 1918 and 1919 in its 'new collective form' marked by 'intellectual rigor'. In the face of such a display of vigour, it really

640-407: A forum for critical debate and the theories underpinning the artists’ work. Contributors included Piet Mondrian , Gino Severini, Giorgio de Chirico and Albert Gleizes among others. The poet Pierre Reverdy and the critic and propagandist for Cubism, Maurice Raynal , also wrote for the publication. The brightly coloured, art deco-inspired covers were designed by Georges Valmier , who also wrote for

720-464: A hub for modern art in Paris through the 1930s, but it was never again as important, either commercially or as a catalyst in the history of painting, as it was for the second wave of Cubism in the years immediately after the Great War. While World War I had provided the opportunity and impetus for the establishment of Galerie L’Effort Moderne, World War II brought about its end. As a Jewish-owned business,

800-486: A letter in January 1927: “Having examined the situation of my accounts with my bookkeeper...I ask that you take note of the fact that payment for any paintings I may buy may not be made until the end of each month, not during the month itself.” There is evidence of at least one rigged sale in 1928 in order to revive de Chirico's prices - incited by de Chirico himself, it has to be said - following an earlier disastrous auction at

880-538: A letter to de Chirico in December 1926, he wrote: “Léger, Valmier, Metzinger, etc. before painting submit drawings or watercolours to me, because they are aware that their canvases are not destined for themselves but for third parties; it is important that subjects and formats be inspired by the tastes and needs of these others.” There was an ongoing tussle with de Chirico over the painter's habit of selling paintings directly from his studio and, in Rosenberg's view, undermining

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960-478: A modern form of patron. His optimism about the market in the face of the gathering financial storm was misplaced, however. L’Effort Moderne went bankrupt in 1931, with much of the stock auctioned off in London. By 1933 Rosenberg was forced to move to a smaller apartment, at 20 rue Spontini, and again in 1934 to 3 Square du Tarn. Two further auctions of works from Léonce Rosenberg's personal collection took place, following

1040-733: A money-grubber I cannot say I enjoy seeing myself become the Cinderella or the ragamuffin of the GEM.” The fallout from the auctions of the Kahnweiler/Uhde collections at the Hôtel Drouot was by no means the only reason for some of Léonce Rosenberg's artists to leave him. Correspondence in the late 1920s with de Chrico, who had by then become one of the mainstays of the L’Effort Moderne, is equally instructive. Rosenberg's financial problems surfaced in

1120-452: A new gallery at No. 79 East 57th Street. The opening was well received by the art world, and garnered a four-page notice within Art Digest . 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. After the end of hostilities, he personally traveled to Paris to hear

1200-524: A portrait of Picasso's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter , which Rosenberg sold in New York in 1951 to Frances Lasker Brody . Every summer the Rosenberg family and the Picasso family would depart for the South of France, holidaying there with friends including F. Scott Fitzgerald , Somerset Maugham , Stravinsky , Ravel and Matisse. By 1935 along his brother-in-law Jacques Helft , a noted antiques dealer, he opened

1280-485: A preface to an exhibition of L'Effort Moderne Cubists in Geneva in 1920, Rosenberg associated Cubist art with Plato 's eternal forms, “beautiful in itself”. He sought to tie Cubism firmly to a French classicism, traced back through Cézanne and beyond, rather than something foreign, or worse, German. L’Effort Moderne was not just a dealer's gallery. It was also an umbrella for a wide range of related activities aimed at raising

1360-564: A range of objects from French antiques to archaeological pieces to Persian miniatures. Léonce Rosenberg, however, soon began increasingly to be drawn to the avant garde experimentation of which Paris was the centre, and he began acquiring works by Cubist artists, bought mainly from the gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler , who was at the time the primary dealer and promoter of the Cubists. By 1914 his collection included works by Pablo Picasso , Auguste Herbin and Juan Gris , as well as examples of

1440-401: A role akin to that of an art patron of old than a conventional dealer. He saw himself as commissioning rather than simply buying and selling works. He suggested - some would say dictated - subject matter and themes, and at times even stipulated dimensions. In the early years he demanded from his Cubists conceptual purity and a limited range of subjects suited to the rigours of Cubism. By 1925 he

1520-863: A significant figure in the career of Henri Rousseau . Born into a Jewish family, Uhde studied law in Dresden but switched to art history, studying in Munich and Florence before moving to Paris in 1904. He purchased his first Picasso in 1905, and was one of the first collectors of the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque . He met Robert Delaunay , Sonia Terk , and Henri Rousseau in 1907, and opened his art gallery in 1908, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs (Paris) where he exhibited Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger , Sonia Delaunay, André Derain , Raoul Dufy , Auguste Herbin , Jules Pascin , and Pablo Picasso. Uhde commissioned Picasso to paint his portrait (1910) and produced

1600-419: A time the preeminent dealer and promoter of the Cubists. But ultimately it was Léonce's brother Paul, the more careful of the two, who proved to be the more commercially successful. And having anticipated and prepared for the coming World War II by shipping much of his stock abroad, Paul Rosenberg was by 1940 ready to set up business afresh in New York, where Rosenberg & Co. still trades. Léonce Rosenberg has

1680-690: The Art Dealers Association of America , remaining one of the association's permanent board members throughout his life. He also served as an advisor 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 , his wife Elaine took over

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1760-655: The Bulletin de L’Effort Moderne as early as 1919 but for financial reasons was forced to delay it until 1924. In return for promising artists some financial security, Rosenberg demanded certain levels of productivity. Along with the precise requirements for what he wanted in the paintings, it soon started to strain his relationship with at least some of his artists. Rivera was by 1918 already in open revolt. Gris grew increasingly frustrated, not only with Rosenberg's stipulations but also accusing him of somewhat more questionable practices. In November 1918 Gris wrote to Rosenberg: “I am not

1840-676: The Dunkirk evacuation , his son Alexandre Rosenberg had escaped to England. There he was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the Free French Forces . After being part of the D-Day Invasion , in August 1944 north of Paris a troop under the command of Lt. Rosenberg dynamited tracks north of Nazi train No. 40,044 and seized it, as it was attempting to transfer looted treasures to Germany. Upon his soldiers opening

1920-608: The Frick Museum in New York, Elaine Rosenberg found the painting Portrait of Gabrielle Diot by Degas listed for sale in an art magazine at the Mathias F. Hans Gallery in Hamburg . The listing included the fact that it had come to the current owner via the dealership of Paul Rosenberg. After she called the dealer and explained her connection to the looted picture, the dealer explained that under his confidentiality rules he could not disclose

2000-629: The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in September 1941, it was earmarked for Göring's private collection. Then in the hands of various dealers during the Nazi period, post-war in the late 1940s it was bought by Norwegian shipping magnate Niels Onstad from the Paris-based dealer Henri Bénézit . It has since appeared in numerous publications and toured the world on several occasions. Although under Norwegian law, due to

2080-581: The Philadelphia Museum of Art . He also purchased the Three Musicians ( MoMA version) from Pablo Picasso in fall of 1921 and gave it to the MoMA in 1949. Alexandre P. Rosenberg 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 , Alexandre became the company's principal. In 1962 Alexandre was a co-founder and first President of

2160-495: The financial crisis that had started building in France from 1926, eventually to spread globally in 1929, Rosenberg felt confident enough to commission a series of decorative panels for the apartment from artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini, Jean Metzinger, Auguste Herbin and Max Ernst . This grand, even megalomaniac, project reinforced Rosenberg's presentation of himself as

2240-450: The Cubist circle. It alienated some of the very artists who had contracted to Rosenberg during the war but who still felt some loyalty to their original dealer. It didn't help that the auctions also weakened the prices they could command. Braque, Gris and Lipchitz were among those who left Rosenberg in the fallout from the Hôtel Drouot auctions. In early 1918 Léonce Rosenberg renamed his gallery

2320-598: The Cubists, was left stranded in Switzerland during the war. As a German citizen he couldn't return to France, and his collection was seized by the French government. It left Kahnweiler's roster of artists without their livelihood. In stepped Léonce Rosenberg. He had begun to collect avant garde, especially Cubist, art before the war, but he now stepped up this activity with the encouragement of André Level, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, who were all instrumental in persuading him to fill

2400-411: The French government as a “prise de guerre”. Léonce Rosenberg managed in 1921 to secure a role as “expert” in helping to supervise the public auction of Kahnweiler's collection and that of another prominent German collector and dealer, Wilhelm Uhde . Kahnweiler had returned to Paris in 1920 and set up in business again with the help of an old friend. Rosenberg hoped to preserve his newly gained position as

2480-574: The Galerie de L'Effort Moderne and recast his business to focus on avant garde art, especially Cubism. Its inaugural exhibition, from March 1 to 22, 1918 was dedicated to the work of Auguste Herbin. And in the months following the 11 November 1918 Armistice, Rosenberg mounted a rapid succession of high-profile exhibitions showcasing the artists he had signed up. It was the turn of Henri Laurens in December 1918, with Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Gino Severini and Picasso following during

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2560-442: The Hôtel Drouot. In the meantime Léonce's brother Paul - the more risk-averse and financially solid of the two - continued to pick up some of the artists for whom Léonce had worked hard to establish a solid reputation and market demand. Picasso had signed with Paul as early as 1918. Braque followed in 1922, Léger in 1927. In 1928 Léonce Rosenberg moved his personal collection to his apartment at 75 rue de Longchamps in Paris. Despite

2640-598: The Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In addition to letters and papers, there are publication manuscripts, periodicals and photographic archives. The photographs in the Pompidou Centre archive comprise mostly reproductions of works handled by L’Effort Moderne, including ones by Braque, Csaky, de Chirico, Gris, Herbin, Léger, Metzinger, Picasso and Valmier, along with views of hangings and events at

2720-721: The Nazis in 1941, in an exhibition catalogue and demanded that the Henie-Onstad Art Centre (HOK) near Oslo , Norway, return it. Rosenberg had bought the painting directly from Matisse in 1937 and had it stored at the time of the Nazi invasion in a bank vault in Libourne , a commune in the Gironde in Aquitaine , southwestern France. The ERR entered the vault in March 1941, and, after cataloging at

2800-775: The Parisian base of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) , whose purpose was to confiscate masonic artifacts and the highest-quality works of art for Hitler's planned Führermuseum in Linz , Austria. All looted art works, including Paul Rosenberg's, were initially shipped by truck to the depot created in the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume . There Nazi art historians, experts, photographers, and maintenance and administrative personnel appraised, filed, photographed and packed what were now termed "ownerless cultural goods" for rail transport to Germany. French officials at

2880-680: 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

2960-530: 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. 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

3040-556: The art critic and resistance leader Jean Cassou . Uhde is also known as the principal organiser of the first Naive Art exhibition, which took place in Paris in 1928. The participants were Henri Rousseau , André Bauchant , Camille Bombois , Séraphine Louis , and Louis Vivin , known collectively as the Sacred Heart painters. Séraphine Louis who had been Uhde's housecleaner artwork was discovered by Uhde who then sponsored her from 1912 to 1930. A significant part of Uhde's life story

3120-570: The art world. After returning to Paris he worked with his brother Paul in the family business. In 1906 Léonce and his brother took over the running of the family gallery, then on Avenue de l'Opéra and which had been in existence since 1872. It specialised in 19th- and early 20th-century art, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. The two brothers parted company commercially in 1910, with Paul continuing from new premises at 21 Rue de la Boétie while Léonce opened his own business, called Haute Epoque, at 19 Rue de la Baume, dealing in

3200-416: The artists who made up the avant garde circle to leave Paris. Some were called up to fight. Some left for the south of France while others, especially those with German connections or who were not French citizens, dispersed to Spain, Portugal and even America. The same was true of many of the collectors and dealers. Galleries closed. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who until the war was the primary dealer for many of

3280-684: The brothers opened their own separate galleries in the city's 8th arrondissement , with Paul at 21 rue La Boétie (opened in 1911) and Léonce in the rue de la Baume. Léonce became a noted champion of Cubism , a lead that Paul followed, but being located in a more noted art district, he gained better contacts and greater finances. Working initially with his brother-in-law Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler , Paul and his partner Georges Wildenstein established and then won over from Kahnweiler exclusive relationships with: Picasso (from 1918); Braque (1922); Marie Laurencin ; Fernand Léger (1927); and latterly Matisse (1936). Paul's stock included pieces by all of

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3360-471: 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. 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. Much of Rosenberg's professional and personal collection

3440-422: 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

3520-480: The correspondence forms a kind of diary of his dealings through some of the most tumultuous years in the history of modern art. They are enabling art historians to reassess their view of some of the artists and of Rosenberg, and to start to explore some subjects in greater detail, such as the pressures exerted on artists and dealers by the economic situation between the two world wars. Paul Rosenberg (art dealer) Paul Rosenberg (29 December 1881 – 29 June 1959)

3600-545: The course of 1919. There were also exhibitions outside Paris, including of the L’Effort Moderne Cubists in Geneva in 1920 and the first one-man show of Picasso's work in the United Kingdom, in 1921. This campaign had to do more than simply market a commercial product. There were those who actively sought to have Cubism - or at least the L’Effort Moderne brand of it - wiped from the artistic map. A concerted assault

3680-559: The current owner's name, but promised to let her know this very important piece of information. On calling a few days later, Elaine Rosenberg was told by the dealer that the "owner" had taken the piece from the gallery and disappeared without leaving any forwarding details. His granddaughter is TV journalist Anne Sinclair , host of political shows and the former wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn . In October 1997, Rosenberg's heirs filed suit in United States District Court for

3760-457: The end of the war estimated that one-third of all art in French private hands had been confiscated. Rosenberg, his wife, his daughter Micheline and her husband Joseph Robert Schwartz, all travelled via Lisbon , arriving at the Madison Hotel in New York in September 1940. There, with the help of well-established friends and pieces that he had already disbursed around the world, he established

3840-415: The entire duration of the war and even while mobilized, I subsidized, by continuous purchases, the entire Cubist movement.” Kahnweiler himself later stated that Léonce Rosenberg had taken on “the task that I could no longer fulfill: the defense of Cubism.” It was by no means a straightforward handing over of the baton, however. There was still the matter of Kahnweiler's pre-war stock that had been seized by

3920-556: The first monograph on Rousseau in 1911. Uhde and Sonia Terk married in 1908 (London), reportedly a marriage of convenience which masked his homosexuality. They divorced in 1910 and Terk married Robert Delaunay. At the outbreak of World War I , many German nationals living in France had their possessions sequestered by the French state. As a result, Uhde's collection (including works by Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris , Auguste Herbin, Marie Laurencin , Fernand Léger , Jean Metzinger , Pablo Picasso, Jean Puy , and Henri Rousseau )

4000-455: The gallery was forced to close in 1941 as a result of the Nazi occupation of France. Rosenberg went into hiding. Some of his property was seized or looted. L’Effort Moderne never reopened, and Léonce Rosenberg died in July 1947 at Neuilly-sur-Seine. Léonce Rosenberg was for more than 20 years one of the leading dealers in the Parisian art world. The list of artists he represented, even if for some it

4080-403: The gallery's artists, including Braque, Gris, and Léger, but also closely associated avant-garde poets such as Max Jacob , Pierre Reverdy , and Blaise Cendrars. 1924 saw the launch of an illustrated art journal, Bulletin de l’Effort Moderne . By 1927, when it ceased publication, it had run to 40 issues. It was a platform not only for Rosenberg's own views and the promotion of his artists but also

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4160-843: The gallery. Further photographs attributed to Léonce Rosenberg are held in the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and are being digitised as part of the Courtauld Connects project. It is, however, the letters in the Léonce Rosenberg collection at the Pompidou Centre, which only relatively recently - in the 1990s and 2000s - found their way into a public archive and so became more accessible to historians, that are proving to be an important new resource. Comprising more than 800 letters and cards to Rosenberg from various artists and copies of more than 600 sent by him,

4240-802: The hole left by Kahnweiler. Even while serving in 1916 and 1917 as an auxiliary army volunteer based in Meudon and English interpreter on the Somme front, he continued during his periods of leave to buy paintings by Picasso, Georges Braque , Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin and Fernand Léger . He also began to prepare for the end of the war. By the end of 1916 he had managed to sign contracts with Jacques Lipchitz , Henri Laurens , Diego Rivera , Auguste Herbin, Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger and Georges Braque. Fernand Léger followed later, in 1918. Léonce Rosenberg also established commercial relationships with Gino Severini , Henri Hayden and María Blanchard . His relationship with Picasso

4320-666: The journal and Rosenberg had begun to represent in 1920. Although several of the leading Cubists defected from Léonce Rosenberg in the 1920s, some of them to his brother Paul, Léonce continued to represent a variety of modern artists including Giorgio de Chirico, József Csáky , Jean Metzinger, Léopold Survage , Francis Picabia and Fernand Léger. By 1927, however, Léger had also moved across to Paul Rosenberg. In 1928 there were solo exhibitions for de Chirico, Jean Metzinger, and Georges Valmier. The exhibitions became more erratic after that, although Francis Picabia had two significant shows at L’Effort Moderne in 1930 and 1932. Léonce Rosenberg

4400-496: The main dealer for the Cubists by preventing his chief competitor from re-acquiring his stock. He also thought that the prices the Cubists could command would rise. On this last calculation he was sorely mistaken. Around 3,000 items were sold over a series of four auctions from 1921 to 1923 at the Hôtel Drouot , one of the leading Parisian auction houses. They included more than 1,200 works by Braque, Gris, Léger, and Picasso. Bidding

4480-508: 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. 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. In December 1987, while reading at

4560-662: The modern collections within The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. 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 1939 New York World's Fair ), Australia, and later to South America. He then stopped adding to his collection in France, and advised his artists to make similar arrangements. Although his relocation plans were well advanced, by

4640-487: The one in Amsterdam in 1921, this time in 1932 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, scene of the infamous Kahnweiler/Uhde auctions 10 years earlier. In 1936 Rosenberg was forced to write to de Chirico, then in America, wondering whether the artist could help in selling there the panels he had painted for the rue de Longchamps apartment, even if at a price less than Rosenberg had originally paid de Chirico. L’Effort Moderne continued as

4720-431: The one who can say whether my pictures are good or bad but what I can say without fear of contradiction is that they are definitely by me. However, the bizarre phenomenon exists that the GEM [Galerie L'Effort Moderne] pays as much or even more for fake Picassos, fake Braques and fake Gris as for genuine Gris.You understand my dear friend that this isn't calculated to encourage me in the purity of my work, and although I am not

4800-709: The painting in the 1950s. 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. In the same year she also donated the 1918 Picasso painting of her grandmother and mother to the Musée Picasso in Paris. 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

4880-462: The period of ownership, the painting now belongs to HOK, Norway was one of 44 signatories to the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. Protracted mediation, overseen by Christopher A. Marinello of the Art Recovery Group , saw the painting returned to the heirs of Paul Rosenberg in March 2014. In May 2015, Marinello also recovered, for the Rosenberg heirs, Portrait of

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4960-583: The proceeds, with which he intended to grow his personal art collection. 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 Pablo Picasso watercolor, Naked Woman on the Beach , painted in Provence in 1923; seven works by Matisse ; and the Portrait of Gabrielle Diot by Degas . In June 1940, via

5040-465: The profile of its artists. There were regular literary and musical events designed to draw in the Parisian cultural elite. The first of these, a reading by Blaise Cendrars and performance by Erik Satie , took place in February 1919 during Fernand Léger's exhibition. Most notably, L’Effort Moderne was also a publishing house, Éditions de L’Effort Moderne. This published a series of books featuring not only

5120-590: The tales of the family chauffeur Louis, who told of the coming of ERR trucks not long after the family had departed. 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. 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. These included Nude Reclining by

5200-519: The time of the 1940 Nazi invasion of France , he still held over 2,000 pieces in the country, both in his gallery and in storage. The Rosenbergs were Jewish and had to flee Nazi-occupied France. They owed their lives to the Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes , who issued them visas to his country. In July 1940, Nazi Alfred Rosenberg (no relation) established

5280-507: The train's boxcar doors, Alexandre viewed many plundered pieces of art that had once been displayed in the home of his father. The seizure saved about 400 pieces of his father's art from being lost, including many masterpieces. Alexandre was demobilized in 1946, and left immediately for his family in New York to join his father's business. The train's interception was the inspiration for the 1964 film The Train , starring Burt Lancaster , Paul Scofield , Jeanne Moreau and Michel Simon . In

5360-453: The types of Asian, Egyptian and African art that were firing the avant garde imagination. World War I proved to be the defining opportunity of Léonce Rosenberg's career. Even before the war, growing anti-German sentiment and the role of German dealers in the rise of Cubism attracted hostility and led to Cubism being characterised as a German movement, even though most of the artists were French or Spanish. The outbreak of war also drove many of

5440-512: The world. 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 Olga Khokhlova and found them an apartment in Paris next to his own family home, generosity which resulted in a lifelong friendship between these two very different men. Rosenberg's purchases from Picasso included Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932),

5520-509: The “methodical, reasonable and honest progression of your prices” that he claimed to be striving towards. Rosenberg was also not afraid to reject works by his artists if he felt they did not meet the standards he expected. In purchasing his artists’ work outright, however, he also assumed greater financial risk. Strapped for funds, he was forced to auction off his collection several times in order to stay in business. The first of these sales took place in Amsterdam in 1921. He had planned to launch

5600-517: 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. The younger son of Jewish antiques dealer Alexandre Rosenberg, Paul and his elder brother Léonce joined their father's business. Alexandre had established his business in 1878, and by 1898 had become a noted dealer of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. He educated his sons in this passion by allowing them both

5680-416: 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

5760-583: Was confiscated in 1914 and sold by the government in a series of auctions at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921. From 1919 to 1920, Uhde worked with Helmut Kolle and lived with him in Chantilly, France. Uhde became active as a pacifist in Weimar Germany , but returned to France in 1924, moving back to Chantilly in 1927. A Jew, he spent the Second World War in hiding in southern France, at one point helped by

5840-444: Was difficult to maintain convincingly that Cubism was even close to extinction". Rosenberg had set out to present Cubism after the war as a “collective synthesis” rather than merely a group of disparate though visually similar artists assembled by a dealer. They had a clear theoretical framework. Juan Gris was the intellectual driver, Rosenberg the publicist, simplifying and amplifying the message. In Cubisme et tradition , published as

5920-409: Was encouraging Giorgio de Chirico, who had just joined L’Effort Moderne, away from his earlier metaphysical themes and towards the neoclassical style he was coming to represent. He requested more “antique subjects”, “Gladiators...Horses with ruins”. From the letters it appears this was driven as much by nakedly commercial as any aesthetic considerations. It was what the market wanted. In a postscript to

6000-456: Was innovative, and occasionally somewhat unscrupulous, in his business practices. Rather than taking paintings from artists on a sale or return basis like most dealers, he insisted on buying the works outright. What he sold, he first owned. He also preferred to acquire only recent paintings, in order to maintain freshness and a greater control over prices. As his frequent correspondence with his artists reveals, Rosenberg liked to cast himself more in

6080-403: Was lacklustre, mainly because many of the potential buyers had little money and because the market became saturated through the rapid sale of so many paintings. Although Léonce Rosenberg was able to expand his own stock to some extent at knockdown prices, Kahnweiler managed to pick up most of the works by Gris and Braque that were up for auction. Léonce Rosenberg's role in all this angered many in

6160-434: Was less formal. Although for a time he bought and sold paintings by Picasso, no contract was ever signed. And although Picasso was among those who had initially encouraged Léonce Rosenberg to step into the breach left by Kahnweiler, Picasso himself decided after the war instead to sign up with Léonce's brother Paul, who had begun to take an increasing interest in modern artists for whom there was already an established demand. It

6240-442: Was mounted by hostile critics including André Salmon and Louis Vauxcelles , through the pages of journals such as Le Carnet de la Semaine . It was a battle as much for the minds of those who influenced taste and trends in the Parisian art market as for the pockets of those with the money to spend in that market. In mounting the first post-war Cubist exhibitions at L’Effort Moderne, Léonce Rosenberg managed to re-establish Cubism as

6320-457: Was only for a short period, is alone testament to his importance. But it is the risk he took in supporting the Cubists during and immediately after the Great War, when nobody else could or would, that sealed his global significance for the history of 20th century art. "Without him" noted Max Jacob, "a number of painters would be drivers or factory workers". Having taken up the baton that Kahnweiler had been forced to drop, Léonce Rosenberg became for

6400-399: Was the start of an increasingly intense commercial rivalry between the two brothers. Léonce Rosenberg's wartime support, when no one else would take the risk, was a lifeline for many of the avant garde artists, who would have been left without a livelihood following the forced absence from France of Kahnweiler, their previous commercial outlet. Léonce Rosenberg was later able to boast: “During

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