Wildenstein & Company, a private art dealership, was founded in Paris by Nathan Wildenstein in the mid-19th century and run by his family ever since. [1] The Wildenstein Institute, established by Nathan's son Georges, maintains one of the largest art history reference libraries in the world.
The Wildenstein Gallery, which became Wildenstein & Company, was founded in Paris during the 1870s by the Alsatian Jewish entrepreneur Nathan Wildenstein, bringing together 18th- and 19th-century French paintings, sculptures, and drawings, and older works by Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish masters. [2] By the turn of the century, the gallery was one of the most prominent in the French capital. Nevertheless, Wildenstein considered the emerging North American market to be more promising. He partnered with the art dealers Ernest and René Gimpel, with whom he opened Gimpel & Wildenstein in New York in 1903. [3] Thirty years later, the gallery moved from Fifth Avenue to a building commissioned by architect Horace Trumbauer. [4] In 1925, the gallery opened a branch in London and, in 1929, another in Buenos Aires. [5]
With Nathan's death in 1934, his son, Georges Wildenstein, took over the gallery. Georges directed the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and published numerous works related to 19th-century French art. [6] He was posthumously honored by giving his name to the São Paulo Museum of Art's pinacoteca, to whom he passed on numerous works under special payment conditions. [7] Daniel Wildenstein took over the direction of the gallery after the death of his father in 1963, specializing in Impressionist painting and writing catalogues raisonées and reference works. He was also editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and a member of the Institut de France. He opened a Wildenstein branch in Tokyo.
In 1993, Daniel established a joint venture with the Pace Gallery, one of the leading art galleries focusing on contemporary American production, creating PaceWildenstein. However, as collecting became more specialized, the concept of "one-stop shopping" for high-end art buyers became less sustainable. The two galleries separated back to their original names in 2010. Pace chairman Arne Glimcher and Wildenstein both stated that the split was "amicable". [8]
In 1995, Puerto Rican journalist Hector Feliciano published The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art, accusing the gallery's former director Georges Wildenstein of receiving and reselling works looted during the Nazi occupation of France. [9] [10] In 2001, Wildenstein was formally accused of selling eight manuscripts from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries that would not have belonged to the gallery but to a Jewish collector. [11]
Throughout the 20th century, Wildenstein became one of the largest and most successful art galleries in the world, selling or reselling a large number of universal masterpieces to museums, institutions and private collectors in the United States, Europe, Japan and South America. Wildenstein clients include Calouste Gulbenkian, Edmond de Rothschild, John Pierpont Morgan, Assis Chateaubriand, Henry Ford II, Jean Paul Getty, and Emil Georg Bührle [12] among others. [13] Below is a selection of masterpieces marketed by Wildenstein. [14]
In 2011 Wildenstein & Co was the defendant in several lawsuits filed by families who said that Wildenstein held artworks that had been stolen from them. Some of the works had reportedly been stolen from Jewish families by Nazis. [15]
In 2019 Wildenstein was sued for allegedly having sold a fake Bonnard in 1985. [16]
The São Paulo Museum of Art is an art museum located on Paulista Avenue in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. It is well known for its headquarters, a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by Lina Bo Bardi, whose main body is supported by two lateral beams over a 74 metres (243 ft) freestanding space. It is considered a landmark of the city and a main symbol of modern Brazilian architecture.
Daniel Leopold Wildenstein was a French art dealer, historian and owner-breeder of thoroughbred and standardbred race horses. He was the third member of the family to preside over Wildenstein & Co., one of the most successful and influential art-dealerships of the 20th century. He was once described as "probably the richest and most powerful art dealer on earth".
The Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection is an art museum in Zürich, Switzerland. It was established by the Bührle family to make Emil Georg Bührle's collection of European sculptures and paintings available to the public. The museum is in a villa adjoining Bührle's former home. In 2021 many works were exhibited on 20-year loan in almost a whole floor of the new extension of the Kunsthaus Zürich museum. There was controversy due to suspicions that many works were looted from Jews by Nazi Germany. The foundation was managed for decades by Bührle's son Dieter, who was sentenced to a conditional prison term of 8 months in 1970 for supplying weapons to the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.
Portrait of Suzanne Bloch is an oil on canvas painting executed by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1904, towards the end of his Blue Period. The subject, Suzanne Bloch, was a singer known for her Wagner interpretations, and the sister of the violinist Henri Bloch. The painting is housed in the São Paulo Museum of Art.
Emil Georg Bührle was a German-born Swiss industrialist, controversial armament manufacturer and art collector. Bührle was long-term managing owner of Oerlikon-Bührle and the founding patron of Foundation E.G. Bührle. By the end of the Second World War Bührle had become Switzerland's richest man after having been told by the Swiss authorities to not only supply weapons to the allies but also to Nazi Germany. He was the patriarch of the Bührle family.
Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers is an oil painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Produced in Paris in 1881, the painting depicts the sisters Alice and Elisabeth, daughters of Louise Cahen d'Anvers and her husband the Jewish banker Louis Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers. It is considered one of the most popular works in the collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art, where it has been conserved since 1952.
Alphonse Kann was a prominent French art collector of Jewish heritage. He was a childhood playmate and adult friend of the writer Marcel Proust, who incorporated several of Kann's features into the character Charles Swann.
Alec Nathan Wildenstein was a French-born American billionaire businessman, art dealer, racehorse owner, and breeder.
René Albert Gimpel was a prominent French art dealer of Alsatian Jewish descent who died in 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg, Germany.
Georges Lazare Wildenstein was a French gallery owner, art dealer, art collector, editor and art historian.
Virgin with the Standing Child, Embracing his Mother, also known as Willys Madonna is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini. It is now in the São Paulo Museum of Art in São Paulo, Brazil.
Sonia Gomes is a Brazilian contemporary artist who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Gomes frequently employs found objects and textiles in her works, twisting, stretching, and bundling them to fashion wiry or knotty sculptural forms.
Bernheim-Jeune gallery is one of the oldest art galleries in Paris.
Wanda Pimentel was a Brazilian painter, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work is distinguished by "a precise, hard-edge quality encompassing geometric lines and smooth surfaces in pieces that often defy categorization as abstract or figurative. “My studio is in my bedroom,” Pimentel said in an interview. “Everything has to be very neat. .. I work alone. I think my issues are the issues of our time: the lack of perspective for people, their alienation. The saddest thing is for people to be dominated by things.”
Fritz Nathan was a German-Swiss gallery owner and art dealer.
Max Silberberg was a major cultural figure in Breslau, a German Jewish entrepreneur, art collector and patron who was robbed and murdered by the Nazis. His art collection, among the finest of its era, has been the object of numerous restitution claims.
Martha Nothmann was a German art collector persecuted by the Nazis because of her Jewish heritage. The concealment of her Holocaust-linked history was revealed in the 2021 book, The Contaminated Museum.
Hugo Nathan (1861-1921) was a German Jewish banker and art collector.
Nathan Wildenstein founded Wildenstein & Cie in 1875, and specialized in French paintings, drawings and sculpture of the 18th century. In 1903, Nathan, Ernest and René Gimpel opened E. Gimpel & Wildenstein in New York City (1903-1933). The gallery became Wildenstein & Company in 1933.
Mr. Wildenstein, who holds dual French and American citizenship, is enmeshed in at least a half-dozen lawsuits; some, provoked by the raid, are being brought by heirs who claim the artwork was stolen from their families.