Léonce Rosenberg
Léonce Rosenberg (12 September 1879 in Paris – 31 July 1947 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was an art collector, writer, publisher, and one of the most influential French art dealers of the 20th century. His greatest impact was as a supporter and promoter of the cubists, especially during World War I and in the years immediately after.[1]
Early life[edit]
The son of an antique dealer Alexandre Rosenberg and brother of the gallery owner Paul Rosenberg (21 rue de la Boétie, Paris),[1] 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 the art world.[2][3]
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.[4][2]
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 a range of objects from French antiques to archaeological pieces to Persian miniatures.[3][2][5]
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.[5] By 1914 his collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Herbin and Juan Gris,[1] as well as examples of the types of Asian, Egyptian and African art that were firing the avant garde imagination.[6]
Later life[edit]
In 1928 Léonce Rosenberg moved his personal collection to his apartment at 75 rue de Longchamps in Paris.[3] Despite 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.[17][18] This grand, even megalomaniac, project reinforced Rosenberg's presentation of himself as a modern form of patron.[19]
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.[17] 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 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.[3] 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.[17]
L’Effort Moderne continued as 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.[5]
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, 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.[9]
L’Effort Moderne never reopened, and Léonce Rosenberg died in July 1947 at Neuilly-sur-Seine.[5]
Legacy[edit]
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 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".[10]
Having taken up the baton that Kahnweiler had been forced to drop, Léonce Rosenberg became for 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.[2][20]
Léonce Rosenberg has 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[1] and especially the Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In addition to letters and papers, there are publication manuscripts, periodicals and photographic archives.[3]
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 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.[21]
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, 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.[8][17]
Jean Metzinger, April 1916, Femme au miroir (Lady at her Dressing Table), oil on canvas, 92.4 x 65.1 cm, private collection
Juan Gris, 1917, Violon et journal, oil on panel, 92.3 × 60.3 cm. Galerie l'Effort Moderne, no. 5122
Theo van Doesburg, 1916, Composition II (Still Life), oil on canvas, 45 x 32 cm. Classique-Baroque-Moderne, Anvers: De Sikkel, Paris 1921: Léonce Rosenberg, [p. 35], as Nature morte.
![Theo van Doesburg, 1916, Composition II (Still Life), oil on canvas, 45 x 32 cm. Classique-Baroque-Moderne, Anvers: De Sikkel, Paris 1921: Léonce Rosenberg, [p. 35], as Nature morte.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Theo_van_Doesburg_Composition_2.jpg/119px-Theo_van_Doesburg_Composition_2.jpg)
Amedeo Modigliani, 1916, Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, oil on canvas, 81.3 x 54.3 cm. Jacques Lipchitz, Paris, acquired directly from the artist, 1916-c. 1921, by exchange to Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, c. 1921-1922
Juan Gris, 1915, Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan, oil on canvas, 115.9 x 88.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Formerly owned by Pierre Faure whose large collection of 26 paintings by Gris were purchased from Léonce Rosenberg between 1915 and 1927
Juan Gris, 1917, Moulin à café et bouteille, oil on cardboard mounted on panel, 60.8 x 37.7 cm. Provenance: Léonce Rosenberg, Paris
Joseph Csaky, Deux figures, 1920, relief, limestone, polychrome, 80 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. Provenance: Léonce Rosenberg, Paris
Theo van Doesburg, 1918, Compositie X, oil on canvas, 64 x 43 cm, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Theo van Doesburg (1921) Classique-Baroque-Moderne, Anvers: De Sikkel, Paris: Léonce Rosenberg
Gino Severini, 1919, Bohémien Jouant de L'Accordéon (The Accordion Player), Museo del Novecento, Milan
