Bernheim-Jeune

Bernheim-Jeune gallery is one of the oldest art galleries in Paris.

Bernheim-Jeune, when at 25 Boulevard de la Madeleine, Paris, 1910

Opened on Rue Laffitte in 1863[1] by Alexandre Bernheim (1839-1915), friend of Delacroix, Corot and Courbet, it changed location a few times before settling on Avenue Matignon. The gallery promoted realists, Barbizon school paintings and, in 1874, the first impressionist and later post-impressionist painters. It closed in 2019.[2]

History

In 1901, Alexandre Bernheim, with his sons, Josse (1870-1941), and Gaston (1870-1953), organized the first important exhibition of Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris with the help of art critic Julien Leclercq.[3]

In 1906, Bernheim-Jeune frères started presenting works by Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Cézanne, Henri-Edmond Cross, Kees van Dongen, Henri Matisse, Le Douanier Rousseau, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Amedeo Modigliani, Maurice Utrillo and Georges Dufrénoy.

From 1906 to 1925, art critic Félix Fénéon was the director of the gallery and was instrumental in bringing in the art of Georges Seurat and Umberto Boccioni.[4] The gallery became one of the centers of the artistic avant-garde. In 1906, the gallery also began publishing monographs; its first release was devoted to the paintings of Eugène Carrière. In 1919 it also launched a bimonthly bulletin about artistic life.

In 1922, an exhibition brought together works by Alice Halicka, Auguste Herbin, Pierre Hodé, Moïse Kisling, Marie Laurencin, Henri Lebasque, Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse.[5][6]

Nazi occupation, seizures and deportation

During the German occupation, its property was seized by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce or ERR.[7] In 1941 Bernheim-Jeune was sequestered, paintings confiscated and their buildings sold.[8] Like other Jewish families such as Réné Gimpel, Adolphe Schloss,[9] Anna Jaffé,[10] Raoul Meyer,[11] Armand Dorville,[12] Alfred Lindon,[13] David David-Weill,[14] Alphonse Kann,[15] Paul Rosenberg, Bernheim had to labor for several decades to recover some of the paintings, the task made more difficult as two record ledgers had disappeared from the gallery during the looting.[16] In 1940 sensing that they, of Jewish background, would be targeted by the Nazis, the Bernheim-Jeune family had sent 30 or so impressionist and post-impressionist paintings to the Château de Rastignac in Dordogne for safekeeping. On March 30, 1944, fleeing Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) forces set fire to the château,[17] after five truckloads of items were removed;[18] the paintings may have been destroyed.[19]

The son of Gaston and Suzanne Bernheim, Claude Bernheim dit Bernheim de Villers (September 15, 1902 – 1944), was arrested and deported in 1943 to his death at Auschwitz.[20]

Postwar

After the death in 2012 of Michel Dauberville, descendant of Bernheim, his cousin Guy-Patrice Dauberville, also an expert in modern paintings and a Bonnard and Renoir specialist, started heading Bernheim-Jeune.

The gallery now exhibits painters and sculptors in the tradition of the École de Paris and artists such as Jean Carzou, Shelomo Selinger or Pollès.

In 2022, Maurice Utrillo's "Carrefour à Sannois" which had been looted in 1940 during the Nazi occupation of France from a cousin of Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Georges Bernheim,[21] was restituted to the heirs after a long legal battle. The city of Sannois (Val-d'Oise) had bought the painting at Sotheby's in 2004. In 2015 the Commission responsible for dealing with Nazi looted art (the CIVS) advised the town that the painting had been looted. A new law voted by France's National Assembly in 2022 paved the way for restitution.[22][23][24]

In 2018, the Bernheim-Jeune website announced the gallery would be closing.[25]

  • Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) Bernheim-Jeune - Musée d'Orsay Paris
    Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) Bernheim-Jeune - Musée d'Orsay Paris
  • Bernheim-Jeune exhibition of Impressionists, April 1903
    Bernheim-Jeune exhibition of Impressionists, April 1903
  • Édouard Vuillard, The Art Dealers - The Bernheim-Jeune Brothers - (1912)
    Édouard Vuillard, The Art Dealers - The Bernheim-Jeune Brothers - (1912)

References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.
  1. Larousse, Éditions. "Bernheim-Jeune - LAROUSSE". www.larousse.fr (in French). Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  2. "Fermeture de la galerie Bernheim-Jeune". Le Journal Des Arts (in French). Retrieved 2022-02-17. L'une des plus anciennes galeries de Paris vient de fermer ses portes. Les dirigeants de la société cessent leur activité de marchand d'art.
  3. "Oxford Index". Archived from the original on 2017-08-30. Retrieved 2017-09-26.
  4. Abc. Gallery.com
  5. The Frick Collection, Galerie Bernheim Jeune
  6. Transatlantic Encounters
  7. "Lost Art Internet Database - Jüdische Sammler und Kunsthändler (Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung und Enteignung) - Bernheim-Jeune, Josse". 2021-08-18. Archived from the original on 18 August 2021. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  8. Harclerode, P; Pittaway, B (2000). The Lost Masters: World War II and the Looting of Europe's Treasurehouses. Welcome Rain Publishers. pp. 90–91. ISBN 9781566491655.
  9. "The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection | JDCRP Pilot Project". pilot-demo.jdcrp.org. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  10. "French family demands the return of Constable painting". RFI. 2016-01-27. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  11. D'Arcy, David. "French heir ends fight to reclaim Nazi-looted Pissarro painting found in Oklahoma". CNN. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  12. Machemer, Theresa. "Art Historian Identifies Ten Nazi-Looted Paintings in the Louvre's Collections". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  13. Moynihan, Colin (2018-06-03). "Did Christie's Do Its Homework? Buyer of Nazi-Tainted Work Says No". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  14. "A Rare Buddha's Head Statue Once Looted by the Nazis Goes up for Auction in New York | Auctions News | THE VALUE | Art News". TheValue.com. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  15. Riding, Alan (1997-09-03). "Collector's Family Tries to Illuminate the Past of Manuscripts in France". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  16. Looted art.com
  17. Michael Johnson, Our Whitehouse in France Archived 2011-07-04 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved March 21, 2011
  18. Resistance and Liberation Maquis Dordogne (continued from page 1) Suite de la chronologie des combats (du 14 janvier 1944 au 23 août 1944) Following the chronology of the battle (14 January 1944 to August 23, 1944) Retrieved March 21, 2011
  19. Nicholas, L (1995). The rape of Europa: the fate of Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Vintage eBooks. ISBN 9780307739728.
  20. "Claude-Bernheim-de-Villers". www.ajpn.org. Retrieved 2022-02-17. En 1943, Claude Bernheim de Villers, âgé de 41 ans, est arrêté parce que Juif et déporté sans retour par le convoi n° 64 du 7 décembre 1943 vers Auschwitz.
  21. "Georges Bernheim (202880) | Musée d'Orsay". www.musee-orsay.fr. Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  22. à 17h26, Par Christophe Lefèvre Le 30 mai 2022 (2022-05-30). "Sannois : le tableau de Maurice Utrillo spolié pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale rendu à son propriétaire". leparisien.fr (in French). Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  23. "Sannois. 82 ans après son vol par les nazis, la toile d'Utrillo enfin rendue à son légataire". actu.fr (in French). Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  24. "Gros plan sur la restitution des œuvres spoliées par les nazis". La Gazette des Communes (in French). Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  25. "fermeture". Bernheim-Jeune. Retrieved 2018-10-18. "Nous avons le regret d'annoncer la fermeture de la galerie Bernheim-Jeune. Les études d'œuvres attribuées à Renoir ou à Bonnard continuent." Translation to English, "We regret to announce the closure of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery. The studies of works attributed to Renoir or Bonnard continue."
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