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

Rue Laffitte Rue Laffitte is a street in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, located near the Metro stations Richelieu - Drouot and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. This street was created in 1771 between the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Provence. Its original ...

in 1863 by Alexandre Bernheim (1839-1915), friend of

Delacroix Delacroix is a French surname that derives from ''de la Croix'' ("of the Cross"). It may refer to: People * Caroline Delacroix (1883–1945), French-Romanian mistress of Leopold II of Belgium * Charles-François Delacroix (1741–1805), ...

Corot CoRoT (French: ; English: Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was a space telescope mission which operated from 2006 to 2013. The mission's two objectives were to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly th ...

and

Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...

, it changed location a few times before settling on Avenue Matignon. The gallery promoted realists,

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name f ...

paintings and, in 1874, the first

impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

and later

post-impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

painters. It closed in 2019.

History

In 1901, Alexandre Bernheim, with his sons, Josse (1870-1941), and Gaston (1870-1953), organized the first important exhibition of

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

paintings in Paris with the help of

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

Julien Leclercq. In 1906, ''Bernheim-Jeune frères'' started presenting works by

Pierre Bonnard Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...

Édouard Vuillard Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior s ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

Henri-Edmond Cross Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of t ...

Kees van Dongen Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauvism, Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually ...

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

, Le Douanier Rousseau,

Raoul Dufy Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French Fauvism, Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramic art, ceramics and textile as well as decorative schemes for public bu ...

Maurice de Vlaminck Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 – 11 October 1958) was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse, he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 we ...

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...

Maurice Utrillo Maurice Utrillo (), born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955), was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painte ...

and

Georges Dufrénoy Georges Dufrénoy (June 20, 1870December 9, 1943) was a French post-Impressionist painter associated with Fauvism. Biography He was born in Thiais, France. His family lived at 2 Place des Vosges in Paris in a historic 17th-century building in ...

. From 1906 to 1925, art critic

Félix Fénéon Félix Fénéon (; 22 June 1861 – 29 February 1944) was a French art critic, gallery director, writer and anarchist during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He coined the term ''Neo-Impressionism'' in 1886 to identify a group of a ...

was the director of the gallery and was instrumental in bringing in the art of

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...

and

Umberto Boccioni Umberto Boccioni (, ; 19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach ...

. The gallery became one of the centers of the artistic

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

. In 1906, the gallery also began

publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

monographs; its first release was devoted to the paintings of

Eugène Carrière Eugène Anatole Carrière (16 January 1849 – 27 March 1906) was a French Symbolist artist of the fin-de-siècle period. Carrière's paintings are best known for their near-monochrome brown palette and their ethereal, dreamlike quality. He ...

. In 1919 it also launched a bimonthly bulletin about artistic life. In 1922, an exhibition brought together works by

Alice Halicka Alice Halicka or Alicja Halicka (20 December 1894 – 1 January 1975) was a Jewish-Polish painter who spent most of her life in France. Biography Alicja Halicka was born in Kraków and studied with Józef Pankiewicz there. She moved to Paris in ...

Auguste Herbin Auguste Herbin (29 April 1882 – 31 January 1960) was a French Painting, painter of modern art. He is best known for his Cubism, Cubist and abstract art, abstract paintings consisting of colorful Geometry, geometric figures. He co-founded the gr ...

, Pierre Hodé,

Moïse Kisling Moïse Kisling (born Mojżesz Kisling; 22 January 1891 – 29 April 1953) was a Polish-born French painter. He moved to Paris in 1910 at the age of 19, and became a French citizen in 1915, after serving and being wounded with the French Foreign ...

Marie Laurencin Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian Avant-garde#:~:text=The avant-garde (/ˌ,art, culture, or society., avant-garde as a member of the Cubism, Cubist ...

Henri Lebasque Henri Lebasque (25 September 1865 – 7 August 1937) was a French post-impressionist painter. He was born at Champigné ( Maine-et-Loire). His work is represented in French museums, notably Angers, Geneva (Petit Palais), Lille ( Musée des Be ...

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

and

Nazi occupation, seizures and deportation

During the

German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...

, its property was seized by the

Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (german: Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg or ''ERR'') was a Nazi Party organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during the Second World War. It was led by the chief ideologue of the Nazi Par ...

or ERR. In 1941 Bernheim-Jeune was sequestered, paintings confiscated and their buildings sold. Like other Jewish families such as Réné Gimpel, Adolphe Schloss, Anna Jaffé, Raoul Meyer,

Armand Dorville Armand Dorville (1875–1941) was a French art collector and lawyer whose art collection was plundered during the Nazi occupation of France. Early years Armand Isaac Dorville was born in 1875 into a family belonging to the old Parisian bourgeois ...

Alfred Lindon Alfred Lindon (born Abner Lindenbaum; – 1948) was a Polish jeweller from a poor Jewish background who became an expert on pearls. He married into the Citroën family and built an important collection of modern art that was looted by the Nazis i ...

David David-Weill David David-Weill (1871–1952) was a French-American banker, chairman of Lazard Frères in Paris, who built an important collection of art. His collection was plundered by the Nazis during the Second World War and over 2000 items seized. He was ...

Alphonse Kann Alphonse Kann (14 March 1870 in Vienna – 1948 in London) was a prominent France, 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 ...

, 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. 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 The Château de Rastignac is a neoclassical style country house located in La Bachellerie, near Bordeaux in the Dordogne in France. It was built between 1789 and 1817 to designs by the architect Mathurin Salat (1755–1822), sometimes called "Bla ...

Dordogne Dordogne ( , or ; ; oc, Dordonha ) is a large rural department in Southwestern France, with its prefecture in Périgueux. Located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region roughly half-way between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees, it is named af ...

for safekeeping. On March 30, 1944, fleeing Nazi

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe d ...

(SS) forces set fire to the château, after five truckloads of items were removed; the paintings may have been destroyed. 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 Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

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 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...

specialist, started heading Bernheim-Jeune. The gallery now exhibits painters and sculptors in the tradition of the

École de Paris The School of Paris (french: École de Paris) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance ...

and artists such as

Jean Carzou __NOTOC__ Jean Carzou ( hy, Ժան Գառզու, born in Aleppo; 1 January 1907 – 12 August 2000) was a French–Armenian artist, painter, and illustrator, whose work illustrated the novels of Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus. Life and care ...

, Shelomo Selinger or Pollès.

Gallery closing

In 2018, the Bernheim-Jeune website announced the gallery would be closing. "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."

Gallery

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) De gebroeders Bernheim-Jeune - Musée d'Orsay Parijs 22-8-2017 16-21-41.JPG,

(1867-1947) Bernheim-Jeune - Musée d'Orsay Paris Bernheim-Jeune Exhibition Impressionnists 1903.png, Bernheim-Jeune exhibition of Impressionists, April 1903 The Art Dealers (The Bernheim-Jeune Brothers) by Édouard Vuillard.jpg,

, ''The Art Dealers'' - The Bernheim-Jeune Brothers - (1912)

References

External links

Official website

Bernheim Jeune story

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernheim Jeune French art dealers French book publishers (people) Arts in Paris 1863 establishments in France