George Joseph Demotte, alternatively Georges-Joseph Demotte (1877-1923) was a Belgian-born art dealer, the owner of galleries in Paris (27 rue de Berri) and New York (8 East 57th Street) specializing in the sale of medieval French art. He has become infamous among historians of Islamic art for his treatment of the highly important Great Mongol ''Shahnameh'' or "Demotte Shahnameh". This came into Demotte's hands about 1910, when "he bought it from Shemavan Malayan, brother-in-law of the well-known dealer Hagop Kevorkian, who had brought it from

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

". Demotte failed to raise the price he wanted for the whole manuscript from the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

and other potential buyers. He then separated the miniatures and sold them, after various physical interventions to increase the sale value, and without properly recording the original form of the book. Pages were pulled apart to give two sides with miniatures, and to disguise this and the resulting damage, calligraphers were hired to add new text, often from the wrong part of the work, as Demotte did not expect his new clientele of wealthy collectors to be able to read Persian. This has left the subject of some miniatures still uncertain, as the surrounding text does not match them. Scholars have been very critical of the "infamous" Demotte, and it irked many that the manuscript he treated so brutally carried his name, so the new name of "Great Mongol ''Shahnameh''" was promoted, and has generally won acceptance. His portrait was painted by

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 ...

in 1918. In 1923 he sued his former New York agent, Jean Vigoroux, in the French courts for embezzlement, while simultaneously suing Sir Joseph Duveen for slander in the American courts, for having declared a medieval statuette that Demotte had sold a fake. Neither suit had been settled when Demotte died, accidentally shot by a friend and fellow art-dealer, Otto Wegener, while returning from a boar-hunting trip. Wegener was cleared of homicide by the French courts, but ordered to pay compensation to Demotte's family. Demotte's galleries, estimated at the time of his death to be worth $2,000,000, passed to his seventeen-year-old son Lucien (died 1934).Demotte Fils
''Time'', Dec. 17, 1923. Accessed 9 June 2010.

Notes

References

*"Grove", ''The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture'', Volume 3, Editors: Jonathan Bloom, Sheila S. Blair, 2009, Oxford University Press, , 9780195309911 *"Iranica", "Demotte ŠĀH-NĀMA",

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encycl ...

online
accessed 28 August 2016

Notes

References

Further reading