M. Knoedler & Co. () was an
art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art.
An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...
ship in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
founded in 1846. When it closed in 2011, amid lawsuits for fraud, it was one of the oldest
commercial art galleries in the US, having been in operation for 165 years.
History
Knoedler dated its origin to 1846, when French dealers
Goupil & Cie
Goupil & Cie is an international auction house and merchant of contemporary art and collectibles. Jean-Baptiste Adophe Goupil founded Goupil & Cie in 1850. Goupil & Cie became a leading art dealership in 19th-century France, with its headquart ...
opened a branch in New York. Goupil & Cie was an extremely dynamic print-publishing house founded in Paris in 1827. Michel (later Michael) Knoedler (1823–1878), born in
Kapf near
Schwäbisch Gmünd
Schwäbisch Gmünd (, until 1934: Gmünd; Swabian: ''Gmẽẽd'' or ''Gmend'') is a city in the eastern part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. With a population of around 60,000, the city is the second largest in the Ostalb district a ...
in
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
, Germany, started to work for Goupil & Cie in Paris in 1844, and moved to New York in 1852 to take charge of the New York branch.
He purchased the U.S. arm of the business in 1857, and was later joined by his sons Roland (1856–1932), Edmond and Charles, with Roland taking the lead after his father's death in 1878.
With dealer
Charles Carstairs
Charles Carstairs (August 1865 – July 1928) was an American art dealer. Throughout his career, Carstairs encouraged American clients to invest in European Old Master paintings. He worked closely with industrial magnate Henry Clay Frick, and was r ...
, Knoedler opened branches in Paris (1895), Pittsburgh (1897), and London (1908), and, under Carstairs' influence developed a reputation as a leading dealer of
Old Master paintings, with customers including collectors such as
Collis P. Huntington
Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900) was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) who invested ...
,
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794 – January 4, 1877), nicknamed "the Commodore", was an American business magnate who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. After working with his father's business, Vanderbilt worked his way into lead ...
,
Henry O. Havemeyer
Henry Osborne Havemeyer (October 18, 1847 – December 4, 1907) was an American industrialist, entrepreneur and sugar refiner who founded and became president of the American Sugar Refining Company in 1891.
Havemeyer was the third generation of h ...
,
William Rockefeller,
Walter P. Chrysler Jr.,
John Jacob Astor
John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and ...
,
Andrew Mellon,
J. P. Morgan, and
Henry Clay Frick, and institutions such as 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 ...
,
the Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, and the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
. Knoedler & Co. became part of an elite group of art dealerships, which dominated the market for British painting in America. Knoedler developed a fruitful relationship with London gallery
Colnaghi
Colnaghi is an art dealership in St James's, central London, England, which is the oldest commercial art gallery in the world, having been established in 1760.
Foundation
The business that became the Colnaghi gallery was established by Itali ...
, with Colnaghi finding suitable paintings in Europe for Knoedler to sell to wealthy collectors in the US. Knoedler and
Colnaghi
Colnaghi is an art dealership in St James's, central London, England, which is the oldest commercial art gallery in the world, having been established in 1760.
Foundation
The business that became the Colnaghi gallery was established by Itali ...
were involved in the
secret sales by the Soviet government of works from the Russian Imperial collection in the
Hermitage in the 1920s and 1930s, along with
Matthiesen Mathiesen is a Danish-Norwegian patronymic surname meaning "son of Mathies" (equivalent of the Biblical Μαθθαιος, cf. English Matthew). Several spelling variants are used, including Matthiesen, Matthiessen, Mathisen, Matthisen. A similar d ...
in Berlin.
After Roland Knoedler retired in 1928, the management of the firm passed to his nephew Charles Henschel, with Carmen Mesmore, Charles Carstairs and his son
Carroll Carstairs
Carroll Chevalier Carstairs MC (20 March 1888 – 2 October 1948) was an American art dealer who served in the Grenadier Guards of the British Army during World War I.
He was a son of Charles Stewart Carstairs (2 August 1865 – 9 July 1928), a ...
. Henschel died in 1956, and E. Coe Kerr and Roland Balay (Michael Knoedler's grandson) took over. The firm was sold to industrialist and collector
Armand Hammer for $2.5 million in 1971.
Five years later, the last member of the Knoedler family - Roland Balay - ceased his involvement in the management of the firm. It increasingly concentrated on
contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...
from the late 1970s. After Hammer's death in 1990, the Hammer foundation continued to hold a controlling interest in the gallery until it closed in 2011, when
Michael Armand Hammer
Michael Armand Hammer (September 8, 1955 – November 20, 2022) was an American businessman. He was the son of Julian Armand Hammer and the grandson of industrialist Armand Hammer. Best known for his ties to Occidental Petroleum, the company of ...
(Armand Hammer's grandson) was its chairman.
Locations
![Goupil Broadway woodcut](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Goupil_Broadway_woodcut.png)
The art dealership occupied eight different locations, starting on
Broadway. By the 1890s, it operated from a
row house
In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house (British English, UK) or townhouse (American English, US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings party ...
at
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
and
34th Street. By 1911, the row house was scheduled to be demolished to make way for the
B. Altman and Company Building
The B. Altman and Company Building is a commercial building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, that formerly served as B. Altman and Company's flagship department store. It occupies an entire city block between Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, ...
, so Knoedler moved to a new building at 556 Fifth Avenue, designed by
Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère ( ; November 9, 1858 – March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (architect), Thomas Hastings (March 11, 1860 – October 22, 1929), was one of the outstanding American Beaux-Arts architecture, Be ...
.
Knoedler then moved to another new building by Carrère and Hastings at 14 East
57th Street, near
Madison Avenue
Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...
, in 1925.
In 1970, the firm incurred significant costs in refurbishing new premises in an Italian Renaissance-style town house at 19 East
70th Street.
Knoedler held a 150-year retrospective in 1996, exhibiting works such as
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. Afte ...
's ''
Watson and the Shark
''Watson and the Shark'' is an oil painting by the American painter John Singleton Copley, depicting the rescue of the English boy Brook Watson from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba. Copley, then living in London, painted three versions. The 17 ...
'',
Thomas Eakins's ''Music'', and
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Born ...
's ''
The Plum'', with loans from 15 institutions, including the
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University.
Overview
The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
, 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 the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
, a coup for a commercial gallery.
In February 2011, the gallery sold its premises at 19 East 70th Street for $31 million.
In 2012, the gallery attempted to auction a portion of its remaining inventory of artworks.
Alleged connection to Nazi looted art
Knoedler was involved in several high profile lawsuits involving Nazi looted art, including a
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 ...
confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 from the Rosenberg family which Knoedler acquired in 1954 and which was eventually donated to the Seattle Art Museum in 1996 by Virginia and Prentice Bloedel, and an
El Greco
Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...
seized by the Gestapo in 1944. The El Greco painting, ''Portrait of a Gentleman'', was listed in exhibition catalogues as being in the collection of New York’s Knoedler & Co, who bought the painting from the Viennese dealer
Frederick Mont, a dealer who worked with the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
, according to Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. Both paintings were restituted after lawsuits were filed.
In 2003 the Springfield Library and Museum Association sued Knoedler for loss of a $3 million painting that it had to return to the museum to Italy as war loot.
Knoedler was also involved in the long-running Cassirer v Thyssen case concerning a
Camille Pissarro
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...
painting, ''Rue St. Honoré, après midi, effet de pluie''. The art dealer
Frank Perls placed the painting on consignment with Knoedler on behalf of Sidney Brody. There it was purchased by Sydney Schoenberg, an art collector in St. Louis, Missouri who sent it to the
Stephen Hahn Gallery, from which
Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
Hans Heinrich August Gábor, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon (13 April 1921 – 27 April 2002), an industrialist and art collector, was a Dutch-born Swiss citizen with a Hungarian title and heir to a German fortune, a long-time resident of Spa ...
of Lugano, Switzerland purchased it in October 1976.
Art fraud scandal and closure
The gallery's president
Ann Freedman
Ann Freedman (née Fertig, born ) is an American art dealer and gallery owner. She was previously director of the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery in New York City; she resigned in 2009 after 31 years working for the gallery during a large-scale forg ...
resigned in October 2009,
amid rumours of forged paintings supplied to the gallery by
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
art dealer Glafira Rosales.
It was later discovered that between 1994 and 2011, under Freedman's direction, the gallery had sold almost 40 faked
Abstract Expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
paintings of works by
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...
,
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
, and
Mark Rothko, among others.
Freedman had purchased the paintings for Knoedler from Glafira Rosales, who had in turn obtained the fake paintings from the art forger Pei-Shen Qian ( zh, 錢培琛).
Qian had reportedly painted the forgeries in a garage in Queens, New York.
Qian was able to imitate the styles of the masters, and give the paintings an illusion of age by using tea or dirt from a vacuum cleaner, dirtying their appearance. He is reported to have received less than US$9,000 for each painting from Rosales, while Rosales sold the paintings for millions of dollars to Knoedler.
A statement issued on 28 November 2011 by Knoedler stated simply that it was closing permanently for business reasons,
unrelated to the lawsuits it faced over the sale of forged paintings.
By 2012, the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
was investigating "at least two dozen paintings"
that were supplied to the gallery by Glafira Rosales. While Rosales initially claimed not to have defrauded anyone,
in 2013, she pleaded guilty to selling over 60 fake works of art to two New York art galleries, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering and tax evasion,
and wire fraud.
She served three months in jail.
In 2017, Rosales was ordered to pay $81 million to the victims of the Knoedler art-fraud scheme,
but received leniency in sentencing due to her cooperation with the US government.
Spanish art dealer José Carlos Bergantiños Díaz (Rosales' boyfriend) and his brother Jesús Ángel Bergantiños Díaz were also indicted in US District Court for the fraud.
The Díaz brothers were arrested in Spain,
and released on bail, in 2014. In 2016, a Spanish court ruled that Jesús Díaz could be extradited to the US.
Later that year, a Spanish court ruled that Jesús' brother, José Díaz, could not be extradited to the US for health reasons.
The art forger who painted the fakes, Pei-Shen Qian, was indicted but avoided prosecution by fleeing to China.
Authorities said at the moment of the trial that he earned sums ranging from several hundred dollars to as much as $9,000 to create a work.
In 2020, filmmaker
Barry Avrich
Barry Michael Avrich ( ; born May 9, 1963) is a Canadian film director, film producer, author, marketing executive, and arts philanthropist. Avrich's film career has included critically acclaimed films about the entertainment business including '' ...
directed and produced the Netflix film, ''
Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art'', a documentary on the Knoedler Gallery forgery scandal. Daria Price's feature documentary about the scandal and trial, ''Driven to Abstraction'', premiered in London in 2019.
Lawsuits and claims related to sales
In 2003,
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
executive Jack Levy bought an untitled Jackson Pollock painting for $2 million, but when the
International Foundation for Art Research declined to authenticate the work,
Levy asked for and received his money back.
Also in 2003 the Springfield Library and Museum Association sued Knoedler for loss of a $3 million painting, ''Spring Sowing'' by
Jacopo da Ponte (Il Bassano) which Springfield had been obliged to restitute to Italy after the painting was proven to have been war loot.
The day before the gallery closed in November 2011,
Belgian
hedge-fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sh ...
manager
Pierre Lagrange Pierre Philippe Alexandre Lagrange (born 15 March 1962) is a Belgian economist, hedge fund manager, financier, and a co-founder of GLG Partners. His net worth is estimated at £500 million according to ''The Sunday Times''.
Early life and education ...
sued the gallery in relation to the work ''Untitled 1950'', which Knoedler attributed to Jackson Pollock.
Lagrange had purchased the painting for $17 million in 2007, on the understanding that it would be included in a supplement to the Pollock
catalogue raisonné.
It was later claimed that no such supplement was planned; tests later showed that some of the paint used was not available until some years after Pollock's death.
The suit was settled out of court in 2012.
In 2012,
Domenico De Sole and his wife Eleanore claimed that the gallery sold them a fake
Mark Rothko, ''Untitled 1956'', for $8.3 million in 2004.
The lawsuit, with Knoedler and Ann Freedman as defendants, went to trial in January 2016. The Soles settled out of court with Freedman on February 7, 2015,
but continued their suit against Knoedler.
Wall Street executive
John D. Howard
John D. Howard is CEO of Irving Place Capital (formerly Bear Stearns Merchant Banking) and was senior managing director of Bear Stearns. He is the manager of the $3 billion Bear Stearns Merchant Banking Fund III. Howard has more than 20 years of ...
sued Knoedler and its former director Ann Freedman in 2012, claiming that a
Willem de Kooning painting that he bought for $4 million in 2007 was a fake. The suit was settled out of court in December 2015.
In 2021 the estate of
Eugene Thaw reached a settlement agreement with the heirs of
Margarete Eisenmann concerning
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is know ...
's ''The Resurrection'' which had passed through
Hugo Perls and the Knoedler Gallery before reaching Thaw. Eisenmann had been deported to
Theriesenstandt in September 1942 and killed at the
Treblinka concentration camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
.
Archive
In 2012, the
Getty Research Institute announced that it had purchased the majority of the gallery's archives, dating from 1850 to 1971.
The Getty subsequently digitized parts of the archive and made them available online. With the exception of the reference library, which the Knoedler Gallery sold separately in January 2012, and which consists of titles already in the Getty Research Institute's library, this acquisition represents the complete archive of the gallery's operations from the 1850s to 1971, when it was acquired by Armand Hammer. The archival material includes business records; correspondence among clients, artists, and Knoedler staff; card files on clients and artworks; photographs; prints; rare books; sales catalogs dating to the 18th century; and gallery installation plans.
The
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London holds the Frank Simpson Archive, a substantial proportion of which comprises records from the London office of M. Knoedler & Co., dating from the early 1900s to 1971, which were acquired by Simpson whilst working there as Librarian from 1958-1971.
This material includes over five hundred files which contain correspondence, images and pedigree information concerning approximately four to five thousand works of art, the majority of which passed through Knoedler salerooms.
References
External links
M. Knoedler & Co. records, approximately 1848-1971Frank Simpson Archive- Records from the London office of Knoedler and Co., ca. 1900–1970
*Podcast b
Revealon fraud story, reported by Gisele Regatão and Emily Harris from December 2023.
{{Authority control
American art dealers
1846 establishments in New York (state)
2011 disestablishments in New York (state)
Defunct art museums and galleries in Manhattan
Art museums and galleries established in 1846
Art museums and galleries disestablished in 2011