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 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 and ...

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 ...

, 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 i ...

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,

William Rockefeller William Avery Rockefeller Jr. (May 31, 1841 – June 24, 1922) was an American businessman and financier. Rockefeller was a co-founder of Standard Oil along with his elder brother John Davison Rockefeller. He was also part owner of the Anaconda ...

Walter P. Chrysler Jr. Walter Percy Chrysler Jr. (March 27, 1909 – September 17, 1988) was an American art collector, museum benefactor, and collector of other objects such as stamps, rare books, and glassworks. He was also a theatre and film producer. Early lif ...

, John Jacob Astor,

Andrew Mellon Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), sometimes A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylv ...

J. P. Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...

, and

Henry Clay Frick Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a maj ...

, 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 centra ...

, 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 It ...

, with Colnaghi finding suitable paintings in Europe for Knoedler to sell to wealthy collectors in the US. Knoedler and

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), ...

. 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 Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, ...

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 ...

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

The art dealership occupied eight different locations, starting on

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

. By the 1890s, it operated from a

row house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United Sta ...

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 ...

and 34th Street. By 1911, the row house was scheduled to be demolished to make way for the B. Altman and Company Building, 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 (March 11, 1860 – October 22, 1929), was one of the outstanding American Beaux-Arts architecture firms. Located in New York City ...

. 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 Str ...

, 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 Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

'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. Bor ...

'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 & Desig ...

, the

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 ch ...

, 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 primar ...

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 ...

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, 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 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 of Lugano, Switzerland purchased it in October 1976.

Art fraud scandal and closure

The gallery's president Ann Freedman 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, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...

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 th ...

paintings of works by

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also inc ...

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism, abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splas ...

, and

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Lat ...

, 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 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 due to health reasons. The art forger who painted the fakes, Pei-Shen Qian, was indicted but avoided prosecution by fleeing to China. 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, Ho ...

executive Jack Levy bought an untitled Jackson Pollock painting for $2 million, but when the

International Foundation for Art Research The International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) is a non-profit organization which was established to channel and coordinate scholarly and technical information about works of art. IFAR provides an administrative and legal framework within wh ...

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 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

. 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 A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

. 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

, ''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 Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

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 kno ...

's ''The Resurrection'' which had passed through Hugo Perls and the Knoedler gallery before reaching Thaw. Eisenmann was deported to Theriesenstandt in September 1942 and killed at the Treblinka concentration camp.

References

External links

M. Knoedler & Co. records, approximately 1848-1971Frank Simpson Archive
- Records from the London office of Knoedler and Co., c. 1900-1970 {{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 galleries established in 1846 Art galleries disestablished in 2011