Jewish Dealers and the European Art Market c 1880-1930

Excellent online symposium from London Art Week looking at the role of Jewish dealers in the late 19th and early 20th century art market.

Over three one hour sessions and with an array of good speakers we were guided through aspects of the subject. Day one looked at how Jews influenced the growth of Modernism in this period. Charles Denhiem who has written a book on the topic said that, with the growth in interest in Nazi stolen art, he didn’t want to see Jews as victims but wanted to know how they played a part in the art market in the first place. Why did they have the art that was taken?

Day two looked specifically at the dealer Asher Wertheimer and how he commissioned portraits of his whole family from John Singer Sargent which he then left to the National Gallery. They are currently on display at Tate Britain and I blogged the display recently. Speakers discussed the reasons both for their commissioning and donation as well as talking us through some of the works and the controversy they caused both when they were first shown and when they were donated.

The final day looked at dealers in London and two of the four speakers were from family firms which were still trading. They talked about how their ancestors had got into the business. Another speaker, Alice Minter, from the Victoria and Albert Museum, talked about Jewish benefactors to the museum and Cherith Summers talked about the role of Jewish dealers in promoting British artists in the international art market in the post-Second World War period.

Three excellent sessions which introduced me to a lot of new ideas and didn’t shy away from discussing difficult issues such as whether we should be labelling this group of dealers, given some of the anti-Semitic critique of them at the time,  and whether and why their Jewishness made them a distinct group.