Léonce Rosenberg

Léonce Rosenberg took the opportunity to visit galleries and museums to broaden his artistic knowledge and appreciation, and to develop contacts in the art world.

[4][2] The two brothers parted company commercially in 1910, with Paul continuing from new premises at 21 Rue de la Boétie while Léonce opened his own business, called Haute Epoque, at 19 Rue de la Baume, dealing in a range of objects from French antiques to archaeological pieces to Persian miniatures.

[5] By 1914 his collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Herbin and Juan Gris,[1] as well as examples of the types of Asian, Egyptian and African art that were firing the avant garde imagination.

He had begun to collect avant garde, especially Cubist, art before the war, but he now stepped up this activity with the encouragement of André Level, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, who were all instrumental in persuading him to fill the hole left by Kahnweiler.

[8][7] Even while serving in 1916 and 1917 as an auxiliary army volunteer based in Meudon and English interpreter on the Somme front,[5] he continued during his periods of leave to buy paintings by Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin and Fernand Léger.

By the end of 1916 he had managed to sign contracts with Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, Diego Rivera, Auguste Herbin, Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger and Georges Braque.

[2][9] Léonce Rosenberg's wartime support, when no one else would take the risk, was a lifeline for many of the avant garde artists, who would have been left without a livelihood following the forced absence from France of Kahnweiler, their previous commercial outlet.

[3] Léonce Rosenberg managed in 1921 to secure a role as “expert” in helping to supervise the public auction of Kahnweiler's collection and that of another prominent German collector and dealer, Wilhelm Uhde.

Rosenberg hoped to preserve his newly gained position as the main dealer for the Cubists by preventing his chief competitor from re-acquiring his stock.

[10] Although Léonce Rosenberg was able to expand his own stock to some extent at knockdown prices,[4][12] Kahnweiler managed to pick up most of the works by Gris and Braque that were up for auction.

[3][5] In early 1918 Léonce Rosenberg renamed his gallery the Galerie de L'Effort Moderne and recast his business to focus on avant garde art, especially Cubism.

[7] It was the turn of Henri Laurens in December 1918, with Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Gino Severini and Picasso following during the course of 1919.

[9] There were also exhibitions outside Paris, including of the L’Effort Moderne Cubists in Geneva in 1920 and the first one-man show of Picasso's work in the United Kingdom, in 1921.

A concerted assault was mounted by hostile critics including André Salmon and Louis Vauxcelles, through the pages of journals such as Le Carnet de la Semaine.

In mounting the first post-war Cubist exhibitions at L’Effort Moderne, Léonce Rosenberg managed to re-establish Cubism as a force within avant garde art, in the face of claims to the contrary by hostile critics.

[7] According to art historian Christopher Green, "this was an astonishingly complete demonstration that Cubism had not only continued between 1914 and 1917, having survived the war, but was still developing in 1918 and 1919 in its 'new collective form' marked by 'intellectual rigor'.

[13] Rosenberg had set out to present Cubism after the war as a “collective synthesis” rather than merely a group of disparate though visually similar artists assembled by a dealer.

This published a series of books featuring not only the gallery's artists, including Braque, Gris, and Léger, but also closely associated avant-garde poets such as Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and Blaise Cendrars.

[4] The brightly coloured, art deco-inspired covers were designed by Georges Valmier, who also wrote for the journal and Rosenberg had begun to represent in 1920.

[3] As his frequent correspondence with his artists reveals, Rosenberg liked to cast himself more in a role akin to that of an art patron of old than a conventional dealer.

[8] By 1925 he was encouraging Giorgio de Chirico, who had just joined L’Effort Moderne, away from his earlier metaphysical themes and towards the neoclassical style he was coming to represent.

before painting submit drawings or watercolours to me, because they are aware that their canvases are not destined for themselves but for third parties; it is important that subjects and formats be inspired by the tastes and needs of these others.”[17] There was an ongoing tussle with de Chirico over the painter's habit of selling paintings directly from his studio and, in Rosenberg's view, undermining the “methodical, reasonable and honest progression of your prices” that he claimed to be striving towards.

Rosenberg's financial problems surfaced in a letter in January 1927: “Having examined the situation of my accounts with my bookkeeper...I ask that you take note of the fact that payment for any paintings I may buy may not be made until the end of each month, not during the month itself.”[17] There is evidence of at least one rigged sale in 1928 in order to revive de Chirico's prices - incited by de Chirico himself, it has to be said - following an earlier disastrous auction at the Hôtel Drouot.

[3] Despite the financial crisis that had started building in France from 1926, eventually to spread globally in 1929, Rosenberg felt confident enough to commission a series of decorative panels for the apartment from artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini, Jean Metzinger, Auguste Herbin and Max Ernst.

And against the odds this correspondence, along with business papers, gallery inventory records and the like, are now held in various public archives, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York[1] and especially the Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

[3] The photographs in the Pompidou Centre archive comprise mostly reproductions of works handled by L’Effort Moderne, including ones by Braque, Csaky, de Chirico, Gris, Herbin, Léger, Metzinger, Picasso and Valmier, along with views of hangings and events at the gallery.

[21] It is, however, the letters in the Léonce Rosenberg collection at the Pompidou Centre, which only relatively recently - in the 1990s and 2000s - found their way into a public archive and so became more accessible to historians, that are proving to be an important new resource.

Comprising more than 800 letters and cards to Rosenberg from various artists and copies of more than 600 sent by him, the correspondence forms a kind of diary of his dealings through some of the most tumultuous years in the history of modern art.