René Albert Gimpel (4 October 1881–3 January 1945) was a prominent French art dealer of Alsatian Jewish descent who died in 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg, Germany.
[1] Friend and patron of living artists and collectors, he was the son of a picture dealer and the brother-in-law of Sir Joseph Duveen.
His witty and acerbic journal, kept for twenty-one years and published posthumously as Journal d'un collectionneur: marchand de tableaux (1963, revised edition 2011), with a preface by Jean Guéhenno of the Académie française, was translated and published in English as Diary of an Art Dealer (1966),[2] and is a primary source for the history of modern art and of collecting between the World Wars.
[4] A friend of Marcel Proust, whom he met at Cabourg in 1907, he had a selective high regard for many museum professionals but a loathing of the experts who provided attributions and certificates of authenticity for paintings in the market.
[5] In 1905 Ernest and Nathan Wildenstein began negotiating to buy a selection of the magnificent Paris collection of Rodolphe Kann from Kann's estate; however, the powerful firm of Duveen Bros muscled in and bought out their interest, eventually acquiring the entire collection in 1906 for 21 million francs (or over $US4 million), including what were considered in those days twelve Rembrandts.