Berthe Weill

Berthe Weill (Paris 1865 – 1951)^[1]: 11 was a French art dealer who played a vital role in the creation of the market for twentieth century art with the manifestation of the Parisian Avant-Garde. Although she is much less known than her well-established competitors like Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Paul Rosenberg, she may be credited with producing the first sales in Paris for Pablo Picasso^[2]: 26 and Henri Matisse^[2]: 26 and with providing Amedeo Modigliani with the only solo exhibition in his lifetime (see poster advertising the exhibition).

The impressive list of artists who made their way through her gallery and into the canon of modern art continues with names such as Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, Diego Rivera, Georges Braque, Kees van Dongen, Maurice Utrillo. Her role was also important in the early exposure and sales of women painters such as Suzanne Valadon, Emilie Charmy and Jacqueline Marval.^[3]

In 1933, Weill published her memoirs, an account of thirty years as an art dealer, from which many historical renditions quote. ^[4] Her gallery lasted until 1939 and notwithstanding the number of luminary artists that passed through her gallery, she remained poor and destitute her whole life and after her death was almost forgotten.

Recently, interest in Berthe Weill has become more significant^[2]. In 2007, Picasso’s portrait of Berthe Weill (1920) was designated a French national treasure^[5]: 11. In 2009 her memoirs (1933) were republished ^[1] and a compilation of her gallery exhibitions^[5]; in 2011 the first study dedicated to her life and dealership was published.^[6]

Esther Berthe Weill was born in Paris into an Alsatian Jewish lower middle class family, one of seven children. As her parents were of modest means, Weill was placed as an apprentice in Mayer’s antique shop where she learned the business of the trade and acquired considerable knowledge, in particular, of eighteenth century engravings. This experience would serve well as she also met collectors, writers and other dealers.

Upon Mayer’s death, she opened a little shop in association with one of her brothers, but it did not last long (1897-1900). Under the influence of Roger Marx, a renowned art critic, she became very interested in the art of the new young painters^[7]: 31.

In 1900, not long after Picasso arrived in Paris, she bought and sold several works producing Picasso’s first sales in Paris.

In 1901, with the help of Mañach, a young Spanish painting broker, and 375 francs, money earmarked for her dowry, she inaugurated “Galerie B. Weill” and dedicated it as a place for the young painters “Place aux Jeunes”, much to the chagrin of her family and the widow of Mayer; discovering new artists was risky business. Her gallery lasted until 1939.

In 1946, many painters who she had championed over the years came together and held an auction of their donated art work, the proceeds went to support Berthe Weill so she could live in some comfort for the last years of her life^[5]: 11.

In 1948, the Republic of France recognized her as a Chevalier de Légion d’Honneur, for her contribution to Modern Art^[5]: 11.

In 1951, at the age of 86 Weill died. Although she was recognized at some level during her lifetime, she was left with a legacy as either misunderstood or relegated to the footnotes of historical accounts of the period, until recent renewed interest emerged.

Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, Manguin, Camoin, Raoul Dufy, Diego Rivera, Braque, Friesz, van Dongen, Utrillo, Puy, Metzinger, Modigliani, Rouault, Marie Laurencin, Suzanne Valadon, Emilie Charmy, Jacqueline Marval, Kisling, Flandrin, Leger, Pascin...

• Adolphe Brisson, Literary Critic for Temps

Picasso’s first sales in Paris were three pastels on canvas depicting bull-fighting scenes, which Weill sold to him in 1900.

• Arthur Huc, Director of La Dépêche de Toulouse. Weill sold Le Moulin de la Galette (1900) to Arthur Huc. According to John Richardson, Huc was "one of the most progressive collectors of the day”. Later this painting was bought by Justin Thannhauser who donated it to the Guggenheim Museum (NY) ^[8]: 168.
• Franz Jourdain, Architect of the Samaritaine Department Store, first president of the Salon d'Automne ; in 1902, Weill sold a Marquet to him ^[7]: 31.
• André Level, Head of the consortium of investors who, in 1904, began forming the Peau de l'Ours art collection of twentieth century art. In 1914, it was sold at auction and was notable for its "phenomenal financial success". "Weill claimed that three-quarters of the items in the collection were purchased from her gallery. Even if she exaggerated, there is no doubt that Level bought from her on a regular basis^{[2]: 26–27 [4]: 194}.
• Gertrude and Leo Stein, American expatriates living in Paris who played a pivotal role in promoting and collecting avant-garde art
• Olivier Saincère, Counsellor of State and future secretary general of the Élysée under Raymond Poincaré, one of Weill's first collectors.
• Gustave Coquiot, French writer and art critic, collector of Maurice Utrillo.
• Sergei Shchukin, Russian collector from Moscow^{[8]: 389–393}.

• Berthe Weill: Galériste à Montmartre. Biography by Françoise Job, 2005
• Decision by the Council of Paris to install a "plaque commémorative" at 25, rue Victor Massé

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THE VISUAL ARTS PORTAL

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The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, comics, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines, such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts, as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art.

Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, crafts, or applied visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions, painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist and being the furthest removed from manual labour – in Chinese painting, the most highly valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes. (Full article...)

Outline of the visual arts

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Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild) is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning and is shown with long pale hair and wild eyes, smothering a wolf with her feet while clutching a cub in her arms. Art historians have presented multiple interpretations—usually that Gauguin intended it as an epithet to reinforce his self-image as a "civilised savage". Tahitian goddesses of her era had passed from folk memory by 1894, yet Gauguin romanticises the island's past as he reaches towards more ancient sources, including an Assyrian relief of a "master of animals" type, and Majapahit mummies. Other possible influences include preserved skulls from the Marquesas Islands, figures found at Borobudur, and a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in central Java.

Gauguin made three casts, each in partially glazed stoneware, and while several copies exist in plaster or bronze, the original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay. His sales of the casts were not successful, and at a low financial and personal ebb he asked for one to be placed on his grave. There are only three other surviving comments of his on the figure: he described the figure as a strange and cruel enigma on an 1895 presentation mount of two impressions of a woodcut of Oviri for Stéphane Mallarmé; he referred to it as La Tueuse ("The Murderess") in an 1897 letter to Ambroise Vollard; and he appended an inscription referencing Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta in a c. 1899 drawing. Oviri was exhibited at the 1906 Salon d'Automne (no. 57) where it influenced Pablo Picasso, who based one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon on it. (Full article...)

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National Gallery Dürer's Rhinoceros Sistine Chapel ceiling Buddhist art The Four Stages of Cruelty Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima Northwest Coast art Campbell's Soup Cans House with Chimaeras Hoysala architecture Impressionism Dutch Golden Age painting Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball Funerary art The Raft of the Medusa Book of Kells Olmec colossal heads Grant Memorial coinage Weather Machine Whaam! Léal Souvenir Warlugulong Migration of the Serbs (painting) Ukiyo-e Hope (painting) The Princesse de Broglie The World Before the Flood The Swimming Hole Nativity (Christus) Louvre Hermitage Museum National Museum of China Metropolitan Museum of Art Vatican Museums Vkhutemas Scottish art in the nineteenth century Mathematics and architecture Bois Protat Stars (M. C. Escher) Freydal Low-key photography National Museum of African Art Arts Club of Chicago Urania's Mirror A Vision of the Last Judgement B of the Bang Petersen Rock Garden Happy Brothers Skagen Painters The Proclamation of Dušan's Law Codex Skaters in the Bois de Boulogne Burnham Pavilions Pop art Lascaux Photojournalism Beaune Altarpiece Dresden Triptych Four Freedoms (Rockwell) Holy Thorn Reliquary Museum of Bad Art Portrait of Mariana of Austria Statue of Liberty September Morn Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball The Blind Leading the Blind The Cloisters The Disasters of War Tornado over Kansas The Entombment (Bouts) Vkhutemas Head VI Hope (painting) Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots The Garden of Earthly Delights Marriage License

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Jean Bellette (occasionally Jean Haefliger; 25 March 1908 – 16 March 1991) was an Australian artist. Born in Tasmania, she was educated in Hobart and at Julian Ashton's art school in Sydney, where one of her teachers was Thea Proctor. In London she studied under painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler.

A modernist painter, Bellette was influential in mid-twentieth century Sydney art circles. She frequently painted scenes influenced by the Greek tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles and the epics of Homer. The only woman to have won the Sulman Prize more than once, Bellette claimed the accolade in 1942 with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in 1944 with Iphigenia in Tauris. She helped found the Blake Prize for Religious Art, and was its inaugural judge. Bellette married artist and critic Paul Haefliger in 1935. The couple moved to Majorca in 1957; although she visited and exhibited in Australia thereafter, she did not return there to live, and became peripheral to the Australian art scene. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

Florence Fuller Henry Moore Vincent van Gogh El Greco James B. Longacre Emily Sartain Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri Caspar David Friedrich Maria Dulębianka Lisa del Giocondo Stefan Lochner Eleanor Norcross Danie Mellor Herbert Maryon El Lissitzky Xue Susu Iso Rae Auguste Rodin Roman Vishniac Salvador Dalí Paul Kane Adolfo Farsari Pierre Rossier Caravaggio Chaim Koppelman Francis Bacon (artist) Jacob van Ruisdael Robert Peake the Elder Benedetto Pistrucci John Michael Wright Tom Thomson Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci Rembrandt William Adam (architect) Karoly Grosz (illustrator) William Bliss Baker Gasparo Cairano Joanne Gair M. C. Escher Olek (artist) Grandma Moses Han Sai Por Banksy Pierre-Auguste Renoir John Thirtle Constance Stokes D. H. Turner Edward Thomas Daniell George Vincent (painter) Edward Mitchell Bannister Kanae Yamamoto (artist) Kacey Wong Gengoroh Tagame Neri Oxman Emeka Ogboh Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi Maija Isola Hans Namuth

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• ... that the art of Irma Blank, of "drawing languages without words" and including sounds, was recognised in the 1970s but fell into obscurity until a rediscovery in the 2010s?
• ... that Diminish and Ascend has been called a real-life M. C. Escher drawing?
• ... that to encourage the development of Bissau-Guinean cinema, one foreign filmmaker provided the country's film institute with cameras, lights, and a Steinbeck guitar?
• ... that Joseph Binder influenced modern poster design, creating posters for the 1939 New York World's Fair, the U.S. Army Corps and the American Red Cross?
• ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
• ... that John Hoke III, who is dyslexic and the chief design officer of Nike, has described drawing as his first language?
• ... that Mexican filmmaker David Zonana wrote his first feature film after producing for two other directors?
• ... that the documentary comedy films Being Canadian and When Jews Were Funny explore the filmmakers' cultural identity through interviews with dozens of comedians?

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