Myran Eknayan

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Myran Garabet Eknayan (born September 27, 1892 in Paris , † June 19, 1985 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a diamond dealer and art collector of Armenian origin.

Life

Myran Eknayan was born in Paris in 1892. As alternative spellings of the first name, Mihran or Mirant can also be found in the literature . The Armenian merchant family Eknayan originally came from the Ottoman Empire . His ancestor Atamik Eknayan (1847–1925) settled in Paris in 1872. In 1893 he founded a diamond cutting shop on Boulevard de la Villette, which later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine. The company also had offices on Paris's posh Place Vendôme , where Myran Eknayan worked as a diamond dealer. He was also president ( président directeur ) of the company SAREMCI (Société anonyme de recherches et d'exploitation minières en Côte d'Ivoire), which operated diamond mines in the Ivory Coast .

Myran Eknayan started building an art collection at a young age. He sold this first collection in 1926 and 1931 at the Paris auction house Hôtel Drouot . This collection included old master paintings such as the interior of a palace with ladies and gentlemen at the feast and a carnival party making music by Dirck van Delen , travelers in a hilly landscape by a river by Philips Wouwerman and a Roman capriccio with laundresses at the statue of Mark Aurel by Hubert Robert . He also parted with Johan Barthold Jongkind's Le Pont Neuf cityscape, painted in the style of realism , as early as 1926 .

The second art collection was largely created after 1945 and focused on Impressionist paintings . The main work of this collection was the 2.5 × 2.2 meter central fragment of the painting Breakfast in the Green by Claude Monet . Monet also included the winter landscape L'Entree de la Grande-Rue a Argenteuil, l'hiver from 1875 in the collection. Eknayan owned two portraits of women by Édouard Manet . In addition to the portrait of Jeanne Demarsy as a young woman with a cape , he also owned the sketchy image of a woman standing between flowers . In addition, there were three typical pictures with dancers by Edgar Degas : the painting Danseuses sur la scène and the pastels Deux danseuses roses assises sur une banquette and Trois danseuses en jupes saumon . Eknayan also had a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in his collection, Girl with a Blue Ribbon . In the meantime he also owned the painting Le Pont d'Argenteuil et la Seine by Gustave Caillebotte , which he sold again during his lifetime.

  • Claude Monet:
    Breakfast in the Green , 1865–1866

  • Edgar Degas:
    Danseuses sur la scène , around 1889

  • Édouard Manet:
    Young woman with cape , 1881

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    Girl with a Blue Ribbon , 1888

In addition to works of Impressionism, there was a depiction of St. Sebastian by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot in the collection. Eknayan also brought together some works from the 20th century. These included Nu aux bas rouges by Pablo Picasso - an early work by the artist from 1901 - a seated female nude Nu assis by Amedeo Modigliani , a Pierrot by Georges Rouault , the still life Fleurs sur une cheminée aux Clayes by Édouard Vuillard and two others Still life - Poisson sur une assiette and Fleurs sur un tapis rouge - by Pierre Bonnard . One of the artists particularly valued by Eknayan was the sculptor Auguste Rodin , from whom he collected some plaster models and a number of bronzes.

In old age Eknayan lived with the former actress Jacqueline Delubac . The couple married in 1981. Art was one of their common interests, whereby the works that Delubac had collected included not only works of classical modernism but also contemporary images - for example by Francis Bacon and Hans Hartung . In 1985 Eknayan died in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He bequeathed his art collection to his wife Jacqueline. As compensation for the inheritance tax due, she left the large-format painting The Breakfast in the Green by Claude Monet to the French state, which transferred it to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris . She also sold some of the inherited paintings, including Le Lit de la bonne by Kees van Dongen . In her own will, she decreed that 35 works of art from her own collection and that of Eknayan should be donated to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon . After her death in 1997, the works of art were shown for the first time in the Museum of Lyon the following year. Works by Corot, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Modigliani, Bonnard, Vuillard, Rouault, Picasso and Rodin come from the previous Eknayan collection. According to the last will of the donor, the Delubac-Eknayan collection will be shown together in two halls of the museum named after the art collectors.

Award

literature

  • Dominique Brachlianoff, Christian Briend: De Manet à Bacon, la collection Jacqueline Delubac . Réunion des musées nationaux Paris and Musée des beaux-arts Lyon 1998, ISBN 2-7118-3678-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on the painting by Dirck van Delen on the website of the art dealer Richard Green. ( Memento of the original from October 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.richardgreen.com
  2. ↑ Information on the painting by Philips Wouwerman on the website http://www.masterart.com.
  3. ↑ Information on the painting by Johan Barthold Jongkind on the Hubert Robert website on the Christie's auction house website.
  4. ↑ Information on the painting by Johan Barthold Jongkind on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
personal data
SURNAME Eknayan, Myran
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eknayan, Myran Garabet (full name); Eknayan, Mihran; Eknayan, Mirant
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Diamond dealer and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1985
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine