René Gimpel
René Gimpel (born 1881 in Paris ; died January 3, 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp ) was a French art dealer .
Life
René Gimpel's father was a Parisian art dealer who took over the business in Rue La Fayette and the branch in New Yorker . He was married to Florence Duveen, a sister of the British art dealer Joseph Duveen .
Gimpel was friends with artists such as Georges Braque , Mary Cassatt , Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso . He commissioned Marie Laurencin several times for portraits of his family. His main interest was French painting of the 18th century.
When France was conquered by the Wehrmacht in June 1940, Gimpel fled to southern France and handed the business over to his assistant. He joined the Resistance with his sons . He was betrayed in 1942 by the Parisian art dealer Jean-François Lefranc, of the Gestapo and the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR) in art theft of the German worked . Gimpel was deported in July 1944 from the Montluc prison in Paris to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg , where he died of the prison conditions.
After the end of the war, the sons Charles and Peter Gimpel continued the art trade under the name "Gimpel Fils" in London and New York. The son Jean Gimpel was a diamond dealer and medieval historian .
The diary that he kept since 1918 has survived until 1939 and gives an insight into the social change in art in the first half of the twentieth century. It was published by Jean Gimpel in 1963 and translated into English in 1966 .
Fonts
-
Journal d'un collectionneur: marchand de tableaux . Foreword by Jean Guéhenno . Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1963
- Diary of an Art Dealer . Translation by John Rosenberg. Foreword by Herbert Read . New York, 1966
literature
- Diana J. Kostyrko: The Journal of a Transatlantic Art Dealer: René Gimpel 1918-1939 . Harvey Miller Publishers, London / Turnhout 2017, ISBN 978-1-909400-51-1 , including dissertation Australian National University, 2006.
Web links
- Literature by and about René Gimpel in the bibliographic database WorldCat
- Bettina Wohlfarth: From dark times in France , in: FAZ , March 1, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bullfinch, René |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French art dealer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 3, 1945 |
| Place of death | Neuengamme concentration camp |