Léonce Rosenberg

Early life

The son of an antique dealer Alexandre Rosenberg and brother of the gallery owner Paul Rosenberg (21 rue de la Boétie, Paris), Léonce Rosenberg attended the Lycée Rollin in Paris followed by commercial training in Antwerp and London as well as travels to Berlin, Vienna and New York. 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.

After returning to Paris he worked with his brother Paul in the family business. In 1906 Léonce and his brother took over the running of the family gallery, then on Avenue de l'Opéra and which had been in existence since 1872. It specialised in 19th- and early 20th-century art, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

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.

Léonce Rosenberg, however, soon began increasingly to be drawn to the avant garde experimentation of which Paris was the centre, and he began acquiring works by Cubist artists, bought mainly from the gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who was at the time the primary dealer and promoter of the Cubists. By 1914 his collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Herbin and Juan Gris, as well as examples of the types of Asian, Egyptian and African art that were firing the avant garde imagination.

World War I and its aftermath

World War I proved to be the defining opportunity of Léonce Rosenberg's career.

Even before the war, growing anti-German sentiment and the role of German dealers in the rise of Cubism attracted hostility and led to Cubism being characterised as a German movement, even though most of the artists were French or Spanish. The outbreak of war also drove many of the artists who made up the avant garde circle to leave Paris. Some were called up to fight. Some left for the south of France while others, especially those with German connections or who were not French citizens, dispersed to Spain, Portugal and even America.

The same was true of many of the collectors and dealers. Galleries closed. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who until the war was the primary dealer for many of the Cubists, was left stranded in Switzerland during the war. As a German citizen he couldn't return to France, and his collection was seized by the French government. It left Kahnweiler's roster of artists without their livelihood.

In stepped Léonce Rosenberg. 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.

Even while serving in 1916 and 1917 as an auxiliary army volunteer based in Meudon and English interpreter on the Somme front, he continued during his periods of leave to buy paintings by Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin and Fernand Léger. He also began to prepare for the end of the war. 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. Fernand Léger followed later, in 1918. Léonce Rosenberg also established commercial relationships with Gino Severini, Henri Hayden and María Blanchard.

His relationship with Picasso was less formal. Although for a time he bought and sold paintings by Picasso, no contract was ever signed. And although Picasso was among those who had initially encouraged Léonce Rosenberg to step into the breach left by Kahnweiler, Picasso himself decided after the war instead to sign up with Léonce's brother Paul, who had begun to take an increasing interest in modern artists for whom there was already an established demand. It was the start of an increasingly intense commercial rivalry between the two brothers.

Galerie de L'Effort Moderne

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.

Its inaugural exhibition, from March 1 to 22, 1918 was dedicated to the work of Auguste Herbin. And in the months following the 11 November 1918 Armistice, Rosenberg mounted a rapid succession of high-profile exhibitions showcasing the artists he had signed up. 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. 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.

This campaign had to do more than simply market a commercial product. There were those who actively sought to have Cubism - or at least the L'Effort Moderne brand of it - wiped from the artistic map. 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. It was a battle as much for the minds of those who influenced taste and trends in the Parisian art market as for the pockets of those with the money to spend in that market.

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. 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'. In the face of such a display of vigour, it really was difficult to maintain convincingly that Cubism was even close to extinction".

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. They had a clear theoretical framework. Juan Gris was the intellectual driver, Rosenberg the publicist, simplifying and amplifying the message. In Cubisme et tradition, published as a preface to an exhibition of L'Effort Moderne Cubists in Geneva in 1920, Rosenberg associated Cubist art with Plato's eternal forms, "beautiful in itself". He sought to tie Cubism firmly to a French classicism, traced back through Cézanne and beyond, rather than something foreign, or worse, German.

Business practices

Léonce Rosenberg was innovative, and occasionally somewhat unscrupulous, in his business practices. Rather than taking paintings from artists on a sale or return basis like most dealers, he insisted on buying the works outright. What he sold, he first owned. He also preferred to acquire only recent paintings, in order to maintain freshness and a greater control over prices. 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. He saw himself as commissioning rather than simply buying and selling works. He suggested - some would say dictated - subject matter and themes, and at times even stipulated dimensions.

In the early years he demanded from his Cubists conceptual purity and a limited range of subjects suited to the rigours of Cubism. 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. He requested more "antique subjects", "Gladiators...Horses with ruins". From the letters it appears this was driven as much by nakedly commercial as any aesthetic considerations. It was what the market wanted.

In a postscript to a letter to de Chirico in December 1926, he wrote: "Léger, Valmier, Metzinger, etc. 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."

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 was also not afraid to reject works by his artists if he felt they did not meet the standards he expected.

In purchasing his artists' work outright, however, he also assumed greater financial risk. Strapped for funds, he was forced to auction off his collection several times in order to stay in business. The first of these sales took place in Amsterdam in 1921.

Later life

In 1928 Léonce Rosenberg moved his personal collection to his apartment at 75 rue de Longchamps in Paris. 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. This grand, even megalomaniac, project reinforced Rosenberg's presentation of himself as a modern form of patron.

His optimism about the market in the face of the gathering financial storm was misplaced, however. L'Effort Moderne went bankrupt in 1931, with much of the stock auctioned off in London. By 1933 Rosenberg was forced to move to a smaller apartment, at 20 rue Spontini, and again in 1934 to 3 Square du Tarn. Two further auctions of works from Léonce Rosenberg's personal collection took place, following the one in Amsterdam in 1921, this time in 1932 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, scene of the infamous Kahnweiler/Uhde auctions 10 years earlier. In 1936 Rosenberg was forced to write to de Chirico, then in America, wondering whether the artist could help in selling there the panels he had painted for the rue de Longchamps apartment, even if at a price less than Rosenberg had originally paid de Chirico.

L'Effort Moderne continued as a hub for modern art in Paris through the 1930s, but it was never again as important, either commercially or as a catalyst in the history of painting, as it was for the second wave of Cubism in the years immediately after the Great War.

While World War I had provided the opportunity and impetus for the establishment of Galerie L'Effort Moderne, World War II brought about its end. As a Jewish-owned business, the gallery was forced to close in 1941 as a result of the Nazi occupation of France. Rosenberg went into hiding. Some of his property was seized or looted.

L'Effort Moderne never reopened, and Léonce Rosenberg died in July 1947 at Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Legacy

Rosenberg is noted for having taken a risk by supporting the Cubists during and immediately after the Great War, when there was little interest in the movement. "Without him" noted Max Jacob, "a number of painters would be drivers or factory workers".

Having taken on many of Kahnweiler's clients, Rosenberg became for a time the most notable promoter of the Cubists. Ultimately, however, Léonce's brother Paul proved to be the more commercially successful. Having anticipated and prepared for the coming World War II by shipping much of his stock abroad, Paul Rosenberg was by 1940 ready to set up business in New York, where Rosenberg & Co. still trades.

Léonce Rosenberg corresponded frequently, during certain periods, daily, with his artists. 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 and especially the Kandinsky Library at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In addition to letters and papers, there are publication manuscripts, periodicals and photographic archives.

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. Further photographs attributed to Léonce Rosenberg are held in the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and are being digitised as part of the Courtauld Connects project.

The letters in the Léonce Rosenberg collection at the Pompidou Centre, which only relatively recently, in the 1990s and 2000s, became available in a public archive and more accessible to historians. 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 diary-like collection, journaling his dealings through some of the most problematic years in the history of modern art. They are enabling art historians to reassess their view of some of the artists and of Rosenberg, and to start to explore some subjects in greater detail, such as the pressures exerted on artists and dealers by the economic situation between the two world wars.

Selected exhibitions

Auguste Herbin, 1 – 22 March 1918

Henri Laurens, 5 – 31 December 1918

Jean Metzinger, 6 – 31 January 1919

Fernand Léger, 5 – 28 February 1919

Georges Braque, 5 – 31 March 1919

Juan Gris, 5 – 30 April 1919

Gino Severini, 5 – 31 May 1919

Pablo Picasso, 5 – 25 June 1919

Drawings, Gouaches, watercolors, ? – 29 November 1919: Blanchard, Braque, Csaky, Gris, Hayden, Herbier, Lagut, Laurens, Léger, Lipchitz, Metzinger, Picasso, Severini

Henri Hayden, 4 – 24 December 1919

Jean Metzinger, 2 – 22 January 1920

Jacques Lipchitz, 26 January – 14 February 1920

Juan Gris, 12 March – 2 April 1920

Les Maîtres du Cubisme: Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Henri Laurens, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso, Gino Severini. Exhibition 3 May – 30 October 1920

Léopold Survage, 2 – 25 November 1920

Joseph Csaky, 1 – 25 December 1920

Georges Valmier, 3 – 25 January 1921

Auguste Herbin, 5 – 31 March 1921

Maîtres du Cubisme: Piet Mondrian, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Jean Metzinger, Amédée Ozenfant, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, Joseph Csáky and Gino Severini. May 1921