http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8sq91rk Online items available Finding aid for the M. Knoedler & Co. records, approximately 1848-1971 Alexis Adkins, Silvia Caporaletti, Judy Chou, Sarah Glover, Erin Hurley, Jasmine Larkin, Emmabeth Nanol and Karen Meyer-Roux Finding aid for the M. Knoedler & 2012.M.54 1 Co. records, approximately 1848-1971 Descriptive Summary Title: M. Knoedler & Co. records Date (inclusive): approximately 1848-1971 Number: 2012.M.54 Creator/Collector: M. Knoedler & Co Physical Description: 3042.6 Linear Feet(5554 boxes, 17 flat file folders) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 [email protected] URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390 Abstract: The records of M. Knoedler & Co. document the business of the prominent American art dealer from the mid-19th century to 1971. The archive traces the development of the once provincial American art market into one of the world's leading art centers and the formation of the private art collections that would ultimately establish many of the nation's leading art museums, such as the Frick Collection and the National Gallery of Art. It contains crucial provenance information on numerous artworks in private and public collections in the United States. The archive includes stock books, sales books and commission books; correspondence with collectors, artists, art dealers and other associates; photographs of the artworks sold by the gallery; records from the firm's offices in London, Paris and other cities; exhibition files; framing and restoration records, and records of the firm's Print Department. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is in English. Biographical/Historical Note M. Knoedler & Co. was a successor to the New York branch of Goupil & Co., an extremely dynamic print-publishing house founded in Paris in 1827. Goupil's branches in London, Berlin, Brussels, and The Hague, as well as New York, expanded the firm's market in the sale of reproductive prints. The firm's office in New York-an initiative of Léon Goupil, the son of Adolphe Goupil, Théodore Vibert, and the agent William Schaus-was established in 1848 at 289 Broadway on the corner of Duane Street near City Hall. In 1857, Michael Knoedler, an employee of Goupil and a manager for the firm, bought out the interests in the firm's New York branch, conducted the business under his own name, and diversified its activities to include the sale of paintings. The office was then established in a larger space at 366 Broadway. When Roland Knoedler, Michael's son, became a partner in the business in 1877, the firm became known from then on as M. Knoedler & Co. Roland Knoedler took over the firm after the death of his father in 1878 and with Charles Carstairs opened galleries in Paris and London. When Roland Knoedler retired in 1928, the management of the firm passed to his nephew Charles Henschel, Carman Messmore, Charles Carstairs and Carstairs' son, Carroll. In 1956 Henschel died and E. Coe Kerr and Michael Knoedler's grandson, Roland Balaÿ, took over. After a number of moves, M. Knoedler & Co. occupied its headquarters at 19 E. 70th Street for many years. When Michael Knoedler purchased the New York Goupil office in 1857, most American museums had not yet been formed. The country was also relatively isolated from Western European centers of art exchange. As the United States witnessed a rise in personal fortunes from the steel, mining, iron, and railroad industries in the nineteenth century, more Americans had the financial means to begin forming art collections. It fueled the art market that M. Knoedler & Co. helped establish and combined with declining nobilities and changes in tax legislation in Europe, it accelerated the process of transferring artworks from Europe to the United States. In 1901, Knoedler sold an important old master, Velázquez, Don Balthazar Carlos with a Dwarf, to the Boston Museum. In 1907, in partnership with P. Colnaghi & Co., Knoedler acquired seven portraits of the Cattaneo family by Anthony van Dyck, of which three now form part of the Widener Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. In 1911, the firm sold Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl to Henry Clay Frick. By the early 20th century, the Knoedler Gallery had become one of the main suppliers of old master paintings in the United States and would continue to serve as a major conduit for the acquisition of masterworks. Among clients of Knoedler were civic-minded collectors, including John Taylor Johnston (1820-1893), the son of a banker, who would become the founding president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Robert Leighton Stuart (1806-1882), a major Finding aid for the M. Knoedler & 2012.M.54 2 Co. records, approximately 1848-1971 donor to the New York Public Library; and Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1828-1887), the daughter of a real estate developer and an heir to the Lorillard Tobacco Company. Wolfe became the first donor to provide both a collection gift and an endowment to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Knoedler developed very close relationships with Henry Clay Frick and Andrew W. Mellon. A large portion of the paintings in The Frick Collection in New York were acquired during Frick's lifetime through the Knoedler Gallery. In 1900, Charles Carstairs and Roland Knoedler were present at Mellon's wedding celebrated in England. The close relationship between Knoedler and Mellon would continue throughout the collector's life, including his appointment as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 until 1932, culminating in the purchase of twenty-one paintings from the Hermitage in Saint-Petersburg in 1930-1931. These artworks-including paintings by van Eyck, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and Rembrandt-would form the nucleus of the National Gallery of Art, which was established and initially funded in part by Mellon. Early in its history, M. Knoedler & Co. chose to advocate the work of American artists. It established an educational division to promote American artists, the International Art Union, which published a journal to help publicize artists' works through print reproductions and which offered artists scholarships to study abroad. Knoedler served as a primary agent for numerous artists, and through an ongoing exhibition program actively promoted artists such as the American landscape painter and printmaker Winslow Homer and Frederic Edwin Church, a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. After World War II, the gallery promoted the work of Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Arshile Gorky, along with European artists, such as Salvador Dalí, Henry Moore, and Wassily Kandinsky. In 1971 the firm was purchased by businessman, philanthropist and collector Armand Hammer. Since the late 1970s, the firm has focused increasingly on contemporary art. During the late 2000s the gallery was embroiled in lawsuits regarding allegedly forged artworks. The Knoedler Gallery closed in November 2011. Note: Regarding the date that M. Knoedler & Co. was created in the nineteenth century, the firm has traditionally retained 1846 as founding date. This tradition was given prominence in 1946 in A Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings and Prints of Every Description, on the Occasion of Knoedler, One Hundred Years, 1846-1946 . In his foreword to the catalogue, Charles Henschel, Michael Knoedler's grandson and then the firm's president, associated 1846 with the date of his grandfather's arrival in New York. The 1846 founding date also appears on some of the firm's labels. This date has been questioned however, in light that the earliest press announcement of an opening of a shop in New York by Goupil may date from 1848. See The Literary World (1849), Volume 5: 317. DeCourcy McIntosh is credited with first questioning the founding date of 1846. See his "Merchandising America: American Views Published by the Maison Goupil," The Magazine Antiques (September 2004): 124-133. Others have questioned whether in reference to the founding of the Knoedler Gallery the date of 1857 is not in fact more relevant than those of 1846 or 1848. Access Open for use by qualified researchers, with the following exceptions. Boxes 77, 262-264, 1308-1512, 1969-1974, 3592-3723 are restricted due to fragility. Box 4468 is restricted until 2075. Publication Rights Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions . Preferred Citation M. Knoedler & Co. records, approximately 1848-1971, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2012.M.54. http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2012m54 Acquisition Information Acquired in 2012. Processing History The archive was processed and partially digitized with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Emmabeth Nanol processed Series I, II, and III and Jasmine Larkin processed Series IV in 2013, under the supervision of Karen Meyer-Roux. Series V. Receiving and shipping records and Series VI. Correspondence were catalogued and processed from July 2014 to January 2015 by Alexis Adkins, Judy Chou, Jasmine Larkin, and Emmabeth Nanol under the supervision of Karen Meyer-Roux. Graduate interns Silvia Caporaletti and Sarah Glover participated in the description and processing of Series VI. Further processing by Natasha Hicks in July-August 2014 and by Isabella Zuralski and Sheila Prospero in December 2014. Series VII. Photographs was catalogued and processed from January 2015 to January 2016 by Alexis Adkins, Judy Chou, Sarah Glover, Erin Hurley, Jasmine Larkin, and Emmabeth Nanol, under the supervision of Karen Meyer-Roux. Further processing and cataloging by Chenglin Lee in June-August 2015. Finding aid for the M. Knoedler & 2012.M.54 3 Co. records, approximately 1848-1971 Series VIII and IX were catalogued by Emmabeth Nanol and Chenglin Lee, Series X.