COLOUR PLATES
1. Titian, Portrait of Jacopo Strada, 1567: his hands hold the work of art but his eyes engage the unseen collector in a timeless image of salesmanship.
2. Frans Francken the Younger, A Visit to the Art Dealer: in the early seventeenth century Flemish galleries like this one were already offering their aspirational clientele a ‘retail experience’ that combined a grand setting and art expertise.
3. Antoine Watteau, L’Enseigne de Gersaint (1720): how the leading dealer in Paris broke down threshold resistance and created the first shopping mall.
4. Leonardo, Madonna of the Rocks: Gavin Hamilton’s greatest triumph as a dealer was to discover this picture in Italy and sell it in London in 1785 for £800.
5. Velázquez, The Rokeby Venus, or, as its first British owner called it, ‘my picture of Venus’s bottom’.
6. Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair: given the full Gambart promotional treatment, including a viewing by Queen Victoria.
7. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Visit to the Art Dealer, featuring Ernest Gambart (standing, centre) as a gallerist of Antiquity.
8. Paul Gauguin, Riders on the Beach: declared degenerate by the Nazis and sold by Wildenstein to the Hollywood actor Edward G. Robinson in 1937.
9. Monet, Poplars: Durand-Ruel encouraged his most marketable Impressionist to paint landscapes in series, in different lights and seasons.
10. André Derain, View of the Thames: one of the revolutionary series of London views painted in 1905 that was the brainchild of Ambroise Vollard.
11, 12. Kahnweiler’s stringent definition of Cubism excluded that of Albert Gleizes (a work of 1914, above) but embraced that of Juan Gris (a work of 1913, left).
13. Félix Fénéon, almost certainly the only art dealer ever to have planted a terrorist bomb, at work in his office (painting by Félix Vallotton).
14. The Manet Baigneuse that Fénéon imaginatively included in his ‘Fauna’ exhibition because of the presence of the sponge.
15. Alfred Flechtheim by Otto Dix, 1926: the eternal art dealer, one hand on a painting and the other on what may or may not be an invoice.
16. Paul Guillaume, from garagist to gallerist: portrait by Modigliani in 1916.
17. Modigliani’s 1917 portrait of his other main dealer, Leopold Zborowski, poet turned businessman.
18. Herwarth Walden, founder of Der Sturm and pioneer of Modernism, who ended his life in a Soviet detention camp (sculpture by William Wauer).
19. Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, which was sold by Julien Levy to MOMA in New York in 1934.
20. Titian, Rape of Europa: Berenson’s commission on its sale to Mrs Isabella Stewart Gardner was rather larger than he revealed to his partner.
21. Commander Beauchamp’s Poussin: sold by Sotheby’s in 1956 for £29,000 to great fanfare. Peter Wilson lost £6,000 on the guarantee but deemed it worth the publicity.