Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America

Archives related to: L. & P. Rosenberg Fils

title	The Paul Rosenberg Archives, 1905-2000
repository	The Museum of Modern Art
description	The Paul Rosenberg Archives is a natural complement to The Museum of Modern Art's extensive holdings of archival materials focusing on early 20th century modernism and particularly on the art of Picasso, Matisse, Braque and other artists of their circles. Furthermore, the Museum was one of Paul Rosenberg's most loyal clients, just as he was among its most supportive and enthusiastic advisors, and the Rosenberg family has always remained active among the Museum's membership. Numerous works in the Museum's collections have Paul Rosenberg and Company as source or donor. The Paul Rosenberg Archives comprise numerous sale records, photographs of every work in the galleries' inventories, correspondence, exhibition files, photographs of installations, and other published and unpublished artistic, literary, professional, and historical documents representing the careers of Rosenberg and his son Alexandre (art dealer, gallery director and founding president of the Art Dealers Association of America), and notable friends. The Archives also includes unedited texts of Paul and his son Alexander Rosenberg, indexes and reference tools prepared in 1998-2000 for the papers of the Galerie Paul Rosenberg (Paris), as well as 'stock books' of the Paris gallery, recomposed by memory and thanks to documentation that survived World War II. This was due to Paul Rosenberg's foresight in having part of his photograph print collections shipped to the USA via England before the Nazi invasion of France. Indexes which have been prepared in-house for most of the photographic collections are particularly useful. Paul Rosenberg's affiliations in international spheres of modern art predate the founding of The Museum of Modern Art, and his papers-in addition to their representation of significant aspects of twentieth-century ideas, art, and society-are critical for documenting the provenance of hundreds of paintings and sculptures in private and public collections and have been used extensively to research claims for Nazi-looted art. War losses and restitution dossiers were begun by PR&Co as early as the beginning of World War II itself and the consequent research and correspondence thus initiated continues, in many cases, to the present as active files. The Paul Rosenberg Archives chronicle the life of the gallery from its early beginnings until 1987, with a gap in the documentation from the years 1928-1939. The invaluable documents include: inventory cards, arranged by artist, accession, client or sale date; photographic prints and negatives of various format and of excellent quality of virtually every work in the gallery's inventory, arranged by artist; bills, statements, and insurance documents arranged chronologically and alphabetically; files concerning exhibitions and photographs of their installations. The correspondence of both Paul and Alexandre P. Rosenberg reflects the nature of their personal and professional relationships with artists, fellow dealers, collectors, museum professionals, as well as with many personal friends, students and art lovers throughout the world. This unique grouping of materials is particularly rich for the study of early twentieth-century French art, while it also documents or indicates interests in Renaissance and Neoclassical painting and sculpture, Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquities, extra-European art, the decorative arts, book arts and design. Biographical and Company History The Rosenbergs have been active and prominent in the art world since the 19th century. It was Alexandre Rosenberg the elder ('père') (died 1913), father of Paul (1881-1959) and his brother Léonce (1878-1947), who had initially established himself as an antiques dealer in Paris in 1878. After 1898, he was well known within the circle of the leading dealers of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. He encouraged his sons to share these professional interests and afforded them ample opportunities in Paris and abroad (London, Berlin, Vienna, New York) to acquire experience and contacts and to collect art. Paul and Léonce first began to work as partners in 1906, when they assumed joint directorship of the gallery, upon the retirement of their father. They soon established distinct personalities and social networks in the creative effervescence of Paris in the early twentieth century and eventually opened separate galleries, Paul in the rue de La Boétie (from 1910), and Léonce nearby in the rue de la Baume, both in the city's 8th District. The rue de la Boétie has been described as the 'nerve center' of modern French art throughout the 1920s and 1930s or as the 'French Florence'. To his inventory of late 19th century art, Paul Rosenberg followed the lead of his elder brother Léonce - an early and well-known champion of Cubism - and added contemporary works by artists who were already in demand. Initially sharing the honor with his brother and with Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Paul Rosenberg eventually enjoyed a special exclusive contract with Pablo Picasso (from 1918 to 1940). While Léonce was first to show the Cubists in his gallery, L'Effort Moderne, it was Paul who possessed the social and financial possibility to provide artists such as Picasso and Braque (as of 1922) with the support they needed, as well as to promote lesser-known artists such as Marie Laurencin, with whom Paul had a warm and fraternal relationship for the rest of her life. Rosenberg also had fruitful arrangements with Fernand Léger (as of 1927) and became Matisse's dealer in 1936 and remained the artist's friend until the end. Paul Rosenberg's relationship with Picasso was a close friendship for the duration of their mature lives. In addition to cultivating and promoting each other's respective careers, Picasso even acted as witness for the birth of Paul's son Alexandre Paul Rosenberg (1921-1987), their families being neighbors in Paris for several years. Paul Rosenberg's legendary 'stock' included a rich selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Géricault, Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, Rodin, Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Lautrec, along with the works by his modern artists, and regularly complemented by works of Henri Rousseau, Aristide Maillol. Odilon Redon and Amedeo Modigliani. His 'stock' from artists in the United States included painting and sculpture by Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, Abraham Rattner, Karl Knaths, Harvey Weiss, Oronzio Maldarelli. Both Paul and his son Alexandre also had contracts with Nicolas de Staël and Graham Sutherland. Alexandre Rosenberg was the American representative and close friend of the sculptors Kenneth Armitage and Giacomo Manzù. Paul Rosenberg opened a new branch of his Paris gallery - managed by his well-known antiquarian brother-in-law Jacques Helft - in London between World War I and World War II. From 1920 until the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Paul Rosenberg's company was widely acknowledged to be without doubt the most active and influential gallery in the world in the field of 19th and 20th century French painting, specializing in the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Cubist schools, as well as in the developments contemporary to these 'schools'. All of the museums of the Western world and all of the great private collectors became clients of Rosenberg, and his exhibitions became points of reference for the promotion of quality painting. Having foreseen the imminence of the Second World War, Paul Rosenberg began to send his collections abroad, especially to England, America, Australia and South America and then put a hold on the operations of his Paris galleries. Even prior to his departure from France with his wife and daughter, his many friends in the United States encouraged and assisted his establishment in New York, where the Rosenbergs arrived, via Lisbon, in September of 1940. Rosenberg presence in New York had attracted so much interest that an issue of the Art Digest declared that "When rumor first intimated that Paul Rosenberg, internationally known Paris dealer in modern art, would open a gallery in New York, 57th Street anticipated something akin to a clap of thunder." Throughout the war and after its end, he was able to re-assemble in New York a very large proportion, though not all of his gallery stock and his personal collections. In this way, and almost without interruption or discontinuity, he re-established his gallery in New York and recommenced the activity previously undertaken in Paris. Alexandre Rosenberg, still a student at the time of the war's outbreak, found his way to England at the end of June 1940, shortly before the occupation of the last free French ports. During the next five years, he served as an officer with the Free French Forces in their military campaigns in Africa, France and Germany. After his demobilization in 1946, he went to New York to be with his family and after a period of study and apprenticeship, became an associate of Paul Rosenberg & Company in 1952, later assuming his father's place as director of the company after the death of Paul Rosenberg in 1959. Under Alexandre's guidance, the company maintained its position in its traditional field and continued to flourish as in the past, both in the United States and in Europe. While 19th and 20th century French painting remained the company's principal focus, however, its horizons also broadened to encompass more of the old masters and select aspects of contemporary painting, drawings and sculpture. Among colleagues and among museum professionals and collectors, Alexandre Rosenberg enjoyed the reputation of being one of the pre-eminent authorities in his field of activity. He was also known to be an excellent scholar and a dealer possessing an undisputed sense of integrity and taste. In 1962 he was one of the founders and the first president of the Art Dealers Association of America, a professional organization bringing together the most important galleries in New York and throughout the United States. The aims of the ADAA were the elevation and maintenance of standards for professionals in the art market. Alexandre Rosenberg remained one of the association's permanent Board members throughout his life. In this capacity, his assistance was very often requested also by the American government in dealing with various issues in the fine arts field. Notably, he served on a consulting committee for the Internal Revenue Service for several years. Throughout the 1970s and until his premature death in 1987, Alexandre Rosenberg was an active initiator of and participant in a wide variety of commercial and cultural projects both in the United States and abroad. He believed that while the wealth of the market in terms of pictures of high quality had considerably diminished over time through the acquisitions of museums and collectors in the 20th century, it was nonetheless still entirely possible to bring together objects of prime importance compatible with the requirements of museums in the field of 19th and 20th century French painting, watercolors, drawings and sculpture. All that was necessary to build such a collection was a certain body of knowledge and contacts and, most importantly, a solid sense of what is pre-eminent in a given class of works. He believed that the difficulty resided less in the rarity of high-quality works than in the increasing evidence of incompetence in evaluating that quality. With time, appropriate effort and careful planning, fine collections could indeed still be put together. Note: As established by Alexandre P. Rosenberg's own knowledge of the family's history, as well as his faith in the acuity of his father's recollections, and recorded in a note from the mid-1970s (Rosenberg family collection), the following dates and addresses are those most frequently referred to in the Rosenberg business and personal correspondence. The following list may therefore usefully serve as a reference for researchers. Preferred Citation Long version: The Paul Rosenberg Archives, a Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg, [series.folder]. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Short version: Paul Rosenberg, [series.folder]. MoMA Archives, NY. Related Material Among the holdings at The Museum of Modern Art Archives, correspondence with Paul Rosenberg and with Alexandre Paul Rosenberg is to be found among the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Papers, René d'Harnoncourt Papers, William S. Lieberman Papers, James Thrall Soby Papers, James Johnson Sweeney Papers, Monroe Wheeler Papers, as well as among other collections of personal and business papers of Museum directors, curators and the Registrar officers. Of special interest within the Museum Archives holdings are the letters to Léonce Rosenberg from artists associated with his Galerie de l'Effort Moderne and its Bulletin. See: Léonce Rosenberg Papers: Correspondence relating to Cubism, 1914-1932. For information on individual artists associated with the Rosenberg galleries, see the Artist Files or relevant monographs in the Museum Library. Holdings of related and associated correspondence and documents may also be accessed at the following institutional repositories: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York [Paul Rosenberg correspondence with artists] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [Paul and Alexandre P. Rosenberg correspondence] Whitney Museum of American Art, New York [Paul and Alexandre P. Rosenberg correspondence] Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. Services des Archives et de la Documentation. Paris [Paul and Léonce Rosenberg correspondence] Musée Picasso, Paris [Paul Rosenberg correspondence with Pablo Picasso] Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris [Léonce Rosenberg correspondence and photographs] Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet, Paris [Paul and Léonce Rosenberg correspondence with Doucet] The Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. [correspondence from Paul Rosenberg to many different artists, art dealers and collectors] The Durand-Ruel Archives, Paris [Alexandre (père), Paul and Léonce Rosenberg correspondence] Manuscripts Department, The New York Public Library [John Quinn papers, Paul Rosenberg correspondence] The Getty Center, Los Angeles [Douglas Cooper papers, Paul and Alexandre P. Rosenberg correspondence] The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration [documentary collections and official correspondence concerning Second World War art looting, recovery, and restitution] [See: Holocaust-Era Assets: A Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1999)] Fondazione Giacomo Manzù, Ardea (Rome) [Alexandre P. Rosenberg and PR&Co correspondence]
extent	140 linear feet in 302 containers
formats	Business Papers Correspondence Financial Records Inventories Photographs
access	The records are open for research. For access to the papers, please contact The Museum of Modern Art Archives, the MoMA Archives will then forward the request for access to Mrs. Rosenberg, which will be granted to all qualified researchers.
record link	http://www.moma.org/learn/resources/archives/EAD/PaulRosenbergf
record source	https://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991005424089707141
finding aid	online and in repository
acquisition information	A Gift of Elaine and Alexandre Rosenberg
updated	03/16/2023 10:30:05
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