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| Fall 2003 Newsletter
An interview with Antony Griffiths, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum IFPDA Honors Dick Solomon In Print: IFPDA Catalogue Raisonné Author Program Committee Events 2003 Meet Our French Members In Memoriam -- Gertrude Weyhe Dennis 1919-2003 An interview with Antony Griffiths, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum
MR (Mary Ryan): How did you come into the field of prints and arrive at the British Museum? AG (Antony Griffiths): My route to prints was accidental. My starting point was that as a schoolboy I wanted to work in the British Museum. I was lucky enough to get a job there in a gap year before going to university; it was pure accident that I was posted to the Department of Prints and Drawings. I expected as a classicist to be sent to the Greek & Roman department. Anyway I found it fascinating, and after Oxford I spent two years at the Courtauld Institute in London University doing an MA in Art History, specializing in Italian painting of the High Renaissance -- a period and school that I have hardly touched since! Again, luck played a huge part. About six months before I finished my course, a job was advertised for someone to look after the print collection in the BM. The notice said that no one over the age of 28 could apply -- it would be illegal to do this today -- and I got it. I joined at the end of July 1976, a few weeks after completing my course at the Courtauld and two days before my 26th birthday. It was my first job, and I expect it will be my last. Having joined as Assistant Keeper, I became Deputy Keeper in 1981 and Keeper in 1991. But I have always retained a specialization and overall responsibility for the print collection, though of course all my colleagues know far more than I do about their own areas. Martin Royalton-Kisch, for example, is our Rembrandt expert, not me. MR: Who are your print world mentors? AG: I was told a story that my job was created by Eleanor Sayre, who terrified John Pope-Hennessy -- the then-Director -- by claiming, rather unfairly, that the prints were being totally neglected in the BM and that he must do something about it. What was certainly true was that I had to teach myself. There was a great tradition of print scholarship in the BM in the first half of the century, and I would single out Campbell Dodgson -- who died before I was born -- not only as the first British art historian who earned respect even in Germany, but as a great moral exemplar. He devoted his whole life and his entire fortune to the Department. But when I arrived in 1976, the major recent publications and exhibition catalogues came from America -- especially Washington and Boston. They showed what might be done. And I soon discovered the writings of W.M. Ivins and Hyatt Mayor, who remain unmatched for the breadth of their outlook and the quirkiness of their approach. I learned more from reading them than from any other print scholar. But I must add that any ability I might have to think straight comes from the training I was given by my Oxford tutors in classics and philosophy, whom I still revere. MR: When was the British Museum founded, and when did the prints and drawings department open? AG: The BM was founded in 1753, and this year is our 250th anniversary. The foundation collection contained some prints as part of a huge library, but the real start came with the bequest of the magnificent collection of C. M. Cracherode in 1799. We were first set up as a separate department in 1808, and the first Print Room opened soon after. Regular acquisitions from government funds began in the 1830s, and the great age of expansion continued until the 1890s. MR: What are the great strengths of the British Museum's prints and drawings collections? AG: The Department is certainly not the best collection in the world; the collections in Paris and Vienna are certainly superior, and there are staggering riches in Berlin and Amsterdam. The drawing collection is remarkable, with eighty Michelangelos, several hundred Dürers, nearly a hundred Rembrandts and so on. The print collection is very wide-ranging, with large sections of portraits, historical prints, topography, fans, playing cards and bookplates as well as the great names such as Rembrandt, Marcantonio, Lucas van Leyden and so on. There is hardly one major figure by whom we do not have a good collection, and usually it is as good as anywhere else. MR: Does most of your funding come from the government? AG: The British Museum was established as a national museum by Parliament, and has historically been entirely dependent financially on the U.K government. Private support extended to gifts and bequests of objects for the collection, but no further. In recent years all this has had to change under the pressures of government cuts and rising public expectations of the service it expects from museums. In my early years, the Museum had £1.4 million for purchases from the government grant; this year we have £100,000, of which about £11,000 comes to my department. We are actually spending ten or twenty times that sum, and the difference is made up entirely from outside support. That creates more work. Unfortunately, at the same time department staff numbers are decreasing, and we have about 25% fewer people than we had seven years ago. MR: How much attention is given to your department in comparison to other departments at the British Museum? AG: Within the BM, we are one of eight departments. We are by far the largest, with over two million works, but because we have no permanent gallery, we are also the least visible. Many visitors leave thinking that the BM is only a collection of archaeology and antiquity. In fact, it is as universal a collection as exists anywhere. Unlike many American museums, it is not a museum of art, but of cultures, and our specialist collection of Western works on paper can sometimes seem to sit rather uncomfortably in that context. But all of us find the context to be immensely stimulating, and I would never wish to work in isolation. We share the same problem as every print department in the world in that so few members of the public instinctively understand what you are talking about when you speak about prints. MR: How accessible is your collection? AG: Anyone can come into the Print Room during our opening hours, 10 AM to 1 PM, 2:15 PM to 4 PM, five days a week. We only ask them to produce some ID and they can then see anything. Most works can be retrieved within a few minutes. We serve about 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a year, including student parties who come in and are taught in front of actual works. We mount three to five exhibitions ourselves, lend to 70 to 80 exhibitions worldwide, supply 3,000 to 4,000 photographs a year and reply to any public enquiry we get from anywhere in the world. Over the past 25 years we have published more than 50 catalogues, many of them now standard works. To do this I have a staff of 17.5, of whom eight -- including myself -- are employed as qualified scholars. The rest are support staff, many of whom know a great deal. We do all registration, packing and loan operations within this team, but conservation and photography is done by other staff. I should add that we teach an MA course in Print History jointly with University College London, and have recently, thanks to a generous endowment in memory of Michael Bromberg, begun to take on two interns a year. The fellows have so far come from six different countries. This is our contribution to trying to train a new generation of print curators and teachers. On a personal level, and for similar reasons, I also devote time to helping David Landau on Print Quarterly, both as a member of the editorial board and as an author. MR: In some museums prints, drawings and photographs are segregated. How are they collected and seen at the British Museum? AG: The prints and drawings have always been kept together since 1808. We make no distinction between drawings and watercolors either. A few photographs drifted into the collection during the 19th century but no one ever pursued them actively. The resulting anomalies were finally cleared up a few years ago when we transferred all our photographs to the Victoria and Albert Museum. MR: How is the print collection stored? AG: The biggest and most often neglected concern for any museum must be its collection infrastructure -- its storage, arrangement and cataloguing. All of these were in poor state when I arrived. We have now completely re-housed and rearranged the collection, which has entailed moving a third of the collection to an outhouse, creating a new taxonomy -- rearranging the contents of many thousands of boxes and portfolios -- and writing a completely new placing index requiring over 25,000 new slips. This took nearly five years of work for me and much help from my staff. I now feel that the collection is no longer being damaged by poor storage, and that the organization and index are sound and can be built on in the future. What is still lacking is a catalogue. With over two million works, my predecessors took the view that any card catalogue would need as much space as the collection itself and so never made one. It is only the computer that has solved this conundrum. But since there was no catalogue, only a summary register of acquisitions, it is a massive task to create one, and we are having to work directly from the prints in the boxes. We began in 1990, and have so far got all the drawings and all the modern prints on the system. We are now turning to the very complicated problems of cataloguing the pre-1900 prints; the complexity is partly because there are no recognized standards for cataloguing prints, unlike books. My chief preoccupation is overseeing the quality of the data entered, and finding the funds to employ more staff to do the work. Any time left is devoted to cataloguing prints myself, a task that I greatly enjoy. I have so far managed to catalogue all the French caricatures. MR: What exhibitions and catalogues have you been involved with at the British Museum? AG: When I joined, the greatest weakness of the collection was the 20th century, and it still is I fear. So Frances Carey and I joined forces in a series of exhibitions on different schools of modern printmaking as a deliberate way to generate acquisitions. We began with French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist prints, of which Campbell Dodgson had bequeathed us a great collection, continued with American prints and followed with German, Czech, British, Scandinavian and French. We are currently acquiring Italian prints. Since the arrival of Stephen Coppel, I have tended to concentrate more on the Old Master prints, and have written catalogues of German printmaking in the age of Goethe, with Frances Carey, and British 17th century prints. I seem to have published on rather a wide range of periods and countries. This is becoming less common these days, but I have never wished to specialize further. Prints are quite specialist enough, and life seems to me too short not to be interested in as much as possible. MR: What are you working on now? AG: I am about to deliver the three Panizzi lectures at the British Library in November. I had to choose a subject relating to books, and selected late 18th century French book illustration. I had always distantly admired this, but never worked on it. I took a calculated risk that they were now so unfashionable and understudied that it must be possible to find out something new and say something fresh. They will be published next year, and my readers can judge whether I have succeeded. MR: Under your guidance, the British Museum has been one of the only European institutions to have collected American 20th century prints from 1900 to 1950 in a serious manner. Why? AG: The simple answer is because they are so good, and any collection with pretensions to international coverage has to have them. I remember David Kiehl once remarking that this period in America was like Holland in the 17th century: there were not only some major masters, but there were dozens of minor ones, each of whom was capable of turning out some wonderful images. My own introduction to them came when I first visited Boston in January 1979, and Barbara Shapiro took me to the basement where Childs Gallery showed their prints. On the wall was Martin Lewis's "Spring Night Greenwich Village" for $1,200. I had never heard of Lewis and had no authority to buy anything, but they very kindly let me take it back with me on approval. To my great surprise my boss, John Gere, loved it, the Director loved it and the Trustees loved it. So much so that Frances, I and John Gere were able in little over a year to put together enough material to make an exhibition in 1980. This had a catalogue that we wrote in less than six weeks, and is now utterly obsolete. But we have continued acquiring American prints when we can, and are preparing a new exhibition on American prints circa 1905 to 1955. Stephen Coppel will write a much better catalogue for it. MR: How has your interest and taste in prints changed through the years? AG: The great thing about prints is that the field is so vast that there is always something new to discover. A recent enthusiasm of mine has been French caricature. There has been so much emphasis put on the British tradition that the equally great French tradition has been overlooked, particularly since the French themselves show so little interest in it. I particularly admire the prints made between 1797 and 1819, which to my mind is the great age, much superior to the French Revolution or Daumier and the 1830s. Some dislikes have remained constant. I still dislike most of the etching revival, as well as all prints that substitute technical proficiency for artistic quality. MR: You started an annual newsletter a few years ago. Do you have a broad base of international supporters at the British Museum? AG: The danger for any Print Room is invisibility. Even those who make it as far as the Student Room cannot really know what the staff is doing. So we thought that we had better communicate with those who might be interested in our affairs through a newsletter. The IFPDA very kindly sponsored it for the first eight years, and we now distribute more than 1,500 copies. It has helped establish and confirm our base of supporters, who come from all over the world. Americans have been particularly generous, and we owe great debts of gratitude to those who have helped us. We try to deserve such support by working on as international a level as we can manage. Mark McDonald, for example, is running in the department the huge project to publish the inventory of the print collection of Ferdinand Columbus, illegitimate son of Christopher, which is fully funded by the Getty Institute. We have contributors from four countries, and the 800,000 word, two-volume book will be a landmark in print studies when it is published next year. MR: What do you most enjoy about your work? AG: I most enjoy the contact with a great collection, which always gives me a fresh kick when I feel ground-down. And equally the pleasure of working with a wonderful team of colleagues in the Department. I would be delighted if my successors in a hundred years' time found that my acquisitions had anticipated their interests, in the same way as I am continually amazed by how well my Victorian predecessors bought. -- MARY RYAN [back to top] IFPDA Honors Dick Solomon IFPDA members have long known Dick Solomon as the president of Pace Editions and the driving force behind Pace Prints, his pristine 57th Street gallery which has been a New York print institution since 1968. It can always be relied upon to serve forth a varied menu of exquisite impressions ranging from Old Masters to the latest publications from the Pace workshop. We also all came to know Dick better during his tenure as IFPDA president from 1998 through 2001.
After eight years in Boston, Dick returned to New York to accept a position at Clairol Inc. where he ultimately became the advertising manager for hair coloring products. In 1968, Dick and Arne Glimcher produced their first print publication with Lucas Samaras. It was followed by a number of other projects, and by 1970 Dick came to the conclusion that they "were good at publishing prints but not at selling them." Dick soon departed Clairol, and Pace Prints started (in a single room) at 32 East 57th Street, where it has remained to this day. The gallery later grew to include Modern and Old Master prints. An expert and loyal sales staff directed by Kristin Heming, Alexandra Schwartz and Carlo Bella has obviously helped Dick overcome his prior selling shortcomings. The turning point for the gallery came in 1975 when Dick started working with Jim Dine and then, in 1977, with Chuck Close -- two artists committed to printmaking. In 1985, Dick expanded his publishing endeavors by moving the shop from 23rd Street to Spring Street and inviting the much-loved and admired Joe Wilfer to join his organization. Along with Ruth Lingen, Bill Hall, Kathy Kuehn and Julia D'Amario, they formed the core of a print shop that gained the loyalty and admiration of many artists. With the addition of the world-renowned master printer and editor Aldo Crommelynck in 1986, the shop added etching to its existing strengths in papermaking and relief printing. In 1998, the workshop moved again to West 18th Street, adding photogravure and state-of-the-art digital facilities as well as new staff-members Jean-Yves Noblet and Andre Ribuoli. In 2001, Yasu Shibata brought his Ukiyo-e printing skills to the workshop. Dick has maintained a long and successful relationship with many of the great names in 20th-century art and has continued to add to a group of respected younger artists. He attributes his longevity in this somewhat volatile and difficult industry to a close and satisfying working relationship with Arne Glimcher at PaceWildenstein. He credits the staffs at the print shop and the gallery with maintaining the trust and confidence of the many artists he has worked with. Dick, who obviously relishes his job, has said, "The most fun about being in this business is that every day is a new challenge." When I asked Dick what he considered his greatest accomplishment was at IFPDA, he answered, "hiring Ali McVeigh!" When pressed, Dick admitted to having a sense of satisfaction at helping to establish the Print Fair as one of the major events of the art world. He credits the free opening night for helping to make the Fair "the place to be" on that particular evening in New York. He is also satisfied having established an active, committed and energetic network of Board and Committee members. In November 2003, many of Dick's friends and colleagues at IFPDA will come together for an evening to honor and thank him for his contributions to the Association during his thirteen years on the Board and four years as Association President. Dick Solomon is the recently elected President of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA); of course, he received his baptism of fire at the International Fine Print Dealers Association! -- DIANE VILLANI [back to top] In Print: IFPDA Catalogue Raisonné Author This fall, Andrew Fitch, Director of Fitch-Febvrel Gallery of New York, looks back on 32 years as a print dealer. In almost as many years, the artist-printmaker Erik Desmazières, whom Fitch has represented since the beginning, has realized a long and distinguished career as one of France's great living artist-printmakers. Recently Fitch took a moment to reflect on his life with prints and the gallery's publication of the third volume of the catalogue raisonné of the prints of Erik Desmazières, which covers the artist's work from 1991 to 2001 (Volumes One and Two were also published by the gallery in 1981 and 1991, respectively). BC (Beth Cullom): When did you first discover Desmazières' prints? AF (Andrew Fitch): The artist Philippe Mohlitz [also represented by Fitch-Febvrel] first showed me his work in a group show at a Paris gallery. I saw his first three prints and wasn't that impressed. This was in 1973 and Desmazières was only 24. From his first aquatint in 1978 to now, the technical progress is huge. He is a very knowledgeable artist -- the son of a diplomat and someone who knows art history. And it comes through in his prints. BC: But you say he's self-taught? AF: Yes, he took a few municipal night courses with the print teacher Delpech, but he is essentially self-taught. Like so many great printmakers, he has learned by doing. BC: What started you on the project to write the catalogue? AF: It was perhaps premature and a little cheeky, but I knew if I didn't get all the details cataloged early, we'd never be able to do it later. Erik was keeping track of some information in the beginning, but I knew it would be lost over time. BC: Desmazières' work incorporates the fantastic and imagined, a close attention to detail and naturalism and vast expanses where all these elements combine. And then there are the six quiet prints of the atelier of his printer René Tazé. AF: In the Atelier prints ["L'Atelier René Tazé I - VI"], really in "L'Atelier VI" especially, you have all the qualities you want to see: an emphasis on space, good light, and really good passages of line and draftsmanship. All Desmazières' subjects start with space. He always wants to convey a feeling of volume. "Atelier VI" is also a true textural tour-de-force. [Author's note: "Atelier René Tazé VI" was recently purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.] A graduate of Yale, Fitch studied French while competing as a collegiate champion wrestler, winning the NCAA title in 1959. In Paris on a Fulbright scholarship to study French theater, Fitch discovered French prints. He returned to New York for graduate work at Columbia University and began teaching at Columbia while continuing his wrestling career, which culminated at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Later in the 60s, caught up in New York protests against the Vietnam War, Fitch decided to leave the country after participating in a draft card burning protest in Central Park. He returned to New York in 1969, newly married to Dominique Febvrel, artist and paper conservator. BC: So how did you begin as a print dealer? AF: I started buying and selling to dealers in New York. I realized that galleries even in the same block didn't know anything about other galleries, so I found that I could buy from one and sell to another. I started part time still working at Columbia, but pretty soon it started to take off. BC: Take off, that's great. AF: Well, we were surprised, but I don't mean a "Tunick" take-off! BC: When did you open your public gallery? AF: In September of 1977 in the same location that we're in now at 5 East [5 East 57th Street, 12th Floor, New York City]. BC: What was your first exhibit? AF: My first show was before we opened the gallery. It was in April of 1972 at the Maison Français at Columbia. The show was Escher and Mohlitz. I had a chance to meet with Escher twice. Back then I thought I was taking a risk coming with a few thousand dollars and leaving with a few prints. If I'd been smart I'd have borrowed and come with twenty or thirty thousand dollars. The show opened in April, a month after Escher died. BC: What attracts you to French prints? AF: The great graphic tradition. You know, Desmazierès is a Vice President of the Société des Peintres-graveurs Français. This is a venerable artists' organization formed in the 19th century. Rodin, Bonnard, Cassatt, Maillol, Whistler, Vuillard are all among past members, as was Redon, another French artist whose prints we've specialized in. BC: So what does the future look like for you and for print collecting? AF: I am, I suppose properly, considered a reactionary. It's not that I don't like abstract art, because I do. But the embrace of conceptual art, à la Duchamp, has been at the expense of what is most important in art, personal expression. We try very hard to represent these artists, but we're still swimming upstream. I can only hope that the tradition of my artists is given an opportunity to have its day or even to have a comeback. This idea of photo-bound and conceptual art, it has taken hold so there is this bias that novelty is the name of the game. It's not. It's soul, and hand and thought that matter. -- BETH CULLOM [back to top] Program Committee Events 2003 Spring programs of 2003 took place in Chicago, Iowa City and New York. On April 23, Domenic J. Iacono, Associate Director of Syracuse University Art Collection, spoke on William Blake (1757-1827), at an exhibition of his works from the University Art Collection at Lubin House, 11 East 61st Street, New York City. Included in the show were pieces from Blake's illustrated books, Songs of Innocence, The Book of Job and John Gay's Fables. During the Iowa Print Fair, on April 12, the Committee sponsored a talk by Stephen Goddard, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas. This program was held in conjunction with the exhibition, Remembering the Family Farm: 150 Years of American Prints, shown at the Iowa Museum of Art. On May 9, Martha Tedeschi, Curator of Prints and Drawings, gave a tour of the new Print Room at The Art Institute of Chicago. Arranged by Pat Albano of Aaron Galleries, included were a visit to the newly renovated print study room and the restoration department; the Institute's Prints and Drawings Department is exceptional among American museums in having its own restoration facility. Also visited were the Department's three different storage areas, planned to the extent that every pastel, usually framed, is individually stored, face up on pullout shelves, to prevent loss through gravity or mishandling. Nadine Orenstein, Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, spoke to IFPDA members and their guests at the Museum's Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) exhibition on July 9. Held in The Robert Lehman Wing, the show of drawings, prints and paintings was the first major retrospective of the work by Goltzius, a Netherlandish mannerist. Plans for Fall 2003 include New York Print Fair Programs. Saturday November 8 is the panel discussion, Contemplating Rembrandt's Journey: Moderator, Catherine Bindman, art writer; curator panelists, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann of The Pierpont Morgan Library, Ger Luijten of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Nadine Orenstein of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Thomas E. Rassieur of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Sunday November 9 talk is Collecting Prints for Museums: A Perspective from MoMA, by Deborah Wye, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art. The 2003 IFPDA Program Committee is comprised of Pat Albano of Aaron Galleries, Madeleine Fortunoff, Dan Lienau of The Annex Galleries, Paula McCarthy Panczenko of Tandem Press, and Anne MacDougall of G.W. Einstein Company, Inc. and Susan Teller, Co-Chairs. -- SUSAN TELLER [back to top] Meet Our French Members This March, the second edition of the Salon International de l'Estampe (a print fair) was held at the Espace d'Auteuil in Paris. Of the thirty-six European dealers showing, six French members of the IFPDA were present: Lida Apelbaum of Galerie Grillon, Didier and Anne Martinez of Galerie Dumas-Simart-Martinez, Alain Cano of the Galerie Laurencin, André and Angela Candillier, Xavier Seydoux, and Hubert Prouté his two daughters, Sylvie Tocci Prouté and Annie Martinez Prouté of Galerie Paul Prouté.
Galerie Grillon was founded in 1981 on the rue de Seine, the present day "heart" of the Parisian print world. Lida got her start in 1975 helping her parents at their Flea Market stand, which specialized in French bronzes and the occasional print. After studying at the Ecole de Louvre and training as a physiotherapist, Lida decided to focus on 19th century Belle Époque prints, her first love. She has recently added a selection of contemporary French prints to her inventory, including a strong group of Delaunay, Esteve and Atlan. With help from Lida's daughter Lisa, the Galerie Grillon showed rare early Steinlen at the Salon, with a fine impression of the "Modele Lisant," 1896, and "L'Ombrelle" from 1898. Like many Parisian dealers, Didier Martinez is the son and grandson of dealers. The Sartoni branch of his family sold books and topographic and decorative prints on the Quai St. Michel in the 30s. His father and mother continued with mainly decorative prints at a gallery which still exists on the rue St. Sulpice. After working with his parents, Didier also worked with Bernard Shapiro for a year, gaining broader experience with illustrated books and photographs. He decided to set up his gallery in the Drouot area in 1981. Galerie Dumas-Simart-Martinez sells prints of all periods -- Old Masters as well as a large choice from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Because many of the prints the gallery sells are inexpensive, they try to maintain a high volume of business through their web site, www.Martinez-estampes.com. In general, this site proposes prints or drawings ranging in cost between 70 and 300 Euros. At this year's fair, they were particularly proud of a fine impression of Bonnet's "Tete de Femme" (1731), an engraving in color after Boucher "in the crayon manner." Alain Cano of the Galerie Laurencin sells Old Master and Modern prints. The only IFPDA French member not based in Paris, Alain began his gallery in Lyon in 1977 in the quarter of Antique dealers. He got his start at a stand in the Flea Market in Paris while studying literature at the Sorbonne. The strength of his gallery is 18th and 19th century prints with a particular emphasis on good Piranese and Callot. Because he is based out of Paris, Alain often finds prints from the provinces which make for an original mix. At the Print Fair he brought a large group of drawings and prints by Victor Prouve, the father of Jean Prouve and a friend of Emile Galle. In May, the Gallery will organize an exhibition of watercolors and drawings in the Lyon space. Although André Candillier is the son of dealer Albert Candillier (who had a shop on the rue des St. Peres called the Nouvel Essor), André received his formative experience working for Mlle Rousseau, herself daughter of dealers and a well-respected expert for Drouot Sales, particularly on material from the 18th century. In this capacity, André was responsible for researching and organizing catalogues for public sales from 1970 to 1975. With his wife, Angela, he opened his own gallery on the rue de Seine in 1976. They have always sold both Old Master and Modern prints of the 19th and 20th century up to 1950. André's presentation at the Print Fair was typical of his preferences with beautiful Canaletto and Dürer, mixed with Villon, Laboureur and Braque and a rare, early color woodcut by Beaufrere. Xavier Seydoux is perhaps the youngest French dealer to have joined the IFPDA. He is a graduate of the Ecole de Louvre and has a law degree. His first experience came with the auction house Tajan, where he prepared catalogues and researched print sales covering all periods. In 1998 he became a partner with Pierre Sanchez. Together, from 1997 to 2001 they ran a gallery at 43, rue Jacob, near the rue de Seine area. With Pierre, Xavier has published the Dictionary of the Salon des Beaux Arts (1800-1950) and the catalogue raisonné of Heymann. Since 2001, Xavier has been working alone. His special interest seems to be Old Master prints although there are always prints from the 19th and early 20th centuries in his boxes. At the Print Fair he displayed some rare engravings by the Maitre S (Alexander van Brugal, 1520-1530). Paul Prouté S A on the rue de Seine is most likely the French IFPDA member least in need of introduction. Victor Prouté, grandfather of Hubert Prouté, began dealing in 1876. His specialty was views of Paris and his gallery was on the rue St. Jacques near the Sorbonne, the historic center of image sellers since the Middle Ages. Paul, Victor's son, moved the gallery to the rue de Rennes and eventually, in 1920, to the present address. Hubert began working with his father in 1940 and is now succeeded by his two daughters, Sylvie Tocci Prouté and Annie Martinez Prouté. The Proutés sell Old Masters as well as 19th and 20th century prints and drawings, and are one of the few French galleries to produce three catalogues every year. The most important appears in March, timed for the "Salon de Dessin" and the Print Fair. The Proutés' shop is a mecca. This reporter remembers learning about image quality while comparing different impressions of the same print found in their shop boxes in the 1970s. This year, they were particularly proud of their impression of Rembrandt's "La Mariee Juif," Piranese and Tiepolo as well as good Rodin and Lautrec. When asked about new trends in collecting, Hubert Prouté remarked with a smile that there was much more demand for biblical illustration of the 16th century now that the new Hollstein had appeared. -- JUDITH PILSBURY [back to top] In Memoriam Gertrude Weyhe Dennis 1919-2003 The passing of Gertrude Dennis in January of this year saddens her friends within an inside group of the art world. In 1919, Gertrude's father, Erhard Weyhe, opened an art book shop which bore his name. The shop on Lexington Avenue, a few blocks north of Bloomingdales, soon added prints to its inventory, prompting Erhard to open a gallery on the building's second floor. Gertrude became involved with the gallery in 1958 and took over its management in 1965. In 1991 she became my neighbor in The Buckingham at 101 West 57th Street. It was there that she met with museum curators, collectors and friends. The gallery championed such artists as Peggy Bacon, Howard Cook, Arthur B. Davies, Adolf Dehn, Mabel Dwight, Emil Ganso, Rockwell Kent, Louis Lozowick and Mahonri Young. It also was recognized as being the first to exhibit the prints of Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco and Alfredo Siquiros. After Erhard's death in 1973, Gertrude's daughter, Deborah Dennis Kiley, took over the book business and transferred it to her home in Maine. She now plans to take her mother's place in the print world, and for the first time the Weyhe Gallery will be showing in the Print Fair in November. -- SYLVAN COLE [back to top] The International Fine Print Dealers Association, a nonprofit organization, is dedicated to ensuring the highest ethical standards and quality among fine print dealers, and to promoting greater appreciation of fine prints among the public. 15 Gramercy Park South, Suite 7A, New York, NY 10003, tel 212-674-6095, fax 212-674-6783, e-mail ifpda@printdealers.com |
