4 Blandine Landau Lucas Giles The Brummer Gallery

4th Annual Study Day Medieval Sculpture: Collecting Medieval Sculpture
The Brummer Gallery:
Buying and Selling Medieval Sculpture in New York 1914-1947
Blandine Landau,
Conservateur du Patrimoine, PhD. Candidate, Duke University – Université Lumière – Lyon 2
Lucas Giles, Duke University
Paris, November 24th 2017

1.a. Who were the Brummer brothers?
Picture of Ernest Brummer, undated
Brummer Gallery Archives, The Cloisters Library and Archives, New York.
Picture of Joseph Brummer on his
French Identity Card, 1920
Brummer Gallery Archives, The Cloisters
Library and Archives, New York.
Picture of Imre Brummer in Cairo, 1913

Joseph’s first years in Paris
“Brummer bought what he could, sold in order to buy more, and finally, when the impulse to own works of art had gained
ascendancy over the need to create them, he took the plunge and became a dealer.”
Walter Pach, Queer Thing, Painting: Forty Years in the World of Art, New York, 1938
Henri Rousseau, Portrait of Joseph
Brummer, 1909, National Gallery,
London
Outside view of the Académie Colarossi, known
as the « Grande Chaumière », Wikipiedia.
Class at the Académie Colarossi, ca. 1901.
Picture of the Académie Matisse with Henri Matisse and his students, 1909,
Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.
Joseph Brummer might be the man standing in front of the window on the right.

Picture of Ernest Brummer, undated
Picture of Joseph Brummer on his
French Identity Card, 1920
Picture of Imre Brummer in Cairo, 1913

1.b. The Paris store
Location of
the Paris
store

In August 1912 the Brummer gallery participates to the Internationale Kunstausstellung
des Sonderbundes in Cologne and sells modern pieces.
Cover of the catalogue and view of one of the rooms, 1912, Rheinisches Bildarchiv,
Cologne.
In February the Brummer
gallery buys a 17th century
painting by J.B. Peeters at the
Haro sale.
In July the Brummer gallery
sells modern pieces to Russian
collector Sergeï Chtchoukine.
In August the gallery hires an
English teacher.
In November the gallery buys
a « statue gotique en piere »
with Antique dealer Brimo.
Pictures of the Livre de Caisse, 1912
Brummer Gallery Archive, The Cloisters Library, New York.

Graph showing the activity of the Paris store compared to the New York store (focusing on Medieval pieces)
Observations:
- The Paris store buys and sells a lot in its early years, probably pieces of
low value among which very few items identified as Medieval.
- In New York the trade of Medieval pieces follows the general trend, at
least regarding the quantity of items: it occupies a larger share of the
activity than it did in Paris. The share in the budget remains to be seen.

1.c. The Market in New York
“One of the most significant developments in the art market after 1900 was the role
played by American collectors and the dealers who supplied them with works of art.”
Encyclopedia Britannica
Picture of Joseph Brummer’s
American passeport, 1925

Main Art Galleries in Manhattan in 1914 :
location and type of art they sold.
C. Diercke Einzelkarte, New York und Umgegend, 1914
Duveen: 56th Street/5th Avenue
Ehrich: 707 5th Avenue
Kleinberger: 709 5th Avenue
Wildenstein: 647 5th Avenue
Knoedler: 556 5th Avenue
Durand-Ruel: 12 E 57th Street
Seligmann: 705 5th Avenue
Kraushaar: 260 5th Avenue
Bourgeois:668 5th Avenue
Macbeth: 237 5th Avenue
Montross:550 5th Avenue
Folsom:396 5th Avenue
Charles Daniel: 2 W 47th Street
Milch: 939 Madison Avenue
Red : “classical art” (i.e. European Art from
the Renaissance to the 18th century)
Blue: Modern European Art
Green: Modern European and American Art
Yellow: American Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art

George Grey Barnard, the Cloisters and the Cuxa affair
George Grey Barnard touring his cloister in
New York, 1921.
Article about Barnard’s affair in Cuxa, The New York Times, June 15, 1913
John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Map of some of the « guilded age mansions » showing a Medieval and
Renaissance inspiration in Manhattan in 1914.
Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, 1883, 1 West 57th Street
Mrs. William B. Astor House, 840 Fifth Ave.
Waldo House, 867 Madison Avenue
The “Petit Chateau”, 660 5th Avenue

The regulatory and legal context
One of the many sale receipts in the
correspondence between Joseph and
Ernest, 1935.
Brummer Gallery Archives, The
Cloisters Library, New York
The regulatory and economical context.

d. Finding the righ hinges: the strategy of the Brummer Brothers
The Brummer Gallery, at 43 E 57th Street, ca. 1925.

Exterior of the Brummer Gallery, 43 East 57th
Street, New York, ca. 1925.
The Cloisters Library and Archives, New York
Medieval Works on display at the Brummer Gallery,
ca. 1925.
Invitation to the opening of a Zadkine exhibition at the Brummer Gallery

Picture of Joseph Brummer’s
American passeport, 1925
James J. Rorimer, curator at The Cloisters, in 1967.
© Yousuf Karsh
The Cloisters Library and Archives, New York.
Henry Walters, founder of the
Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore
William Randolph Hearst, considered to
account for 25% of the Art market in the
1920s and ‘30s, his collection is the heart
of the LACMA
Grenville Winthrop, owner of a collection of about
4,000 items given to the Fogg Art Museum after his
death in 1943.
Alastair Bradley Martin, owner of the « Guennol collection ».
About a hundred of its pieces were presented as long term loans at
the Metropolitan Museum and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
William Forsyth, assistant of Rorimer
and later curator at The Cloisters

The Brummer Gallery records, Digital Collections Website, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Brummer index card, French Romanesque head

Sample data set (500 items) Added variables based on return on investment

Object breakdown according to the sample dataset (500 items)

Object breakdown in terms of accumulative sale price (left) and return on investment (right)

Bronze Venus sculpture, Greek and Roman bronze category, bought for $5 and sold for $450

Buying patterns according to object category: private collectors vs galleries

The Roaring 20’s The Great Depression

Hearst Castle, central coast of California

Cloister purchased by William Randolph Hearst

Gallery sales according to year (from the larger dataset: 1091 items)

Sales according to object category: Post-MET sale (blue) vs pre-MET sale (red)

4 Blandine Landau Lucas Giles The Brummer Gallery

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4 Blandine Landau Lucas Giles The Brummer Gallery