renewed National Portrait Gallery, London.

 National Portrait Gallery entrance

The National Portrait Gallery in London first opened in 1856, featuring just 42 portraits. Then in 1896 it moved to the site of the St Martin's Church burial ground which later became Martin’s Workhouse. But even since 1896, there was damage. In Nov 1941, two bombs fell on the gallery: one demol­ished a staircase; the second fell in the courtyard outside the Director’s flat.

Planning permission was granted by Westminster City Council to launch the best redev­elopment project in the Gall­ery’s long history, the Ins­pir­ing People Project. The refurb­ishment was designed by Jamie Fobert Architects in partner­ship with Purcell. £31.5 million had already been raised out of the £35.5 million target, so the work commenced on time in 2020.

National Portrait Gallery, display area

The new entrance and forecourt on the Gallery's North Façade created a more welcoming entrance and relieved the existing congestion. Three windows were altered to form doorways leading to a new, open entrance hall, which linked with the Ond­aatje Wing Main Hall and better connected the building. The forecourt was to be a great civic space for both the public and for Gallery visitors.

The East Wing of the Gallery, part of the historical 1896 building, was re-opened to the public in 2023. This included converting the office space back into impressive top-lit galleries on the first floor. The ground floor and basement levels were re-done, providing a flexible space with its own dedic­ated entrance and the extension of the vaulted Portrait Café. The project improved the quality of education at the Gallery via a much-improved Learning Centre.

Today, the gallery has 11,000+ works in its collection. So the project had to improve accessibility to the entire collection as well as upgrading the gallery spaces, while celebrating the existing architecture and decorative feat­ures. Maintaining a chron­ological approach, this project displayed works that were rel­ev­ant to a wider range of aud­iences and presented missing or hidden stories from British history. Set amongst the Gal­lery’s best-loved paintings were more works from the collection of 250,000 photos, from 1840 to now.

For the first 100+ years of its existence, The National Por­t­rait Gallery in London had no contemporary collection at all. Al­th­ough the total display space remains about the same, contemp­or­ary and C20th portraits, which were often displaced or moved be­cause of temp­orary exhibitions in the past, will be more consistently displayed in the future.

This redevelopment will better display contemporary works. So I have created links to some of my favourites: royalty, East End of London, and Cecil Beaton. Nonetheless I have selected five of the old favourites that visitors to the Portrait Gallery have loved the most. 

Chandos Portrait of William Shakespeare

The Chandos Portrait of William Shakespeare (1600-10) was named after the Dukes of Chandos who used to own the painting. It is the only artwork considered by ex­perts to have been painted of the playwright during his lifetime. It was the first painting donated to London’s National Portrait Gallery when it was founded in 1856.

Queen Elizabeth I

unknown artist

Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603), daughter of King Henry VIII, nearly didn’t become Queen at all. But when she did, she rallied her troops to fight off the Spanish Armada. She ruled for 44 years, never married, and fixed viewers on this painting with an authoritarian stare and her masculine-style doublet. This portrait (c1575) was painted by an unknown English artist.

Lord Byron (1788-1824) was painted by Thomas Phillips in c1835, presumably based on a painting done in Byron’s lifetime. The Rom­an­tic poet/politician travelled the world, became a Greek national hero after fighting the Ottoman Empire, had affairs with many women, died at just 36 and was famously summed up by lover Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. Byron sat for this portrait wearing Albanian dress, the portrait being recom­mended by his contemporaries for its likeness.

                                                  

Lord Byron by Peter Phillips

self-portrait of Sir Anthony van Dyck

The self-portrait of Sir Anthony van Dyck c1640, one of just three by the Flemish artist, was saved for the nation in 2014. The att­ent­ion to detail brought a piercing realism to his face, a cont­rast to the broader strokes on his dress. This disparity suggested eit­h­er that the painting was unfinished, or that Van Dyck was exper­imenting with his use of paint in this informal work.

The portrait of Thomas Carlyle was painted by Sir John Everett Mil­l­ais 1877. Carlyle was one of the great C19th intellects whose his­t­ory and philosophy were very influential. His harsh crit­ic­isms and uncertain temper became legendary. This recog­nised lit­erary leader eulogised heroes and strong govern­ments, mis­trusted technological progress and analysed the class struggle brill­iantly. Carlyle was a co-founder of the National Portrait Gallery. Exas­per­ated by the con­t­inued denial of women’s right to vote, suff­ragettes at­tack­ed museums and galleries in order to draw attention to their cause. In July 1914 his portrait was attacked with a meat cleaver by suff­ragette Anne Hunt. She was sentenced to six months in gaol, but was released early.

Thomas Carlyle, by Sir John Everett Mil­l­ais 1877

Alongside the architectural works, Inspiring People is the Gallery’s most extensive programme of activities to engage people onsite, online and across the UK. It is being achieved by building on exist­ing partnerships in locations from Plymouth, Belfast, Sheffield and Southampton.

The National Portrait Gallery had to remain closed during this major redevelopment project, re-opening in 2023.

Ivor Weiss: talented UK artist.

 The Waiting Room, 1964

The Discussion, 1968 

Spitalfields Life introduced Ivor Weiss (1919-86) who was born in Stepney in the East End of London near Cable St, son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who came from Bucharest. Ivor’s talent for draw­ing was apparent from an early age and en­couraged by his parents. 

His studies at the Northampton Rd Polytechnic London, were cut sh­ort by the outbreak of WW2. He ended up in the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to the North African campaign in Egypt. He then spent most of the war with the Brit­ish 8th Army in Malta where he was all­owed to study at the Malta School of Art in Valetta. There his tal­ents were first recognised at a serious level. 

When demobbed in 1946, he enrolled at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea, where he gained a diploma in painting. It was his time there and its long tradition of figurative art that had the greatest imp­act on his art. And then St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Rd, where he studied paint­ing and art history, like many other Eastern European artists. And he met his future wife, Joan Dare, also an art student and painter.

Ivor’s brother was a pilot in the RAF who had been seconded to Mont­gomery USA. After graduating in 1950, Ivor and Joan in­vited to Al­ab­ama to live. There they set up an art school called the Weiss Gall­ery. And he had 3 exh­ibitions in the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. To supplement their income they undertook commissions from commerc­ial clients, creating large murals and mosaics. And two of the child­ren were born in US. Unfortunately the normal family practice of holding multi-racial classes was at odds with Alabama’s segregated society. But only by 1955 had they saved up enough money to return.

On returning home, Ivor Weiss designed glass windows for the Stock Ex­ch­ange in Johannesburg S.Africa and a large mosaic in Maid­st­one. Ivor was offered a locum art teacher position at Lanc­ing Coll­ege near Brighton for six months. Then he and his family decided to move to Brightlingsea Essex, a sea­side town where he taught art at the local high school. In 1958 they had their third child.

To supplement his income, he moved into teaching evening classes and into art dealing from the Brightlingsea home. By 1965 they’d made enough money to buy a big house in Colchester Essex. Ivor con­tinued as the art dealer, while Joan did the restoration. Weiss was a mem­b­er of Colchester Art Society in the 1950s and again later on.

In the 1960s Weiss’ mature work came to the attention of the prest­igious Mayfair Gallery in Carlos Place, near Lon­­don’s Conn­aught Hotel. There he exhibited several times, plus in Cambridge, Harlow and at Ben Uri Gallery London.

Four Drinkers, 1968

The Onlooker, 1968 

Stylistically Weiss’s paintings provide an evident love for the feel and texture of the paint itself . The black lines, which form a st­ructure to contain the paint, have soft contours softened by square brush strokes. Line and colour merge together with dramatic effects.

Note his most powerful works, of Jew­ish rituals and traditions, con­veying streng­th of faith. These works showed the importance of family and communal ties. They were characters who, alth­ough grouped in social acts like eating and drinking, often appear isolated. Their eyes disappeared into the black lines, a metaphor for avoidance of eye contact and distance. For a non-religious man, Weiss was prod­ucing an impressive body of works of orth­od­ox Jewish men at prayer eg he had a solo ex­hib­ition at the Colch­est­er Art Society called Rabbi and Ritual in 1971. More recently one of Ivor Weiss’ rabbinic paintings was hung Sandys Row Synag­ogue, Spitalfields.

Ivor was multi-talented: he taught pottery and made enamel jewell­ery, text­iles and fur­n­iture. His work was exhibited at the R.A and the White­chapel Gallery as well as inter­nat­ionally, and some pictures are in the collections of Cambridge Uni and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. In the last decade of his life he became ins­pired by Judaic scenes probably influenced by Mark Gertler (1891-1939). 

A long struggle against cor­onary disease evoked memories of Ivor’s youth. These scenes expressed a need for an identity. And his trip­le bypass strengthened ever further his need to go back to his Judaic heritage and his East End child­hood. 

Ivor’s eldest son Mark took on the family business and Ivor was able to spend more time paint­ing both at home and on Italian holidays. How­ever in 1986 he died, at 67. His emotive paint­ings remained hang­ing in the family houses in storage with Joan, until she died at 92. Weiss Gallery was filled large bold paintings that possessed a tender hum­an­ity. These pictures embodied the cultural memory of the Jewish East End, speaking movingly of a good life and a great tal­ent.

Albemarle Gallery, in London's West End, organised a post­humous exhibition of his work in 2005, accompanied by a richly il­l­ustrated catalogue by Julian and Debra Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist.

Mark moved the Weiss Gallery to 59 Jermyn St, one of the last truly grand gallery spaces in London, where the Ivor Weiss show opened on Oct 2017. This Portrait of an Artist: Ivor Weiss Exhibition showed 31 works, many of them featuring Jewish symbols. 

I enjoyed reading Ivor Weiss: Memories of a Jewish Artist exhibition catalogue.

 Ivor Weiss rabbinal painting,

 donated to Sandys Row Synagogue. Dec 2017

Hood Museum of Art, New Hampshire

Eve Kahn wrote that Dartmouth College in Hanover N.H  gathered much of its experimental architecture along the edges of its cam­p­us, which was otherwise dominated by Georgian and colon­ial quadrang­les in brick and white clapboard. At the SE corner, a few imagin­ative buildings dedicated to the arts are hud­dled together. The best so far is the Hood Museum of Art, which was originally de­sig­n­ed in the 1980s by the influential post-modernist Charles Moore. Its gabled brick pavilions are crowned in a domed finial with a necklace of raised copper triang­les. Moore laid out a meandering path from the campus’ main green, meant to pique curios­ity. He flanked a gateway with layers of square columns, which all­owed glimpses of courtyards and galleries beyond. But the signage was poor, and the gateway’s brick, con­crete and copper surfaces aged poorly in winter.

Hood Museum of Art, 

Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire

Hood director, John Stomberg, says that for many students and visitors, Moore’s scheme was too obtuse. Stomberg supervised a $50 million renov­ation and expansion by the Manhattan firm Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects (of Barnes Collection in Philadelphia fame) that added badly needed classrooms, gal­leries and an atrium. The ever-growing permanent collect­ion (c65,000 pieces) spans from Assyrian palace reliefs to C19th Native American battle­field sket­ches, Papua New Guinea head­dresses, and a 2018 painting by Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu.

Each year, thousands of schoolchildren visit the gal­leries. There’s no entry fee, and few rival institutions nearby. Dartmouth und­er­grad­uates have to take some art classes, and have to visit a museum.

Pass the New Guinea wooden drums, masks and shields in poly­chrome swirling patterns, and through a forest of cross-hatched poles car­v­ed by Aboriginal Australians. A teacher and her class choose an elab­orately coiffed Af­rican mask to sketch. A 2016 teepee-shaped sculpture was made by Choctaw-Cherokee Jeffrey Gibson, topped with a birdlike cer­am­ic head and draped in bells.

Side galleries have more predictable works: Calder’s mobile, Rot­hko’s abstraction, Picasso’s Guitar on a Table (1912). In Perug­ino’s C16th tableau Virgin and Child with Saints, men gaze up at Mary and her infant on a pedestal; the paint­ing is studied in various Renaissance classes. Under-appreciated masters from the 19th and early C20ths were also displayed.

There are calm waterfront scenes by the African-American painters Robert Seldon Duncan­son and Henry Ossawa Tanner, and luminous por­traits of women by Cecilia Beaux and Lilly Martin Spencer. A grey-green stoneware jar was made in South Carolina c1830 by enslaved potter David Drake. Snakes sprout from the forehead and ribs of Harriet Hosmer’s 1850s marble bust of Medusa, near Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s C19th painting of an ancient Roman sculpture gallery.

Dartmouth School opened in 1769. soon starting collections eg fragments of mastodon tusks excavated in Kentucky and a ruffle-edged silver bowl made in Boston. Over the centuries, museum displays were installed at var­ious buildings, incl at neigh­bouring Wilson Hall, a 1880s turreted Romanesque former library. The Hood’s construction in the 1980s was financed by rich al­umnus Harvey Hood.

The Hood site is sloped and narrow, tucked between Wilson Hall and a 1960s theatre building, Hopkins Centre for the Arts, designed by modernist Wallace Harrison. The Hop has concrete archways and cantilevers. Moore described his contribution to the campus as unobtrusive, in reaction to modernists’ macho construct­ions.

The Hood attracted many gifts e.g New Guinea woodcarvings from L.A collector-dealer Harry Frank­lin and Native Amer­ic­an drawings from art historian Mark Lansburgh. But there was lim­it­ed room to show them. Classroom space was cramp­ed as faculty incor­p­orated art into the curricula and there was little flexible in­door space for events.

Stomberg arrived in 2016 from Mount Holy­oke College Art Museum, when construction plans and fundraising were underway. Charles Moore’s defenders were protesting against TWBTA’s partial eras­ure of the original building and gateway. TWBTA has pointed out that the firm has the greatest respect for Moore’s oeuvre – Tsien had been one of his architecture students in the 1970s.

Much of the 1980s brick skin has been preserved, along with the signature domed finial. The galleries and staircases still have Moore’s expanses of raw concrete and quirky ziggurat forms sculpted on the column capitals and light fixtures. A variety of dark and pale oak floorboards adds a sense of patina to the redone galler­ies. Sunlight streams in through skylights, staircase windows and the bay, which keeps visitors oriented as they roam through disp­lays that explore continents and millennia.

Reactions to the renovations have been fav­ourable, albeit with some traces of nostalgia. The lofty atrium, lined in the same brick, is already serving as a major campus attraction for stud­ents. Live saxophone music wafts upstairs. Stomberg says he is hop­ing to schedule some dance performances in the window, which has a sweeping view of the Georgian and Colonial campus.

Thank you Apollo for the history and the photos.

African Art
architecturalrecord.com

Modern American Art
Artforum

Assyrian Reliefs and ancient Greek pottery

artscope

An art critic, who visited the Hood since it re-opened in Jan 2019 after nearly three years and $50  million renovations, wrote this response: Clearly the old gallery was too dark, too small and poorly equipped for students and outside visitors. The gallery literature says the space of the old Hood was greatly expanded, and there are now 16 galleries instead of 10. Even more importantly the galleries are now beautifully light-fitted. And the Hood is much better connected to the university campus.

But the contents on display and the flow of visitors are less satisfactory. The new director clearly wanted to map and display the entire world of art his­tory, within one gallery! When I go to a gallery it is to see what they special­ise in eg Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, or Rus­sian decorative arts during the Czarist reigns. I can broaden my horizons in art history, but I don’t want to be involuntarily moved from one era to other eras within a single room, from cont­in­ent to continent without a cup of coffee in between. I agree with Murray Whyte: “In one of the mus­eum’s few unavoid­able paths, you have to pass through a coll­ect­ion of contemporary Native American art to reach the Hood’s trad­it­ional American collection”. It was confusing.

Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350

Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-50 is at the National Gall London June 2025. This might be less of a popular success than previous shows featuring paintings by eg Vincent Van Gogh, but then the C14th was a while ago. The National Gallery had mixed popular and academic shows before.

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–50,

book cover

The early C14th in central Italy was a golden moment for art and change. Artists Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti were forging a new way of painting. They painted with a drama not seen before. Faces showed vibrant emotions. Bodies moved in space. Stories flowed across panels.

Name a key Renaissance Italian city-state and many people will say Florence. But C14th Siena was wealthy and had a stable government, with plenty of patrons, both religious and secular. And as a centre for trade and pilgrimage, Siena artists were exposed to new ideas and styles. Ideal for talented artists to grow and to foster fame in Florence.

This London exhibition makes the case for the 1300-1350 era being a critical moment in Siena’s art history. Firstly, Siena was an important banking centre in Western Europe, leading to prosperity and to art patrons. This was true for private devotional objects or for more public displays of faith and wealth. Secondly Siena was a cosmopolitan place to meet new ideas. Eg see how Sienese artists encountered Gothic works from France and adapted them into their own context. Thirdly there is a whole section on textiles which came from the east and found their way into art works. Siena’s status as a trade centre and a pilgrimage route stop from Canterbury to Rome enabled this cultural exchange.

In the decades pre-1350, Siena was the site of fine artistic innovation and activity. Drawing on the quality collections of  NY Met and National Gallery London, as well as loans from other major lenders, the exhibition includes 100+ works by remarkable Sienese artists. It features paintings, metal work, sculptures and textiles. And this shared exhibition with The Met focuses on the artists noted above.

Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple, 1342

National Museums Liverpool

Why did the glory era end in 1350? The Black Death/bubonic plague was ruining Europe, Asia and Africa’s people. And being a trade centre, on a pilgrimage route, became dangerous; Siena suffered as most cities and towns did. It had been easier for artists to work on commissions in times of peace & stability. Fortunately Siena’s artistic efforts did have a lasting influence, post plague.

A public display of intimate objects was created for private devotion. With 100+ exhibits made by artisans working in Siena, Naples, Avignon and beyond, see some of Europe’s earliest, most significant art works. The London and the Met’s shows are used to bring together the very best.

It is important to focus on the artists singly. By seeing many examples of their work, visitors can examine their style, themes and the commissions the artists received. Focusing on artists who knew each other personally and professionally also gives a sense of Siena’s artistic community. The exhibition’s individual biographies allow viewers to consider how each career met the city’s civic, religious and political institutions. Each depiction of the Virgin Mary, patron saint of Siena, was important.

The art space suits the biographical approach and the curators’ notes are great. The visitors can set the scene with a few Byzantine-style icons helping them understand why these Sienese paintings are innovative and thematic. Duccio was the earlier of the artists, so start with him and then, in the central space, see the other artists...and their legacy.

What was confusing was the change of individual artists and broader themes eg the artistic and historic background first, followed by Duccio. His masterpiece, the Maestà altarpiece for Siena Cathedral, occupies the hub of the hub and spokes. 2 of the spokes focus primarily on major works by Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti. But look at connections between this Lorenzetti and sculptor Tino di Camaino. Then at religious devotional objects and the depiction of textiles, and work by the Lorenzettis.

Alas the exhibition kept switching to broader themes before it finished with the biographical approach. Surely the layout is chronological, explaining why the artists come in order, with contemporary trends inserting themselves in between. 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation 1344.
Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 122 x 116 cm
Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena

One of the interesting legacies of this generation of Sienese painters is how their influence extended beyond Siena eg to the Papal Court in Avignon. Martini played a pivotal role there, taking Sienese painting to Avignon in 1330s and dying there in 1344. His works helped transmit the elegance, linear refinement and emotional nuance of Sienese painting.

The emphasis on grace, storytelling and beautifully controlled surfaces marked the International Gothic style. While the rest of the exhibition shows Sienese artists featuring French Gothic & Northern European styles, see Siena’s influence on France’s, Bohemia’s and early Dutch art.

The Sienese commitment to story-telling and decorative richness left a clear mark, separate from the Florentine emphasis on anatomy and emotion. So while Siena’s Golden Age was short, its visual language lived on in courts and church settings where visual rhetoric overcame naturalism.

Duccio’s Maestà panels haven’t been together for ages. A great example is Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych where the diptych and triptych joined together in a multiple altarpiece. This devotional work was done for Card. Napoleone Orsini. Close it like a book, open it to an Annunciation scene or totally unfold it to reveal Christ’s tragic end. This show reunites them after being in the Louvre, Belgium and Berlin.

Duccio 's Maesta altarpiece, 1308-11

Siena Cathedral 

After centuries of separation, the exhibition reunited panels that once formed part of Duccio’s monumental Maestà altarpiece. Panels from Martini’s glittering Orsini work finally came together. Gilded glass, ivory Madonnas, illuminated manuscripts, rugs and silks show the creative energy flowing between European artists.

Many thanks to saltertonartreview. And enjoy Joanna Cannon’s book Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–50, 2024 

stolen art WW2: Cassirers, Camille Pissarro

 

Camille Pissarro, 1897

Rue St Honoré, Après-Midi, Effet de Pluie

Wiki

Millions of European Jews were forced to quickly sell their hom­es and businesses with WW2, their assets being confiscated by the Nazis. Works of art often seemed very significant to war heirs; they represented a last cultural conn­ect­­ion to their dead families. I particularly thank Marilyn Henry.

Sadly there had been an intentional campaign of con­fis­cation and destruction of European cultural prop­er­ty. Post-war, Allied Forces uncovered cac­h­es of looted goods and the U.S military returned mill­ions of art objects to the countries of the works’ origin. But those nat­ions were responsible for locating the actual heirs. Did they find them?

Once the Nazis sold the objects, the works entered the art market and were dispersed. Both the pre-war owner and the current owner may have had moral claims to the works, but legal ownership varied. Most Western legal sys­t­ems couldn’t deal with losses from other decades, and from oth­er coun­tries. Claims could be barred because Statutes of Lim­it­at­ion expired. Or claims and the rights of a curr­ent possessor were con­fused when art crossed borders. Add­ition­ally most nations had laws that protected good-faith pur­ch­as­ers. And who could define a forced sale? Only Germany recog­nis­ed some sales under duress.

In the U.S, most museums are private so ownership disputes were and are civil matters. The New York State Banking Dept estab­lish­ed its Hol­ocaust Claims Processing Office in 1997, to resolve claims without litigation. Since then, it accepted 142 art claims covering 25,000 objects. But the small staff of lawyers, linguists and hist­orians only secured the VERY slow return of 12 art works!

Camille Pissarro, 1897, Wiki

Boulevard Montmartre, Morning, Cloudy Weather

NGV Melbourne

Also in the U.S, the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal created a database linked to American museums, identifying thousands of items that had been in Europe from 1933-45. But while the portal could be searched by an artist’s name, country of origin and a painting’s name, it could not be searched by the family own­er.

An artwork’s ownership chain was often patchy. There WAS a res­ponsibility to participate in provenance research, but it was exp­ensive. The paper trail about prov­enance history was often deposited in: multi-national settings, private family memorabilia, govern­mental or museum arch­iv­es.

Some museums did no additional research to clarify the history, until a claimant came forward. Others eg North Carolina Museum of Art, took the initiative. Artworks with uncertain gaps of war-time ownership were reviewed by prof­essional provenance research­ers.

Museums and collectors are more willing to acknowledge legitimate claims than they were a decade ago, and to settle them without lit­ig­ation. But of course museums and collectors still dispute ten­uous claims. Most museums have put their entire collections on Web sites so now the assertion of claims is much easier than it was.

The size of wartime art thefts will never be known. The size of their return, through some heroic post-war efforts, was very great. But those efforts were eventually seen as incon­sistent with foreign policy, or reflecting cold war ten­s­ions by the 1960s. Only West Germany paid partial com­p­en­sation to some claim­ants; read Nazi Confiscated Art Issues.

Camille Pissarro, 1897

Boulevard Montmartre Spring
Courtauld Institute of Art

These days attention to war-era ownership is emerging in the art wor­ld. Major auction houses and museums have provenance re­search­ers, so sellers and buyers routinely check objects with the Art Loss Reg­is­ter - an international database of lost and stolen art formed in 1991 by auction houses and art traders. Un­for­t­unately this did not happen 50 years ago.. when scrutiny could have helped.

As more artwork is identified and located, other nations are quest­ioning the ownership of their holdings. A number of European count­ries eg Austria and Britain have enacted restitut­ion policies or established independent panels to review claims. However these re­view processes didn’t ensure the recovery of loot­ed art, even with clear evidence. Many claimants, especially the children whose parents died in the Holocaust, continued to be frustrated at the expense and time required to pursue a work.   

The same Pissarro painting in Lilly Cassirer’s Berlin flat, c1930.

artnet news

There were 15 Camille Pissarros (1830–1903) that were painted from his Paris hotel room window. One version was called Boulevard Mont­martre, spring morning,  moved through the hands of two of my favourite art dealers: Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris who acq­uired it from the art­ist in June 1898; and Paul Cassirer in Berl­in who acquired it from Durand-Ruel in Oct 1902.

Now consider Lilly Cassirer and her second husband Otto Neubauer, who swapped a beautiful Camille Pissarro impressionist painting for their free­d­om. A Nazi-appointed appraiser forced her to sell Rue St Honoré, Après-Midi, Effet de Pluie for $360 then. But when the coup­le fled Munich in 1939, they could not take the funds. Lil­ly’s first husb­and Fritz Cassirer, from the prom­inent German Jewish family of publishers and art dealers, had bought the painting from Pissarro’s agent in 1900.

Although the post-war German government voided the sale, Lilly nev­er re­covered the Pissarro. It was sold multiple times. In 1993, the Sp­anish government paid $350 million for the col­lection of industr­ialist-Nazi supp­ort­er Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and placed in their Museum.

In 2001 in the US, grandson Claude Cassirer (1921-2010) found the painting after years of searching and spent five years trying to recover the Pissarro through diplomatic channels. Finally Claude filed a federal lawsuit in California against Spain and against Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation to recover the paint­ing, now worth $40mill.   

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer and her beloved heir grandson Claude, born Berlin 1921

Claude's mother died flu 1921; Claude's grandmother loved and raised the child

itsartlaw

Claude Cassirer learned the painting was at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in 2000 and petitioned Spain and the museum to return it. See the legal proceedings: the District Court case was in 2006, the first appeal was 2009-10, the second appeal was 2013, the Spanish Law case was 2015 and a last decision was in 2019. Whose law should app­ly, Spain’s or the USA’s? In 2024 the U.S Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit awarded the painting to the Spanish museum; it was legally bound to decide the case using Spanish law because the thefts occurred there. The Cassirers appealed the 9th Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court which vacated the Circuit Court of Appeals decision. It will now have to reconsider the case in light of the new California law on holocaust survivors' right to reclaim looted art.

Wedgwood British pottery & U.S slavery

Portrait of Josiah Wedgwood

painted by Joshua Reynolds, Wiki

Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) lived in Stoke-on-Trent. His family were potters in Nth Staffordshire & by the mid-1700s, the closeness of clay and coal helped turn that narrow Midlands valley into a success­ful ceramics centre. Smallpox swept through Burslem in the 1740s and the Wedgwoods were harmed. Josiah’s right knee was badly dam­aged, permanently stopping him using the pot­t­er’s wheel pedal. Instead he was attracted by the design, in­novat­ion and busi­ness aspects of the pottery trade.

 
Wedgwood’s success advanced the Potteries region in Stoke-on-Trent into an industrial revolution centre, and started to make his name well known. Wedgwood’s fusion of art and industry depended partial­ly on great glazes, while he was a junior partner to Thomas Whieldon (1754–9)

His key breakthrough came in the mid-1760s with cream-ware. Building on the work of Enoch Booth, Wedgwood designed a clean, functional and el­egant alternative to Chinese ceramics. The smooth, fine-textured body, cov­ered with a bril­l­iant glaze, also allowed for easy decoration by paint­­ing with enamels. Thus his pottery could fol­low fashion.

Bentley medalllions of King George III and Queen Charlotte, 1777

E & H Manners

With rising incomes, the challenge for Wedgwood (and partner Liverpool merchant Thom­as Bentley) was how to get the cream­ware noticed by a smart public. Here was where Wedgwood’s marketing skills stepped in. Fashion was much superior to merit in many resp­ects, he believed; one had only to make choice of proper sponsors. And his best sponsor was German Queen Charl­otte, whose patronage of his tableware service turned cream­ware into Queens­ware and raised Wedgwood to Her Majesty’s Master Potter.

Most techniques in modern salesmanship, from prod­uct placement to the use of influencers, were utilised by Wedgwood and Bentley. Their West End showroom was more commercial gallery and show space than shop.

The first modern factories in Stoke-on-Trent ensured efficient delivery of ornamental pott­ery and tableware, and new levels of quality prod­uct­ion. Then came Black Bas­alt and Pearlware. Finally Jas­per was invented in the mid-1770s, the most orig­inal of all Wedgwood’s ceramic mater­ials. The pale-blue Jasper body with white neo-classical reliefs show­ed his years of ex­per­im­entation with clays, kilns, cobalt and iron ox­ide, in his base­ment laboratory. It won him a Fellowship of the Royal Society!

Beautiful Jasperware teaset

Sunday Times

  
Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) had co-founded the Lunar Society in 1765. It met monthly at Matthew Boulton’s Soho House in Birm­ingham, to debate the first discoveries and observ­at­ions. Along with poly­maths Joseph Priestly and James Watt, this was a dis­cuss­ion group where intellectuals, thinking industrial­ists and natural philos­ophers could get together in a rad­ic­al environ­ment. Wedgwood was a good fit for that rad­ical circle of C18th thinkers, keenly ex­amining minerology, ast­r­onomy and med­icine. Apparent­ly the origins of the Engl­ish Enlightenment were not in Oxford or Cam­brid­ge, but in the Midlands. However The Lunar Society never discussed party politics, even though its members were largely sympathetic to liberalism and internationalism.

In 1780 Wedgwood joined the Society for Constitutional Information and became friendly with new reformers. This organisation of social reform­ers was dedicated to publishing political tracts and educating cit­izens on their lost ancient liberties. It promoted the work of camp­aig­ners for parliamentary reform eg Tom Paine.

Wedgwood’s politics were born of radical patriotism: a deep love of  his country along a fearful sense that the promise of Great Britain (liberty under the law, Protestantism and progress) was being undermined. As a democrat, Wedgwood supported the rebel MP John Wilkes in his campaigns for parliamentary reform and franchise spread.

When the Bastille was stormed in 1789, Wedg­wood was excited by the pros­pect of radical change in France. The pol­it­icians thought that as a man­uf­act­urer, Wedgwood would be ruin­ed if France had her liberty, but he risked it. Wedg­wood stopped mak­ing his Jasper medallions of Queen Marie Ant­oi­nette, favouring a new figure of France embracing Liberty.

His most lasting contribution to C18th radicalism was probably his camp­aign ag­ainst the Transatlantic slave trade. Strange, since for decades Wedg­wood & Bent­ley’s success had been closely intertwined with the rich­es deriv­ed from the Atlantic slave economy! Not only was the grow­ing wealth of the Georgian consumer market buoyed by slavery’s prof­its, but the tea rit­uals Wedgwood supplied were linked to slave owners’ estates.

Still, by the 1780s Wedgwood was convinced of slavery’s innate evil. Voted onto the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, he used his design and marketing skills to create the defining symbol of anti-slavery activism: white Jasper with an enslaved African in black relief. This symbol was called the Em­ancipation Medallion. Whether worn in bracelets or as hair pins, fashion promoted the cause of justice and freedom. By displaying the extent of public support for the anti-slavery movement and by reminding civil soc­iety of the suffering endured by Af­ric­­an sl­av­es, the medallion actively participated in the abolition campaign. [Slavery in the British colonies was abol­ished in 1807] 

Em­ancipation Medallion

Am I Not a Man and a Brother, 1787

In Sept 1792, Earl Macartney left Britain aboard HMS Lion, via Cape of  Good Hope to Tientsin-Tianjin, the Chin­ese port city. The passeng­ers included c100 of Georgian Brit­ain’s finest scientists, nat­ur­al phil­osophers and draught­smen. There were also c600 crates of objects carefully chosen to showcase Britain’s industrial might. Mac­artney’s mission was to convince China’s Celestial Court to open their huge markets to British imports, to excite a taste for Eng­lish workman­ship. The Wedgwood vases prom­oted Britain’s belief in its design and manufacturing prowess even further.

Since Macartney sailed to China (1790s), Wedgwood’s pottery earned nat­ional pride for British art and des­ign. His tech­nol­ogy and de­sign, ret­ail prec­is­ion and man­ufacturing efficiency trans­for­med prod­uction and ushered in a mass consumer society. All the C18th’s great themes were em­bedded in his art: enlight­en­ment, liberty and nat­ional identity. Now his prog­ressive int­er­nationalism may also become a source of patriotic pride

Read Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Trans­formation of Britain, Allen Lane, 2021.

Miracles & Madness in German art Guardian

Nolde's Crucifix, 1912
was in Städtisches Museum in Halle

I’ve not read The Gallery of Miracles & Madness: Insanity, Art and Hit­l­er’s First Mass-Murder Programme by Charlie English, 2021 because I was more interested in the fate of Germany’s degenerate artists than in men­t­al patients in asylums. So here is Kathryn Hughes’ fine review.

In 1922 Heidelberg psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn’s book Artistry of the Mentally Ill fired up the art world. Since the C19th, doctors in asylums pored ov­er the drawings, paintings and sculptures of their patients. Could doctors spot schizophrenia just by looking at how someone coloured in the sky? Could they discern neurosis in an patients who simply painted models with incomplete faces?

But using art diagnostically was not Prinzhorn’s issue. His interest in the patients’ art was aesthetic and philosophic eg when a delusional Ham­b­urg metalworker Franz Bühler produced The Choking Angel, an intense version of God’s messenger with a shining crown and a torturer’s face, Prinz­horn seriously compared the work to Albrecht Dürer’s!

Bühler, Angel, 1909

The Guardian

This was certainly not art to soothe the soul, but of course soul-soothing was not what mod­ern art was about. From the late C19th, Gustav Klimt, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele focused on describing the agony of modern selfhood. Feel the ris­ing tide of madness in Munch’s horrified scream or Schiele’s warped bodies. And it was that madness, a heroic refusal to fall for the easy remedies of civilised soc­iety, that Prinzhorn’s asylum artists easily accessed. While sane art­ists scraped off layers of social condit­ioning and acad­emic train­ing before they could reach Freud’s hidden parts of themsel­ves, asylum in­mates had a shortcut to their unconscious. Rather than being patronised, these artists of the interior were to be revered and copied.

Paul Klee, teaching pictorial theory of form at Bauhaus, greeted the images in Prinzhorn’s book rapturously. In these oddly shattered shapes, with jagged outlines, perspective shifts and incomplete­ness, Klee saw an authent­ic response to all post-WW1 world crises. See his Prophetic Woman (1923), a prim­itive figure in­debted to Lamb of God, a dense geometric pen-ink drawing by an insane banker.

Angel of Suffocation by Franz Karl Bühler, 1909 on book cover of:

Artistry of the Mentally Ill: Psychology and Psychopathology of Configuration

Hans Prinzhorn, Amazon

Among the Surrealists, Prinzhorn’s book also succeeded. Max Ernst drew inspiration from August Natterer, an Upper Swabia engineer who believed he was a direct Napoleonic descendant. Natterer’s intensely detailed, densely coloured works, which came to him in a vision, provided in­spiration for Max Ernst’s 1931 Oedipus. Salvador Dalí borrowed from madmen but, to his credit, tried hard to go insane as a way of improving his own painting, never quite managing it.

Having failed 2 entrance exams to pre-WW1 Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, self-taught art­ist Adolf Hitler scraped a living by copying postcards of pleasant Munich views and selling them in bars. Until he ended up in a Bavarian prison, screaming at the admitting psychologist! A ps­ych­ologist had assessed Hitler as a mor­bid psychopath, with hysteria and an inclin­ation toward a mystical mind­set. Hitler was imprisoned for his part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, in which he led 2,000 Nazi storm­troopers in a failed attempt to end the Weimar Republic. His fort­unes were about to change and within 10 years he was Chancellor of Germany, but his ideas about art did not change. In fact they hard­ened into a dogma that be­came a founding principle of the Third Reich’s German culture and pure Aryan race.

Hitler’s outrage at modern art focused on abstract, distorted and angry works. This worsened in WW1’s devastating aft­ermath in Germany, exaggerated colours, expressive brush strokes and gory subjects only ex­acerbated Germany’s societal divisions, and econom­ic and political cris­es. For Hitler, on the other hand, Healthy Art was an art that painted exactly what was in front of its nose, plus some ex­tra swagger. People should look like Ary­ans, with firm limbs and rosy cheeks, and land­scapes should resemble the tourist postcards he once churned out. So the Füh­rer introduced legislation to en­sure that painters followed his rules.

Any art that did not follow these rules was Degenerate, seen as a deliberate ploy by the Jewish-Bolsheviks to destroy Germany. To ensure this didn’t happen, Hitler ordered the confiscation of all trouble­some art from Ger­man galleries and museums in 1937. This collected treasure, includ­ing a number of pieces by the Prinzhorn artists Klee, Marc Chagall and Otto Dix, was put on display in the Degenerate Art Exhibit­ion that year. Lat­er iterations of the immensely popular show cont­rasted modern­ist art with art made by the Heidelberg patients, in order to show the conn­ect­ion between biological and artistic degeneracy.

Otto Dix. Storm Troops Advancing under Gas, 1924.

Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf.

By this time the patients were extremely vulnerable. Most profess­ional artists whose work featured in the Degenerate Art Exhib­ition had gone. Klee was in Switzerland, Chagall, Dalí and Ernst were in New York, while Oskar Schlemmer and Dix were in hiding. So there was no-one left to speak up for the asylum artists when, in autumn 1939, Hitler set out to exterminate them.

The rationale was eugenics. Psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia were heritable, so it made sense to purge the un­for­tunates who “rep­res­ented life unworthy of life”. Actually cost-cutting was possibly the more immediate driver: long-term psychiatric care cost money and, as Ger­many prepared for war with Brit­ain, the money could be better spent on tanks. 30+ of Prinzhorn’s artists were among the 250,000 in­mates put into gas chambers early in the war. The lucky ones got away with forced st­er­ilisation.

Great Exhibition of German Art catalogue cover, 1937. 

ancient, classical, proud

Charlie English’s book was as beautiful as it was bleak. Thank you Kathryn Hughes

Julia Cameron, Roger Fenton, Qn Victoria

To celebrate two of the leading artistic figures of the C19th, The British Royal Collection announced that 22 of the best photographs of contemporaries Roger Fenton (1819–1869) and Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) were travelling to three venues across the UK in 2011. The photos were selected from the Royal Photograph Collection, having initially been collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, two royals who lent their enthusiastic support to the exciting new medium of photography.

Henry Cole, the first Victoria and Albert Museum director, seemed to have been the link between Julie Margaret Cameron and the Queen. Cole knew the photographer and had sat for her in the past, so he arranged for her to have a studio in the museum where she could take portraits in an ideal setting. Already in 1858, the museum had the world's first international photographic exhibition and I am assuming this was where the Queen first saw Cameron's amazing work. The V & A must have remained supportive of Cameron's art. In 1865, the Museum acquired 63 of her works.

Princesses Alice and Victoria, Queen Victoria’s daughters,

at Balmoral, 1856, 

by Fenton

Queen Victoria maintained her interest in photography, even after she became a widow. And one of her most important collections came from Julia Margaret Cameron. The 2011 exhibition appropriately included six of Cameron’s powerful portraits of male sitters, part of the Great and the Good of C19th Britain.

May Day by Cameron, 1866

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The Victorian Web

Cameron was attracted to subjects who'd been successful & famous via their careers, but her portraits were unlike that produced by contemporary, studio-based photographers. Artist G.F Watts helped Cameron to create portraits that expressed the individual character of the sitter, rather than a mere record of the sitter’s facial features. The slight blurring of each image was adopted by Cameron as an artistic technique, to achieve a more painterly effect and to suggest a sense of energy.

Roger Fenton (1819–1869) was trained as a barrister, not as an artist. Yet in 1852 his photographic work was exhibited at the Society of Arts, in the first British exhibition devoted exclusively to photography. Fenton was appointed the first official photographer of the British Museum in 1854 and achieved widespread recognition for the photographs that he took of the Crimean War in 1855.

He was introduced to Victoria and Albert at the first exhibition of the Photographic Society. And soon Fenton was invited to Windsor Castle to photograph the entire royal family. This brought great happiness to both sides - Fenton's unprecedented access to the family life of the royal family must have influenced his artistic future and Fenton in turn increased the royals' great interest in photography.

The Royal Collection exhibition includes Fenton’s final work for the royal family, completed after the photographer’s return from the Crimea in 1856. Fenton had travelled to Balmoral to photograph the newly completed royal residence in Scotland and members of the Queen’s household.

The royals also purchased a number of Fenton’s commercial photos, including his views of Windsor Castle and the surrounding parkland taken in 1860. Since the opening of two railway stations in Windsor, a visit to the Castle had become a popular trip from the capital. So Fenton may have intended his work to be sold as a quality souvenir or to serve as illustrations to guidebooks.

I wondered why the nation-wide tour started in Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House in Cumbria. Possibly because the Lakeland Arts Trust's own collection already contained photographs and photographic objects relating to the development of photography in the Lake District.

The book, 2010, by Sophie Gordon.

Photo of Thomas Carlyle by Cameron.

The accompanying book, Roger Fenton • Julia Margaret Cameron: Early British Photographs from the Royal Collection by Sophie Gordon, was published by Royal Collection Publications in 2010. Rather than being a distant patron, the book illustrated how Queen Victoria's owned a much loved set of Cameron portraits. And it showed Fenton images of Windsor Castle and the royal children.

The first photographs dated back to the first half of the C19th and after that, techniques developed rapidly. But photography as a fine art was met with some resistance by cultural critics. Perhaps it was Queen Victoria's support that pushed photography from mechanical art to fine art.

Gertrude Stein & friends: life in art.

Gertrude Stein at her salon, 1920

Invaluable

Baby Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and the family moved to Vienna and Paris, so Gertrude spoke German, French and English well. Her father moved them back to USA in 1879 but died in 1891, so older brother Michael supported them. Brother Leo moved back to Europe, immersing himself in art and in 1903 Gertrude also returned to Paris, sharing a left bank art studio. Michael sent money each month, making their bohemian life-style sustainable.

Thus Rue de Fleurus became the first permanent home for the Steins, with Gertrude remaining there for 40 years. They provided the informal focal point for contemporary art in Paris, inspiring, supporting and buying art. Their home became a salon, where art works by Picasso, Renoir, Gauguin and Cezanne shone. Saturday evenings enabled young, impoverished artists to examine the family’s notable art collection in their salon.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

 1923 

How did Leo & Gertrude become so learned about art? Art scholar Bernard Berenson introduced Leo to Paul Cézanne and helped Leo buy a work from Ambroise Vollard's gallery. In 1904 Berenson welcomed and taught the Steins in Florence. In 1905 the siblings saw the Manet Retrospective in Paris and bought Portrait of a Woman with a Hat by Henri Matisse. This purchase encouraged Matisse, just when avant-garde artists were being criticised by the press.

In 1905 Pablo Picasso met the Steins at Clovis Sagot’s informal art gallery. The first Picasso oil paintings that Leo bought was Nude on a Red Background! Then they bought some Renoirs, 2 Gauguins, a Daumier, a Delacroix, an El Greco and Cézanne water colours. The friendship with Matisse cooled only when Gertrude developed a greater interest in Picasso. Fortunately Michael Stein continued to collect Matisse.

Etta and Claribel Cone were wealthy, elegant, educated Baltimoreans who inherited vast wealth in their 20s. The Steins and Cones travelled to Florence in 1905 where Berenson introduced the Cones to Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck’s art. The Steins took Etta to Picasso’s studio while he was doing Gertrude's portrait, and she urged Etta to buy Picasso drawings.

The Steins were introducing artist to artist, patron to artist, patron to patron. In 1905-6, Leo and Gertrude invited Picasso and Matisse to their studio to meet each for the first time. In Jan 1906, Michael and Sarah Stein took Etta and Claribel to meet Matisse at his Seine flat, and both sisters bought as many works as they could. Gertrude also sold the Cones some of her prized pictures including Delacroix, Cézanne and a Stein salon group portrait by Marie Laurencin.

In the US, Harriet Lane Levy (1867–1950) had been a popular journalist in San Francisco. She’d already visited Paris before, the first being with her friends Michael and Sarah Stein. But this time she sailed to Paris with friend Alice B Toklas. They arrived in Paris in 1907, living together until Toklas met Gertrude Stein.

Toklas was invited to a weekend party at Steins’. She was besotted, soon becoming a regular visitor and going to the galleries with Gertrude. In 1910 Alice moved into rue de Fleurus home and became Gertrude's right hand woman, reader, critic, typist and publication handler! She was Stein’s lover & assistant for ever!

By 1909, photographer/gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz was introduced to the Steins. By then Stieglitz knew the works of Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne well, and began to negotiate with Leo and Gertrude to exhibit their huge collection. Other young modernist painters joined in eg Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Robert Delaunay and Guillaume Apollinaire.

New Eastern Europe Jewish artists arrived in Paris from 1904 on. Starving in their Paris garrets, Steins’ salons filled with food-drink were much appreciated. The Americans were all secularist Jews, but they wanted to help the Jewish artists, especially Max Weber, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, Chaim Soutine, Sonia Delauney and Italian Amedeo Modigliani. The fact that the Steins, Cone sisters, Alfred Stieglitz, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Alice B Toklas spoke Yiddish or German from home must have helped the lads integrate.

Levy returned to the US in 1910, at 43, and lived her life collecting and art philanthropy. We know which artists Harriet patronised in Paris and which paintings she bought in the USA, because she became a very important benefactor at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. See Derain’s Paysage du midi 1906; Matisse’s Corsican Landscape 1899 and La Table au café c1899; and Pablo Picasso’s Scène de rue 1900.

Readers will love Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein and Their Circle by Harriet Lane Levy, 2011.

Gertrude understood the radical implications of Cubism and was keen to link her status with it. Spanish cubist Juan Gris visited in 1910s, finding Stein accepted the more radical art styles that others quickly rejected. But a family rupture followed. Leo was a dedicated Matisse patron, not a Cubist fan. Gertrude and Alice visited Picasso’s studio where he was at work on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the work that marked the end of Leo's support for Picasso. In 1912 Leo took the Renoirs and many of the Cézannes to Italy, permanently! NB the Steins had established the first Museum of Modern Art at rue de Fleurus but the salon wound down with Leo leaving and war breaking out in 1914.

On her return to Baltimore in 1921, Claribel Cone rented a large flat in Etta’s building and arranged it as a private museum for their growing collection. This excellent Cone collection entered the Baltimore Museum of Art when Claribel died in 1929.

27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris

Note the plaque, next to the door

Leo Stein died in 1947, Gertrude Stein died in 1946 and Alice B Toklas in 1967. Gertrude and Alice B Toklas were both buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The Stein collection had been constantly divided among relatives, friends, dealers and collectors, making it difficult to track. American collectors John Quinn and Albert Barnes both had access to the Stein collection and acquired significant paintings from them. In 1913, Gertrude traded large, early Picassos to dealer Kahnweiler in exchange for other paintings she wanted. Thus I’m sure the Steins were hugely successful as salonieres and patrons, more so than collectors. The 2012 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's exhibition brought together important paintings for the first time since pre-WW1 Paris.

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade, 2025. Wade wanted to uncover the woman behind the celebrity, as cultivated by Stein herself. But it was this very celebrity that eclipse her work. Wade found new archive material to shed more light on Stein’s relationship with Alice B. Toklas, and on the origins of her undeniably radical writing.

Wade examined the creation of the Stein myth eg posing for Picasso's portrait; central to Bohemian Parisian life hosting people eg Matisse & Hemingway; racing through the French countryside with Alice Toklas; dazzling American crowds on her sell-out tour for her sensational Autobiography. But admirers called her a genius, sceptics a charlatan.

Yet Stein hoped to be remembered not for her personality but for her work. From her deathbed, she begged Toklas to secure her place in literary history. Using unseen material, Wade uncovered the origins of Stein's radical writing, the real Gertrude Stein as she was when alone.