Wildenstein, Georges

Date born: 1892

Place born:   Paris, France

Date died:  1963

Place died:   Paris, France

Art dealer, connoisseur and art historian. Wildenstein was the son of Nathan Wildenstein (1851-1934), the founder of the art gallery that bears their name.  The younger Wildenstein began working in his father's firm in 1910, assuming the head in 1934 at his father's death.  Wildenstein added masterworks of the Impressionists and post impressionists to the gallery's holding, developing vast holdings from which top collectors could chose.  He also developed the firm's legendary art reference libraries, considered to be among the finest in the world. Wildenstein took over as publisher of the Gazette des Beaux Arts from its founder, Charles le Blanc, and acted as such until his son, Daniel (q.v.), took over.   In 1924 he founded his own weekly serial, Arts.  Though Wildenstein was less interested in twentieth-century art, he assisted the Surrealists in the 1930s, lending them a gallery in which to stage their International Surrealist exhibition.  In 1932 Wildenstein hired architect Horace Trumbauer to design the New York galleries at East 64th Street, in a regal five storey building.  As an art dealer, Wildenstein was famous for turning a profit on great works of art.  Between 1923 and 1955, Wildenstein sold one Toulouse Lautrec painting five times, its price having jumped from $1800 to $275,000.  Wildenstein was an authority on Gauguin and wrote knowledgeable texts on Ingres and Chardin.  The (London) Times' obituary described Wildenstein  as Duveen's heir, not entirely a complement.  Wildenstein's heirs have had to fend off accusations that the elder man accepted stolen paintings from the Nazis during the French occupation to sell for them.

Home Country:   France

Sources:  Bazin, Germain.  Histoire de l'histoire d l'art; de Vasari à nos jours.  Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, pp. 246-251; [Obituary] Gazette des Beaux-Arts 62 Series 6 (July 1963): p. supplement I-II

Bibliography:   Ingres. London: Phaidon, 1954; Ingres. London:  Phaidon Press, 1956; Manet. Paris: Les Beaux-arts, édition d'études et de documents, 1932; Chardin. Zürich:  Manesse, 1963; Gauguin. Paris: Beaux-Arts, 1964.