A Parisian Picture Dealer

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31440, 5 August 1967, Page 4

A Parisian Picture Dealer

Diary of An Art Dealer. Rene Gimpel. Hodder and Stoughton. 446 pp. Index. Illustrated.

Rene Gimpel was one of the most successful Paris picture dealers during the period between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second World War. In his diary he gives a dose insight into the life of a sensitive, highly-cultured person in the then artistic capital of the Western world. Mr Gimpel’s penetrating and often humorous comments on paintings, the painters, writers, art collectors and well-known public figures of the day make interesting reading. It was the day of the rich American collector—the Fords, Rockefellers and the Carnegies. At times Mr Gimpel records in detail his meeting with the great, while sometimes a short sentence succinctly sums up the character of a well-known personality—or his wife. Mr Gimpel’s perspicacity is most marked, and even when

his comments are disparaging they are rarely bitter. They are perhaps the more revealing because Gimpel appears to have kept his diary with no thought that its contents would ever be published, for it is a. mixture of personal “aides memoirs” (such as the price paid for a certain painting) and vivid, spontaneous comments on individuals. It is, however, as a businessman, an art expert able to attribute paintings and expose forgeries that Mr Gimpel emerges' so clearly. Mr Gimpel was a traditionalist in his approach to art and preferred the French masters of the 18th century. But, in spite of this penchant, he had the ability to recognise genius among modern painters. The entries dealing with such artists as Picasso, Braque, Manet, Matisse, Renoir and Utrillo are revealing. His friendship with Proust is commented on in detail—their mutual admiration for Vermeer’s paintings was the beginning of a long friendship. It is not only artists and collectors who come to life in these pages; for instance, the

pen portrait, of the French statesman, Clemenceau, the “Tiger,” is so different from that of the cartoonists of the day and he is shown to have had a real understanding of art.

Mr Gimpel remarks that it is strange that one can move with such ease in the atmosphere of words but with such difficulty among the “almost tangible Images of painting.” Rene Gimpel as a critic of art comes near to a spiritual penetration of this mystery. The diary, by virtue of its acute observation and engaging style, is a valuable record oi the social life of the period as well as being a unique commentary of famous paintings in many parts of Europe and America. Mr Gimpel’s observation that Rembrandt did not know how to draw hands is an example of how those interested in the paintings of the Masters can learn much from this book.

Rene Gimpel’s father was an Alsatian Jew, who moved to Paris because he was opposed to the treaty of 1871. His son and grandsons had the same spirit of revolt and after the fall of France in 1940 they worked for the Resistance. Rene was eventually interned by the Nazis and spent his time in a labour camp teaching his fellow internees to speak English—in preparation for the liberation. He was sent to Germany, where his health finally broke down, and after four years’ confinement he died.

During these terrible years Mr Gimpel showed great serenity and a readiness to help others, even when he knew he was dying. For once the Germans were unable to break the spirit of a sensitive, cultured prisoner. Here was one man they could not defeat, a man of courage and self-sacrifice.