Volume 46, Number 14 · September 23, 1999
His Son the Art Dealer
By Richard Dorment
Matisse: Father & Son
by John Russell
Abrams, 415 pp., $39.95
Three days before Christmas in 1924, the twenty-four-year-old younger son of Henri Matisse arrived in New York with the intention of selling modern art to Americans. His success in doing so can be measured by the time he was to spend in America and by the fortune he was to make there. On his arrival, Pierre Matisse had a big name, little money, and no English. After his death in 1989, his heirs sold the inventory of the gallery that bore his name to Sotheby's and the Acquavella Gallery for $142.8 million. As well as becoming president of the Art Dealers Association of America, for sixty-five years Pierre was a one-man conduit through whom much of the best contemporary European art found its way into our public and private collections. Miró, Balthus, Dubuffet: all were given their first one-man shows in America at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in the Fuller Building on the corner of Madison and 57th Street.
Review, 4082 words
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