Jacques Seligmann & Cie

Jacques Seligmann & Cie (also known briefly as Jacques Seligmann & Fils) was an international art and antiquities gallery privately run by the Seligmanns, a family of German émigrés. With offices in both Paris and New York, the company fostered American interest in European art and facilitated acquisitions for some of the earliest American collectors of Cubism and modern art.

Jacques Seligmann, who had moved to Paris in 1874 to work as an auctioneer, founded Jacques Seligmann & Cie on rue des Mathurins in 1880. Seligmann opened a larger Galerie Seligmann in 1900 at 23 Place Vendôme and hired his brothers Simon and Arnold. While Jacques handled purchases, Simon worked as the company’s accountant, and Arnold was responsible for the firm’s client base. In 1904 the Seligmanns opened a New York office at 7 West 36th Street and developed a client list that included the likes of the Russian Stroganoff family and the prominent American collectors William Randolph Hearst, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Walters. In 1908, Jacques acquired the Hôtel de Sagan at 57 rue Saint Dominique, likely with the proceeds from the sale of the Mathurins location. In 1912, a family dispute split the company between Arnold and Simon, who both remained at the Place Vendôme gallery, while Jacques made the Hôtel de Sagan his business headquarters and added a gallery space at 17 Place Vendôme (this site later moved to 9 rue de la Paix). The location of the New York branch moved several times before finally being established at 5 East 57th Street.

Up until the outbreak of World War I, Jacques Seligmann & Cie focused on the sale of decorative arts from the Byzantine and Renaissance periods in conjunction with trends of the time—enamels, ivories, tapestries, and eighteenth-century French furniture. Jacques’s son Germain became partner in 1920, changed the company’s name to Jacques Seligmann & Fils, and took on the role of president at the New York office. When Germain became president of both company branches in 1924, following the death of his father, he aimed to modernize the family business and began selling paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Honoré Daumier, and Vincent van Gogh. (The company name also reverted to Jacques Seligmann & Cie in 1925.) While sales in Europe stagnated immediately following the war, American collectors sought European contemporary art after the success of the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art (also known as the Armory Show).

Since the Seligmann family disapproved of the shift toward selling modern art, in 1927 Germain surreptitiously formed a subsidiary, The International Contemporary Art Company Inc., with the help of dealer César Mange de Hauke; the name of the subsidiary soon changed to de Hauke & Co., Inc. De Hauke was responsible for purchasing contemporary European art from Galerie Pierre, dealer Etienne Bignou, and the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, as well as the Leicester Galleries in London—and selling to the Marie Harriman Gallery, M. Knoedler & Co., and private clients like Louise and Walter C. Arensberg, Lillie P. Bliss, Frank Crowninshield, Duncan Phillips, and Howard Putzel. The success of modern art sales pleased the Seligmann family and permitted Germain in 1930 to dissolve de Hauke & Co., Inc. and replace it with Modern Paintings, Inc., a fully-fledged department of the New York branch. Throughout the early 1930s, landmark works of modern art passed through the Seligmann storage rooms and galleries: Fernand Léger’s Contrast of Forms (1913–14; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Georges Braque’s Soda (1912; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) were acquired from the Galerie Pierre in 1930; Juan Gris’s Checkerboard and Playing Cards (1915; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift from the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection) was purchased from the Leicester Galleries in 1929; and Amedeo Modigliani’s Reclining Nude (1919; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) was acquired with the help of Bignou in 1932.

Modern Paintings was dissolved in 1934 and absorbed by Jacques Seligmann & Cie and the Tessa Corporation (a company established by various members of the Seligmann family who owned inventory of the original Paris-based company). In 1937, with the political situation in Europe growing more contentious, the Seligmanns moved their company headquarters from Paris to New York. For the next decade, Germain would focus company interests on selling and exhibiting French modernism. After successfully acquiring Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and six other works by the artist from Jacques Doucet’s widow in 1937, Jacques Seligmann & Cie organized a series of exhibitions specifically spotlighting Cubist works lent by private clients: Twenty Years in the Evolution of Picasso, 1903–1923 (1937), which featured Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Man with a Guitar (1912; Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Ma Jolie (1913–14; Indianapolis Museum of Art), among other works by Picasso; Juan Gris, 1887–1927 (1938); and 1910–1912: The Climactic Years in Cubism (1946).

The Seligmann galleries and family holdings in Paris were seized by the Vichy government in 1940 and mostly sold through private auction. Following the war, the Seligmanns attempted to recover their looted artworks. After Germain’s death in 1978, Jacques Seligmann & Cie closed its doors.