Max Pellequer

Max Pellequer was a French banker and collector who assembled an important collection of modernist artworks in the 1920s and 1930s, including a number of significant early works by Pablo Picasso.

Pellequer was a co-founder and director of the Banque Nationale du Commerce et de l’Industrie. In 1920 he married Francine Level, the niece of the dealer and businessman André Level. Pellequer and his brother Raoul were key investors in André Level’s Galerie Percier, established in 1922. The position granted him access to the gallery’s artists, including Picasso, whom he met in the 1920s. Pellequer later became Picasso’s private banker, financial advisor, and close friend, and Pellequer assembled a major collection of the artist’s work through gifts, purchase, and trade.

While there is little information available on Pellequer, individual works that he owned were often reproduced throughout the 1920s and 1930s in Cahiers d’art and Formes, offering a sense of his collecting habits. Among his early works by Picasso were a version of the artist’s bronze Jester (1905; private collection), sold to him by the dealer Ambroise Vollard in November 1926 (one of a number of sculptures by Picasso that Vollard sold that year); the oil painting Bullfight (1901; location unknown, Zervos I no. 88); Célestine (1904; Musée Picasso, Paris); two gouaches, The Mistletoe Seller (1902; private collection, Zervos I, no. 123) and Virgin and Child (both of which were included in a 1936 exhibition of contemporary Spanish art at the Jeu de Paume in Paris); and the work on paper Three Nudes (1906; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift from the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection), which Vollard sold to him around 1932. Pellequer also owned several Analytic Cubist works, including Bottles and Glasses (1911–12; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York) and Glass and Bottle of Bass (1914; private collection, Zervos II, no. 441). Picasso even designed a special etched bookplate for Pellequer, which he dedicated “pour mon ami.” During the Occupation of Paris in World War II, Pellequer reportedly helped Picasso to protect his own collection of artworks from Nazi confiscation by placing them in a safe under the name of Marie-Thérèse Walter.

In addition to works by Picasso, Pellequer also acquired paintings and works on paper by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Raoul Dufy, Paul Gauguin, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, and Maurice Utrillo. He owned Degas’s Dancers, Entrance on Stage (1907–08; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa.), which was previously in the collections of Paul Durand-Ruel and Vollard, and which was part of a sale of paintings from Degas’s studio following the artist’s death. In addition to purchasing works directly from artists, Pellequer also bought from auction houses, such as the Hôtel Drouot; from Paris-based dealers, including Bernheim-Jeune and Galerie Maeght; as well as through private sales. Evidence suggests that he also acquired a notable collection of Egyptian and African objects by the 1920s.

Pellequer sold works in his holdings to other collectors and dealers during his lifetime. He also frequently conducted business with Picasso, selling him art from his collection (Cézanne, The Sea at L’Estaque [ca. 1878–79; Musée Picasso, Paris]) or exchanging works by other artists for Picasso's own. Upon his death, Pellequer left his collection to his brother and nephew, Georges.