Celebrity collectors: The Stein family

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The Steins Collect, Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant Garde

Editedby Janet Bishop, Cecile Debray and Rebecca Rabinow

In the 10 years before 1914, the Stein family’s collecting supported avant-garde artists more than any other collectors or institutions anywhere. Yet not until now have these, now dispersed, collections been thoroughly catalogued.

The Steins, Leo, his younger sister Gertrude, and their older brother Michael and his wife Sarah, were American Jews, independently wealthy, though not fabulously so, just enough to allow them to live comfortably in Paris. Leo arrived in 1903, joined that autumn by Gertrude. They lived in the rue de Fleurus. Michael and Sarah arrived in January 1904, living close by in rue Madame. Annotated photographs of these various residences show developments in their taste, documenting acquisitions and the hang of the paintings over the years. Images of painting between the essays on each family member further show their differing tastes.

In line with their funds, their purchases were modest. Buying the radically new: Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, they had the passion, foresight, or nerve, to purchase succés de scandale – Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, Madame Matisse (the Green Line).

The collections’ growing celebrity led to Saturday soirées. Visitors could view both as Sarah and Michael opened theirs earlier than Leo and Gertrude, who received from 9 p.m. Visitors were many and varied, coming to see art that, at the time, was derided, perceived as abominable, ugly. But not only the paintings stood out; the Steins’ lack of convention extended to the evenings’ social protocol. By day they wore corduroy and comfortable sandals, of an evening Sarah and Gertrude received in loose-fitting robes; sometimes Leo wore a kimono. Harriet Levy would recall: ‘it was a world to be in ease in’ – too much so for some.

Gertrude developed her literary style within the context of the work on her walls, addressing the issue of perception, prominent in early 20th century avant-garde art. Even so, the rue de Fleurus gatherings are better known than those at rue Madame owing to Gertrude’s entertaining, but not wholly accurate accounts. ‘Gertrude didn’t like reality’ said the art dealer Kahnweiler.

From 1905 until 1909 it was Leo’s aesthetic judgements that led the family to own the most extensive collection of Picassos and Matisses in the world. Then with rising prices, just before 1914, the richer Russians, Shchukin and Morosov, surpassed them. Leo genuinely understood the paintings within the context of art history and emerging theories of the time. The Steins’ homes became the centre of a new language with its own vocabulary; pure form, colour sensations, plasticity and rhythmic expression that soon made their way into published criticisms. Nothing like Leo’s explanations had been published in English. Leo’s influence helped establish a canon that persists today.

Hearing him talk one evening, Alfred Stieglitz said: ‘I quickly realized I had never heard more beautiful English nor anything clearer’. 

Leo’s insights were further promoted by Sarah. Her near-religious enthusiasm for Matisse was part of a spiritual quest that culminated in her joining the Christian Science Church in Paris. She and Michael were tastemakers. In San Francisco they had collected Oriental art. In Paris, Sarah held forth on Matisse’s paintings displaying them beside Persian fabrics and Chinese ceramics.

Sarah and Michael were the first to show Matisse’s paintings in New York and San Francisco in 1906. Matisse’s work would not be displayed publicly until the San Francisco Panama–Pacific Exposition in 1915. They encouraged and backed the artist to set up the Académie Matisse. Sarah influenced Etta and Claribel Cone’s collecting, making purchases on behalf of them and other friends. She introduced Edward Steichen to Matisse, leading to the latter’s first solo show at Steichen and Steiglitz’s NY gallery.

These legendary collections were assembled before 1914, a year that would be a watershed.Leo departed in the spring, and he and Gertrude divided their paintings. For Leo, Picasso’s Cubism was a vacant attempt at intellectualism. His sister’s writing was another bone of contention. Once he left his taste became less adventurous. He married Nina Auzias in 1921 and they began selling off his collection to fund their lifestyle. Nonetheless, he did begin publishing art criticism, which he had previously struggled to do. His The A-B-C of Aesthetics came out in 1927; to Leo’s devastation the reviews were almost uniformly negative.

The bulk of Michael and Sarah’s Matisses were on loan in Germany at the outbreak of the First World War. They would lose them in what is known as the ‘Gurlitt Affair’. Examined here through literary accounts, much remains unanswered in the matter.

In the 1920s, as Sarah had once promoted Matisse, Michael now extolled modern architecture. They now chose an architect, Le Corbusier, every bit as visionary as Matisse. Corbusier built the Villa Stein-de Monzie, Les Terrasses, outside Paris, for them. Open plan, with ribbon windows flooding maximum light into each room, it was an audacious act of patronage, a milestone in modern architecture. Today it is an historical monument. Yet they would inhabit their masterpiece for only seven years. Returning to California, Michael died in 1938 and Sarah would disperse the collection to pay her grandson’s racing debts.

Gertrude continued championing Cubism and Picasso. But after the war she could not afford his prices; like Matisse’s, they rose and she turned to Juan Gris and André Masson. With Gertrude’s growing celebrity the Saturday soirées also changed. Continuing into the 1920s she presided over a literary salon, with acolytes coming to worship her, not the paintings.

After 1925 her choices were less far seeing, stubbornly opposed to André Breton’s Surrealism she collected artists like Tchelitchew and Bérand. Thus the time, as well as judgement, are factors in building a great collection.

Poignant for collections born of love not fiscal investment, Gertrude’s also would be seen in terms of its value. Her will left the collection to her nephew, Allen, but her life partner, Alice B. Toklas, was to have use of it till she died. Because of their value, Allen’s widow would remove the paintings leaving Toklas to struggle financially. 

The Steins Collect, Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant Garde, edited by Janet Bishop, Cecile Debray and Rebecca Rabinow is published by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2011. 464 pp., illustrated, £50.00/$75.00. ISBN 978-0300169416