Charles Sedelmeyer

Charles Sedelmeyer (French particular collection)

Charles Sedelmeyer (1837–1925^[1]) was an Austrian art dealer, collector, and publisher active in Paris from 1866, with premises at 6 rue de la Rochefoucauld. He is credited with popularising the Dutch artist Jan van Goyen in France^[2]. Sedelmeyer assessed the American market as important enough to send his Rubens Atalanta and Meleager from the Marlborough collection for exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the winter of 1886.^[3] He bought and sold Mihaly Munkacsy's 1878 The Blind Milton Dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughters, and after doing so offered Munkácsy a ten-year contract, making that painter a wealthy man and a really established member of the Paris art world. Sedelmeyer wanted him to paint large-scale pictures which could be exhibited on their own. They decided that a subject taken from the Bible would be most suitable. In 1882 Munkácsy painted Christ before Pilate which was followed by Golgotha in 1884. The trilogy was completed by Ecce Homo in 1896. These huge paintings were taken on a tour and exhibited in many European cities and also in the US. All three were bought by American millionaire John Wanamaker^[4].

A public dispute with Dr. Abraham Bredius over the attribution to Rembrandt of the Woman Taken in Adultery sold by Sedelmeyer to the Weber collection resulted in Sedelmeyer's justificatory pamphlet, 1912.^[5] .Sedelmeyer's collection was dispersed at a series of sales in Paris.^[6]

His daughter Emilie married the sculptor and art historian Stanislas Lami.

Works

• Charles Sedelmeyer, Illustrated Catalogue of the Eighth Series of 100 Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French and English Schools, Paris 1902

Notes

1. ^ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2. ^ Richard Green
3. ^ The painting returned to Europe and eventually did come to the Metropolitan Museum: Margaretta Salinger, "Rubens's Atalanta and Meleager" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, 3.1 (Summer, 1944):8-13) p. 13.
4. ^ David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures; The Milton hangs in the New York Public Library.
5. ^ "On The Woman Taken in Adultery of the Weber Collection " The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 22 No. 119 (February 1913:287).
6. ^ Part 3, 3–5 June 1907.

Sources

• B. Wild, ‘Charles Sedelmeyer: Ein österreichischer Kunsthändler macht Karriere in Paris’, Parnass 14, no. 3 (1994), pp. 76–80 (cited here)
• C. Huemer, 'Charles Sedelmeyer (1837–1925): Kunst und Spekulation am Kunstmarkt in Paris', Belvedere: Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 4–19.
• C. Huemer, 'Charles Sedelmeyer’s Theatricality: Art and Speculation in Late 19th-Century Paris', Ján Bakoš (ed.) Artwork through the Market: The Past and the Present, Bratislava: Slowakische Academy of Sciences 2004, pp. 109–124.
• M. Theinhardtová, ‘Charles Sedelmeyer a Václav Brozík, cesky malír historie v Parízi’ (Charles Sedelmeyer and Václav Brozík; a Czech painter of history in Paris), in Václav Brozík (1851–1901), Národní galerie v Praze. Valdstejnská jízdárna (Prague, 2003), pp. 111–29.
• C. Huemer, 'Crossing Thresholds: The Hybrid Identity of Late Nineteenth-Century Art Dealers', Jaynie Anderson (ed.) Crossing Cultures: Conflict-Migration-Convergence, Melbourne: Miegunyah Press 2009, pp. 1007–1011.

Persondata
Name	Sedelmayer, Charles
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1837
Place of birth
Date of death	1925
Place of death