The Elusive Mr. Richard Owen:
A Dealer’s Rise and Fall in the Art Market in the United States
by Danielle Hampton Cullen
Danielle Hampton Cullen is a research assistant for the newly published digital catalogue French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945, featuring 106 French paintings and pastels at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where she conducts research on the provenance and the bibliographic and exhibition history of the collection. Her recent publications include three catalogue entries for French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945. Prior to joining the Nelson-Atkins in 2016, she received her master’s degree from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, specializing in nineteenth-century French art.
Email the author: dhampton[at]nelson-atkins.org
Citation: Danielle Hampton Cullen, “The Elusive Mr. Richard Owen: A Dealer’s Rise and Fall in the Art Market in the United States,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 21, no. 2 (Summer 2022), https://doi.org/10.29411/ncaw.2022.21.2.5.
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In the history of collecting, Paris-based dealer Richard Owen (British, 1873–1946) is rarely mentioned. Though he placed hundreds of drawings and paintings by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French artists into prominent US collections in the early part of the twentieth century, little is known of his role in the trade.[1] Yet, through the development of a network of art professionals on both sides of the Atlantic, Owen infiltrated the art market in the United States and proposed the acquisition of masterpieces by artists such as Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), Hubert Robert (1733–1808), and Constantin Guys (1802–92) to institutions including the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, among others.[2] Owen also served as an agent, advisor, and scout to some of the most important US collectors, curators, and museum directors of his time, such as Samuel H. Kress (1863–1955), a founding benefactor of the National Gallery of Art; Paul J. Sachs (1878–1965), former associate director of the Fogg Art Museum (now the Harvard Art Museums); and Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967), an art advisor connected to both the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.[3] For many of the works in these collections, Owen’s name figures prominently in the provenance records, suggesting his importance to the market.
Who was this dealer? How did he so successfully infiltrate the art market in the United States? Why is there so little information available about him, even as other dealers’ careers have become better understood through biographies and archives? This article is an attempt to answer these questions as it addresses both Owen’s achievements and his fall from grace as an art dealer after a series of missteps in the 1930s.[4] It aims at showing that, despite these slipups, innocent or not, Owen played a pivotal role in the early twentieth-century US art market, which sparked an exponential demand for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings and paintings on this side of the Atlantic. Drawing upon a wide variety of archival records, it attempts to define his role in the trade, investigate his strategies when purchasing and selling art, and introduce his relationships with a network of agents, collectors, dealers, curators, and museum directors that facilitated his transnational success and helped to build a market for French art, especially French eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works on paper, in the United States.
Building a Collection: A marchand-amateur in Paris and London
Owen began his career in the art market in the mid-1920s by working for the decorative- and fine-arts firm Trotti et Cie in Paris.[5] As early as 1925, he began his own commercial enterprise and established a storefront art gallery at 15 quai Voltaire, in the 7th arrondissement, devoted to the sale of eighteenth-century drawings while also selling eighteenth-century paintings as well as nineteenth-century drawings and paintings.[6] From the outset, Owen was talented at generating publicity for his gallery, placing regular advertisements in specialized art periodicals such as La Renaissance, Le Moniteur des consulats, and Le Gaulois artistique (fig. 1).[7]
from: Gallica.
Owen had several means of acquiring stock for his gallery. London vendors, most notably Colnaghi and Agnew’s, were a primary source of inventory for the dealer, and he frequently purchased and exchanged works with them.[8] In the summer of 1928, for example, he purchased a drawing by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) entitled The Storyteller (fig. 2) from Agnew’s, for the sum of £850.[9] This drawing was later purchased from Owen by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Later that year he purchased, again from Agnew’s, a related drawing by Watteau for £600.[10]
From 1911 to 1931, Owen regularly bought from and sold works to Colnaghi.[11] Among his most celebrated acquisitions from Colnaghi was an album of 102 carnival drawings by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804) for £800.[12] Not long after acquiring the album, Owen promoted his purchase in an exhibition in 1921 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. While a catalogue does not appear to exist for this exhibition, its display of Owen’s collection was highly publicized throughout Paris.[13] Its success became the hallmark of Owen’s career, establishing his credibility as a dealer in drawings and bolstering the visibility and value of his acquisition.[14] A decade later, Owen sold almost the entire album, piecemeal, to wealthy clients and institutions in the United States. The Cleveland Museum of Art has five drawings from the album; the Harvard Art Museums has two; and the title page to the series is held at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (fig. 3).[15]
Though he bought art from fellow dealers, Owen’s main suppliers were auction houses in Paris, as they were for most dealers at the time. Beginning as early as 1927, Owen regularly purchased eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings and paintings from the well-known auction house Hôtel Drouot and the auctions organized by the Galerie Georges Petit, which, in addition to mounting retrospectives, used its gallery for important auction sales.[16] At the sale of Jean Dubois’s collection, held at the Hôtel Drouot on March 21–22, 1927, for example, Owen obtained the largest number of works by a single collector, including two important watercolor drawings by Robert for 55,000 francs.[17] His acquisition of these and several other high-quality works by artists such as Fragonard, Guys, Louis Gabriel Moreau (1740–1806), and Nicolas Lancret (1690–1743) at the sale of Marquis Le Franc de Pompignan’s collection at the Hôtel Drouot that same year prompted art critic Maurice Feuillet to praise the dealer’s purchasing acumen.[18] In Le Gaulois artistique, Feuillet wrote: “I have known Owen a long time . . . I know with what taste, what science, he seeks the masterpieces of our best artists of the eighteenth century. The fact that we often met as adversaries in the sales of these beautiful works has made us friends.”[19] A year later, Owen bought another significant group of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings and pastels at the sale of Georges Bottellier Lasquin’s collection at the Galerie Georges Petit on June 7–8, 1928.[20] And the following year, Owen found himself again an object of praise in the press for his acquisition of works at the sale of Marius Paulme’s renowned collection held at the Galerie Georges Petit on May 13–15, 1929. Eager to build his inventory, he purchased more than a dozen works by François Boucher (1703–70), Fragonard, and Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–89).[21] The proceeds of the sale reached the extraordinary sum of 13,283,370 francs, and Owen was among the main buyers.[22] That same year, Owen acquired a number of drawings at the sale of the Eugène Rodrigues collection held at the Hôtel Drouot on February 25–26, 1929, including a prized drawing by Fragonard entitled Terrace and Garden of an Italian Villa (fig. 4) for 60,000 francs.[23] This work was later purchased from Owen by Kress and is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. An investigation of Owen’s presence at these aforementioned auction houses reveals that he strategically purchased a majority of his inventory wholesale at dispersal sales from some of the most famous and important art collections auctioned in Paris in the early part of the twentieth century, later selling many of these works for incredible sums to US collectors and institutions.[24]
From “Tastemaker” to Anonymity: A Dealer’s Rise and Fall
in the United States
Following the successful examples of Paul Durand-Ruel and Nathan and Georges Wildenstein at the turn of the twentieth century, Owen sought to expand his dealings to the United States, and by the late 1920s took his practice overseas.[25] His ascent to a prominent position in the US art market is particularly noteworthy in that it took place in a matter of a few years. Through his impressive network of art experts, dealers, and agents in Europe, Owen aggressively pursued the art market in the United States, cultivating business relationships with well-known firms in New York, among them Scott and Fowles, Jacques Seligmann & Cie, the Duveen Brothers, and Brummer Gallery, the last of whom hosted a series of exhibitions of Owen’s inventory and assembled for him a network of prominent US clients on his behalf. Leveraging himself as a veritable French tastemaker, Owen quickly became a valued scout, agent, and advisor, acting as a go-between for his US clients while abroad and shaping the holdings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French drawings and paintings of some of the most prominent public and private collections. These clients included directors, collectors, and art agents associated with major institutions along the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Missouri, including Sachs at the Fogg Art Museum; Parsons on behalf of the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins; Philip Hofer, then connected to the Morgan Library in New York; and Kress, at the National Gallery of Art, to name only a few.
An established gallery in New York, the Duveen Brothers were perhaps the greatest contributors to Owen’s success in the United States.[26] From approximately 1923 until 1934, Owen was actively involved in varying degrees with the New York firm as a client, agent, and intermediary. Joseph Duveen, president of the firm, was Owen’s main advisee and colleague. Letters between the two suggest that Owen frequently relied upon Duveen as a source for US clients. In March of 1925, for example, Duveen wrote to Owen: “I have spoken to several [clients] and will endeavor when in Paris to bring them to see your collection . . . you may count upon me doing my utmost in this direction for you, and am looking forward to the pleasure of seeing you when you come to America.”[27] As early as January 1929, the Duveen Brothers facilitated on behalf of Owen the shipment of an impressively large number of works from his gallery in Paris to his furnished suite at the Hotel Waldorf in New York, where he set up a kind of minigallery of his collection while in the United States.[28] Letters discussing the shipment of these works, as well as shipment memorandums from the firm, reveal that the two dealers exchanged a large number of paintings among themselves for monetary gain.[29]
The Duveen Brothers also played a crucial role in constructing Owen’s reputation in the US art market, promoting his collection in their galleries’ showrooms on Fifth Avenue. Their first collaboration seems to have taken place in late November 1935, when the Duveen Brothers organized a loan exhibition of ninety-six works from Owen’s collection, including works by Robert, Moreau, Jean-Baptiste Mallat (1806–1863), and others.[30] In the years that followed, Owen took on an intermediary role with the firm. In spring of 1932, Owen brokered the sale of an Antoine-Louis Barye (1796–1875) drawing titled Black Panther, proposing the sale of the work to Parsons on behalf of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.[31] This work is now part of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s collection; prior to this discovery, its earlier provenance was unknown.
The correspondence between George E. Seligmann, nephew of Jacques Seligmann who joined the family’s gallery in the 1930s, and Owen suggests that Owen worked as an agent for the New York firm. While thus far I have been unable to discern if he was a paid agent, it appears, based on extant correspondence, that Seligmann relied upon Owen as an authority in proposing pictures and at times would ask him to serve as a scout to find specific works desired by Seligmann’s clients. In November 1945, for example, Seligmann wrote to Owen for assistance: “Here again I come to you after a long silence to ask you whether in the meantime you have heard of some beautiful drawings, including eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French, which would be for sale.”[32]
Although Owen’s preference was for eighteenth-century artists, especially Boucher, Robert, and Fragonard, he also placed numerous nineteenth-century French drawings and paintings into collections in the United States and promoted the sale of works by Honoré Daumier (1808–79), Gustave Doré (1832–83), Guys, Henry Somm (1844–1907), Paul Gavarni (1804–66), Edouard de Beaumont (1821–88), and Delacroix. He exercised considerable influence over the collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art through his working relationship with Parsons as an art agent. Correspondence in the archives at both museums suggests that Owen not only sought out and recommended pictures but also was involved in various instances as an agent and intermediary.[33]
In the case of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, letters between Owen and Parsons speak of their working relationship, with Parsons relying heavily upon Owen for his Paris stock and connections abroad. Owen brokered his first major deal with Parsons in 1932, when the latter bought several eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings from Owen’s collection on behalf of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. In a letter to museum trustee J. C. Nichols dated September 26, 1932, Parsons writes: “I am confident that when you see the group you will agree that it was a wise purchase. For these works are worth at least three times what we have paid for them, and the group contains splendid things by such important masters as François Boucher, Hubert Robert, Gustave Doré, Eugène Delacroix, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Eugène Isabey, Constantin Guys, Paul Garvarni and others, it is a fine group.”[34] This transaction is especially noteworthy in that the works were purchased prior to the opening of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and thus formed the basis of its budding collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings.
Owen was also instrumental in forming private collections such as that of Kress. In total, thirty-five works in the Kress Collection were purchased from Owen between 1930 and 1940, including drawings by Boucher, Fragonard, Robert, and Guys that are now owned by the National Gallery of Art.[35] Letters between Duveen and Owen suggest that Owen not only purchased works on behalf of the collector but also scouted out works for him, and on various occasions accompanied him to auctions and museums in Europe. In a letter to Duveen from August 11, 1935, Owen writes: “I went for ten days to Munich where I saw Kress every day. . . . We went to the museums together, auctions, lunched and dined.”[36] This letter attests to Owen’s close working relationship with Kress and the dealer’s ability to shrewdly use his influence and connections abroad to garner sales.
As quickly as Owen’s reputation in the US art market rose in the 1920s, it declined in the mid-1930s when a major disagreement developed between him and Oscar Strauss, an enthusiastic collector and US ambassador for Scott and Fowles. Correspondence between Owen and Duveen sheds light on aspects of the sordid affair: Strauss had purchased a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings and paintings from Owen; several were later declared photographic reproductions, and three Daumier paintings were declared to be forgeries by leading experts at the time.[37] Strauss demanded a refund, but Owen responded that the claims were false. Letters from Duveen to Owen suggest that the situation was “exceedingly serious,” made all the more unpleasant for Duveen by an exhibition Duveen Brothers had hosted of Owen’s collection the year before that included the alleged forgeries.[38] Despite allegations to the contrary, it seems that Owen sold the forgeries unknowingly as he strenuously continued to defend their authenticity, writing to Duveen that same year: “If, by any chance, you see Wildenstein before you leave, suggest that the attacks on me do his firm in New York no good, as he cannot expect me to sit still without retaliating.”[39]
As rumors circulated among dealers and collectors regarding the unsavory transaction between Owen and Strauss, museums in the United States began to reevaluate the works they had purchased from Owen. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Rhode Island School of Design, each of which had purchased a number of works from the dealer nearly a decade earlier, began to invite experts to examine works acquired from Owen following the Strauss scandal. At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, six of the twenty-eight works purchased from Owen were reconsidered. A drawing, Courtroom Studies, and a painting, Exit from the Theater, bought as authentic works by Daumier, were downgraded in status to works attributed to Daumier.[40] A painting, View in Italy, once thought to be by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), was newly attributed to an anonymous French painter from the mid-nineteenth century.[41] A painting by Félix Ziem (1821–1911), Still Life with Fish, was deaccessioned in 2004. Lastly, a small oil on paper mounted on canvas, Cows in Field by Eugène Boudin (1824–98), was deaccessioned but remains at the museum as part of a study collection. Many US museums and dealers began distancing themselves from Owen. Blacklisted by the US art market, Owen’s working relationship with Duveen, Kress, and Parsons all but ceased by the late 1930s. Despite this, Owen remained an active dealer in Los Angeles, still working with dealers such as Seligmann until his death on January 8, 1946.[42]
Reconstructing Richard Owen’s Collection: A Dealer’s Contributions in the United States
Ultimately, Owen’s strategy of purchasing works at low prices abroad and selling them at high prices to institutions and collectors in the United States proved to be his undoing. In the case of several acquisitions, it seems likely that his desire to turn a profit in a market of phenomenal demand for artwork by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists may have inadvertently obscured his better judgment. Yet, while he made some critical missteps during his time in the United States, his legacy cannot be reduced to these machinations. His overall impact—measured by the quantity (to date more than 150 drawings and paintings) and quality of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works placed in US collections, all with firm attributions—was tremendous. Uncontested examples in US institutions, such as the drawing Study of Birds (fig. 5) at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art by the nineteenth-century draughtsman and illustrator Doré, attest to Owen’s eye for quality and originality.[43]
Making use of archival evidence, this article has examined Owen’s dealing practice in the history of collecting and has aimed to incorporate his story into the growing body of literature on this topic. Although this research is necessarily ongoing, Owen’s interactions with auction houses, museums, and collectors, as well as his purchasing patterns, are essential to an understanding of how US collectors and collections developed an interest in and built holdings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French works on paper.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Casey Kane Monahan, Cunningham Curatorial Assistant for the Collection, Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums; and Dr. Katja Lindenau, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (Daphne-Projekt), Provenienzforschung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, for their assistance during my initial research of Owen. Their resources on Owen provided me with my first insight into the world of this elusive dealer, whose narrative, I have since learned, is quite complicated.
Notes
[1] At present, no biography on Owen exists; nor have records or stock books from his time as a dealer been located. A photographic archive of works from his collection is held at the Harvard Art Museums. The most valuable source of information about his dealing practice is in his correspondence and invoices with gallerists, dealers, collectors, and museum professionals regarding works for sale, shipments, and so on, including the Duveen Brothers Records, 1876–1981 (bulk 1909–1964), at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; the Jacques Seligmann & Co. Records, 1904–1978 (bulk 1913–1974), at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the archives and records of museums, including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the British Museum in London; the Harvard Art Museums; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Morgan Library & Museum in New York; the Yale University Art Gallery; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
[2] Richard Owen’s name appears in the provenance of twenty-one drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, thirty-five drawings at the National Gallery of Art, sixteen drawings and paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and twenty-seven drawings and paintings at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
[3] Samuel H. Kress was a businessman, philanthropist, and collector of Old Master paintings and European works of art. Between 1929 and 1961 he established the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, assembling and distributing his collection of more than two thousand works of art across the United States, with the largest portion remaining in Washington, DC. See Biographical Note, Samuel H. Kress Foundation Archive Finding Aid, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, http://archive.kressfoundation.org/. Paul J. Sachs was associate director at the Fogg Art Museum from 1915 to 1944. See Sachs’s official Harvard bio: https://haa.fas.harvard.edu/people/paul-sachs. Harold Woodbury Parsons was brought on as an art advisor for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 1930. He also served as the art advisor to the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1925 to 1941. See Kristie C. Wolferman, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A History (Kansas City, MO: University of Missouri Press and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2020), 84–86. See also Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “The Collecting of French Paintings in Kansas City,” in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2021), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.6.40.
[4] The present essay builds on Martin Birnbaum’s The Last Romantic, which provides an excellent, albeit brief, telling of Owen’s fall from grace in the US art market. See Martin Birnbaum, The Last Romantic (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960), 124–27.
[5] This information was provided by Hannah Dale, assistant archivist, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, England. Waddesdon Manor’s record for Owen mentions that he worked for Trotti et Cie. See letter from Hannah Dale to Danielle Hampton Cullen, research assistant, French Paintings Catalogue, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, January 14, 2020, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art curatorial file [hereafter, NAMA curatorial file].
[6] Annuaire du commerce Didot-Bottin (Paris: Firmin-Didot Brothers, 1925), 1997. See also Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800 (London: Unicorn Press, 2006), http://www.pastellists.com/. See also the letter from Joseph Duveen to Richard Owen, October 10, 1923, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence and papers regarding scouts, dealers, restorers, and collectors, 1910–1965, Duveen Brothers Records, 1876–1981, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA [hereafter, Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records].
[7] See, for example, Le Gaulois artistique, July 9, 1927, 174. See also Le Moniteur des consulats, June 30, 1922, 6; and La Renaissance, January 1929, n.p. Advertisements for Owen’s gallery were also placed in magazines for US audiences, such as The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 55, no. 316 (July 1929): ix.
[8] Agnew’s account ledgers for the period covering 1918–46, held at the Research Centre at the National Gallery in London, reveal that Owen had an open account with the firm and purchased a steady stream of artwork beginning as early as 1925. See Richard Owen, Account Ledgers, 1918–1946, Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd. Archive, National Gallery, London.
[9] Richard Owen, Account Ledgers, 1918–1946.
[10] Richard Owen, Account Ledgers, 1918–1946.
[11] According to Colnaghi’s Picture Stock Books, 1911–1931, a number of works passed between the two art dealers with relative fluidity, and Richard Owen’s name is indexed as both a purchaser and a seller on several occasions. Owen is indexed on pages 24, 28, 35, 58a, 133; and as a seller on page 86. See COL3/1/2 Pictures Stock Book A1, 1911–1931, P. & D. Colnaghi Ltd. Archive, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, England.
[12] Colnaghi had purchased the renowned album for £610 a year earlier on July 6, 1920, at Sotheby’s, London. For an account of this transaction, see Bram Shaw, The Drawings of Domenico Tiepolo (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 52.
[13] For an account of this exhibition, see “Art et Curiosité,” Le Temps, May 26, 1921, n.p. See also “Concours et Expositions,” Chronique des art et de la curiosité, May 31, 1921, 80.
[14] Owen was remarkedly creative in terms of promoting his inventory, well aware that his participation in exhibitions bolstered the value of his collection. Three years after the success of the 1921 exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Owen advertised his inventory at the Palais des Beaux-Arts for the Exhibition of the French Landscape from Poussin to Corot. He loaned the largest number of works by a single collector: eleven drawings by artists such as François Boucher, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Louis Gabriel Moreau, and Hubert Robert. See Exhibition of the French Landscape from Poussin to Corot, exh. cat. (Paris: Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1925). French art critic Arsène Alexandre hailed the exhibition as one of the most significant French art exhibitions in years. See “De Poussin à Corot,” La Renaissance, May 1925, 183–200. Owen also regularly participated in exhibitions held at the Musée Carnavalet and the Hôtel Charpentier. See, for example, La Vie parisienne au XVIIIe siècle, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1928); Exposition de la jeunesse: Vue par les maîtres français et étrangers du XVIe au XIXe siècle, exh. cat. (Paris: Hôtel Jean Charpentier, 1928); and Le Théâtre à Paris (XVII–XVIIIe siècles), exh. cat. (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1929).
[15] A Spring Shower (1790s–1804; Cleveland Museum of Art); The Trial (1790s; Cleveland Museum of Art); The Cattle Vendor (1790s; Cleveland Museum of Art); The Game of Bowls (1790s; Cleveland Museum of Art); Punchinello Arrested (1790s; Cleveland Museum of Art); Group of Punchinelli with Dancing Dogs (ca. 1793; Harvard Art Museums); A Boar Hunt (18th–19th century; Harvard Art Museums); and title page to the Punchinello series (ca. 1800; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art).
[16] While the entirety of Owen’s purchases from these auction houses is often hard to discern due to privacy acts involving client purchases, accounts from the sales and annotated catalogues provide insight into his purchasing patterns and inventory acquired at auctions in Paris.
[17] An annotated copy of this sale is available at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The annotated copy identifies Owen as the highest bidder of the day, purchasing four drawings by Robert. See Catalogue des dessins anciens et des objets d’art et d’ameublement, sièges et meubles, appartenant à Monsieur Jean Dubois, auction cat. (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1927), 23. For a review of this auction and Owen’s purchases, see Curiosa, “Les Ventes de mars–avril,” Le Gaulois artistique, May 10, 1927, 132.
[18] Catalogue des dessins et gouaches par Louis Moreau, Hubert Robert, etc., petits meubles du 18e siècle, tapisseries appartenant à monsieur le marquis Le Franc de Pompignan, auction cat. (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1927). For the critic’s words of praise, see Maurice Feuillet, “Un pastel inconnu de Fragonard,” Le Gaulois artistique, July 9, 1927, 80.
[19] “Je le connais de longue date. . . . Je sais avec quel goût, quelle science, il recherche les oeuvres maîtresses de nos meilleurs artistes du XVIIIe siècle. De nous être souvent rencontrés comme adversaires dans les ventes de beaux dessins, nous a fait lier d’amitié.” The translation is mine. Feuillet, “Un pastel inconnu de Fragonard,” 180.
[20] Catalogue des dessins, gouaches, pastels du XVe siècle au milieu du XVIIIe siècle et principalement de l’école française du XVIIIe siècle: Composant la collection de M. Georges B.-Lasquin, auction cat. (Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1928). For a review of this auction and Owen’s purchases, see Curiosa, “Revue des ventes,” Le Gaulois artistique, July 7, 1928, 302–4.
[21] Catalogue des dessins anciens, gouaches & pastels principalement de l’école française du XVIIIe siècle: Composant la collection de M. Marius Paulme, auction cat. (Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1929). For a review of this auction and Owen’s purchases, see Jacque Daurelle, “Art ancien et curiosité,” Mercure de France, July 1, 1929, 200–02.
[22] Daurelle, “Art ancien et curiosité,” 200.
[23] Estampes et dessins anciens et modernes, autographes, livres sur les arts: Collection de M. E. Rodrigues, auction cat. (Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1929). For a review of this auction and Owen’s purchases, see Curiosa, “Revue des ventes,” Le Gaulois artistique, January 9, 1929, 117–24.
[24] In the case of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a collection of eighteen drawings was purchased from Richard Owen by agent Harold Woodbury Parsons on December 1, 1932, for the sum of $5,000. The Tiepolo drawings were among those in the collection and were purchased for $98. For the transaction, see University Trustees Minutes, January 16, 1933, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, MO.
[25] For more on these dealers expanding their practice in the United States, see MaryKate Cleary, “The Galerie Paul Rosenberg and the American Market in the Interwar Era,” in Pioneers of the Global Art Market: Paris-Based Dealer Networks, 1850–1950, ed. Christel H. Force (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 171–84.
[26] The Duveen Brothers archives, available online at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles, offer perhaps the most valuable insight into Owen’s dealing practice in the United States. Owen is mentioned in the Client Property Books, New York Sales Books and Ledgers, and Joseph Duveen’s correspondence files.
[27] Letter from Joseph Duveen to Richard Owen, March 19, 1925, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[28] Letter from Joseph Duveen to Richard Owen, January 10, 1929, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[29] These records are also rich in data regarding the provenance of works formerly in Owen’s collection that are now housed in US institutions. See Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II. Correspondence and papers, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[30] See Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II. Correspondence and papers, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[31] Client Property Book 4, Series I.D. General business records, 1907–1964, Duveen Brothers Records, 1876–1981, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA.
[32] Letter from George E. Seligmann to Richard Owen, November 24, 1945, box 74, folder 19, Owen, Richard, 1928–1946, Series 1: Correspondence, 1913–1978, Jacques Seligmann & Co. Records, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.
[33] See, for example, Series I: Correspondence (by subject) 1932–81, RG 80/15, William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Records, 1905–86, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, MO.
[34] Letter from Harold Woodbury Parsons to J. C. Nichols, September 26, 1932, Series I: Correspondence (by subject) 1932–81, RG 80/15, William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Records, 1905–86, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, MO.
[35] Richard Owen, NAM0893, Kress Collection Digital Archive, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
[36] Letter from Richard Owen to Joseph Duveen, August 11, 1935, March 8, 1935, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[37] Birnbaum, Last Romantic, 126.
[38] Letter from Joseph Duveen to Richard Owen, March 8, 1935, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records
[39] Letter from Richard Owen to Joseph Duveen, March 20, 1934, box 372, folder 4, Ov–Ox, 1923–1951, Series II.E. Correspondence, Duveen Brothers Records.
[40] However, recent historical research and an extensive technical study by conservators and scientists make a stronger case for Daumier as the artist. See Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Attributed to Honoré Daumier, Exit from the Theater, after 1863 [catalogue entry],” and Mary Schafer and John Twilley, “Attributed to Honoré Daumier, Exit from the Theater, after 1863 [technical entry],” in French Paintings and Pastels, 1600–1945: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2021), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.512.5407.
[41] See the forthcoming entry by Asher Ethan Miller in French Paintings, 1600–1945, https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.536.
[42] The California Trust Company in Los Angeles handled the estate of Richard Owen, and the executor of his estate was E. L. Johnson. See letter from E. L. Johnson to Georges E. Seligmann, March 21, 1946, box 74, folder 19, Owen, Richard, 1928–1946, Series 1: correspondence, 1913–1978, Jacques Seligmann & Co. Records, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.
[43] This drawing was one of eighteen drawings purchased from Owen by Parsons on December 1, 1932. See University Trustees Minutes, January 16, 1933, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, MO.