Tedesco Frères

Tedesco frères were dealers and art experts in Paris who specialized in 19th century French painting. The firm opened in 1833 as an art supplies store of Giacomo Tedesco, a merchant who came to France from Venice, Italy. With time, the art supply store became a respected art dealership operating under the name Tedesco or Tedesco frères. After the death of Giacomo Tedesco in 1870, his sons, Joseph Tedesco, Arthur Tedesco, and Leon Yehudah Tedesco continued to manage the gallery and provide expertise at auctions, such as the sales from the estates of Eugène Delacroix or Gustave Courbet, the Boyard collection, the collection of Jules Jaluzot, or the liquidation sale of property of Joseph Schnell. The name Tedesco was prominently featured in catalogs of auctions held at Hôtel Drouot and Galeries Georges Petit. Since the 1870s, the Tedesco brothers continuously expanded capital and trade. In 1877, when the gallery registered under the name Tedesco frères commerce des tableaux, for 10 years, the registered capital was 10,000 French francs. In 1903, when the gallery registered under the name Tedesco frères tableaux, for 20 years, the capital grew to 30,000 French francs. The gallery remained family business until it was closed by the Nazis in 1941. It reopened in 1946 and was sold in 1964. The majority of artworks traded at Tedesco frères were landscapes and genre scenes in the styles of the Romantic school, academic art, or Impressionism, with focus on the Barbizon school. Occasionally sold were Old Masters, especially Dutch; Old Master drawings; and decorative arts, such as tapestries. The gallery’s stock books for the years 1880 to 1941, held at the Getty Research Institute, feature approximately 13,360 entries for moren then 300 artists, mostly French, along with artists from other European countries and some from United States. On most occasions, the gallery purchased directly from the artists and resold to other art dealers or private collectors. The registers show numerous transactions completed with the same artist, suggesting exclusive contracts or first refusal-agreements giving the gallery commercial monopoly over an artist's work. Between 1880 and 1922, the gallery sold ca. 430 paintings by Jules Louis Dupré and ca. 330 paintings by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot; purchased predominantly directly from the artists. Trading of paintings purchased from Rosa Bonheur (ca. 200 ), Félix Ziem (ca. 200), Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña (ca. 190), Eugène Louis Gabriel Isabey (ca. 150), Jean Jacques Berne-Bellecour (ca. 150), Charles-François Daubigny (ca. 120), Henri-Joseph Harpignies (ca. 120), Charles-Émile Jacque (ca. 110), and Eugène Louis Boudin (ca. 80) point to exclusive contracts. Besides maintaining exclusive contracts with the artists, Tedesco frères also operated within a network of art dealers selling to each other. The registers show well-established commercial relations with Arnold & Tripp, Bague et Cie; Jean Dieterle & Co.; Paul Durand-Ruel, M. Goldschmidt & Co., Georges Petit, Fréderic Reitlinger, and Paul Rosenberg, all in Paris; and M. Knoedler & Co. and John Levy Galleries, in Paris and New York. The gallery was also a reference point and intermediary for many Goupil & Cie purchases from other art dealers, including Durand-Ruel, Frédéric Reitlinger, and Charles Sedelmeyer. Economic Situation During the 1870s and 1880s, the gallery frequently purchased and sold paintings by contracted artists in bulk, with minor profit. Occassionally, it facilitated deals between other art dealers as an act of courtesy. At the start of the 1870s, several works were sold to Goupil & Cie with a low markup, sometimes less that 10 percent. This commercial strategy changed in the early 1890s. Following the commercial success of Maison Goupil/Boussod & Valadon, the gallery began to be increasingly oriented toward purchasing a smaller number of paintings chosen to satisfy particular clients outside the dealers' network, with a greater chance of profit. At the same time, it continued to participate within the dealer's network focusing on quick turnover and redistribution of artworks by selling and buying between colleagues at a minimun profit that would allow space for additional profit when reselling the artwork outside the dealers' market. In the 1890s, thanks to the dealers' network, the gallery often made a profit of 50 percent or more, trading a great number of paintings sold on commission, by mediation or on consignment. Purchases in joint ownership are documented as well, such as the coacquisition with Arnold & Tripp of seventeen paintings from Schwabacher in 1882 or the purchase of the the Melot collection of twenty-three paintings jointly with Le Roy Frères. Between 1880 and 1922, the gallery traded 21 artworks by Delacroix. The last artwork traded before closing in 1941 was a drawing by Delacroix, purchased from Baudoin & Co. in November 1939. It was sold in March 1941 to a client named Hamburger. The gallery sold numerous paintings to private collectors in United States, including Chester A. Braman in New York; Walter P. Chrysler Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia; George F. Harding in Chicago; or Charles J. Oppenheim in New York. Through trade with private collectors and art dealers in United States, especially with M. Knoedler & Co., several artworks traded by Tedesco frères are now in American public collections. An example is Eugène Delacroix's painting Arabs Skirmishing in the Mountains, from 1863, which the artist sold to Tedesco frères in the same year, just a few months before his death. By 1878, the painting was sold to the French collector Édouard François André and is currently in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Another painting purchased by Tedesco frères directly from Delacroix was A Turk Surrenders to a Greek Horseman, from 1856; today at the Fogg Art Museum. Eugène Boudin's The Beach at Trouville, from 1869, was sold in 1929 by Tedesco frères to the collector A. Durince in Paris. In 1934, M. Knoedler & Co. in New York sold it to Saint Louis Art Museum. Another example of a trade deal leading to United States was the sale of Corot's painting Souvenir de Saint Servan, which was acquired by Tedesco frères in 1910 and sold to Paul Rosenberg in 1913, who sold it to M. Knoedler & Co. in New York. Rosa Bonheur's painting Young deer in a forest clearing, from 1893, was acquired by Tedesco frères and sold to M. Knoedler & Co. in New York. An example of the gallery's trading activities after the Second World War was the sale of the painting The Boatyard, from ca. 1875, by Jean-Charles Cazin. Sold by Tedesco frères in 1954 to Walter P. Chrysler Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia, it is now part of the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. From the perspective of art history research, the gallery's registers reveal a trove of information about female artists' participation in the Parisian art market in 19th century. Paintings by accomplished female artists, such as Louise Abbéma; Rosa Bonheur; Marguerite Buret; Zoé-Laure de Chatillon, née Delaune; Isabelle Desgrange; Marie Diéterle; Marie de Garay; Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau; Marguerite Gérard; Madeleine Lemaire, née Coll; Jeanne Sarah Nathalie Micas; Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot; Juana Romani, née Carolina Carlesimo; Jeanne Rongier; and Eugénie Alexandrine Marie Salanson were traded at the gallery.