Art Review: Berthe Weill Show at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Having covered exhibitions in Baltimore, Newark, and the Swamp in the last few weeks and walked a quarter mile of the Freedom Trail in Boston in 104-degree heat, I went to Montreal and Quebec City to cover two long-awaited, buoyant shows, and in cooler climes. Today I’ll write about Berthe Weill, Art Dealer of the Avant-Garde, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Weill (1865–1951) was the first to sell the work of the new, untested Picasso and, over the years, Matisse, Modigliani, and Chagall, among many others. She was picky, prickly, and dauntless, pushing into the hands of collectors her business card, which read, “Prepare for the young.” In her day, Weill was well respected in the Paris modern-art market and among its pioneers, but after her retirement, hastened by declining eyesight and the Nazis, and her death, her story was mostly lost to time, until now.

I love the Weill exhibition. It’s meaty, with a hundred objects, elegantly arranged, and it unfolds well but for two or three dips from which it recovers with a zestful bounce. Weill’s story appeals and impresses. And I was always learning something new. The first gallery is efficiently biographical. Weill’s father was a ragpicker, a living not without prospects, and her mother was a dressmaker. But with lots of children, the family means were modest. They were part of Paris’s mostly but not entirely downtrodden community of Jews.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Having covered exhibitions in Baltimore, Newark, and the Swamp in the last few weeks and walked a quarter mile of the Freedom Trail in Boston in 104-degree heat, I went to Montreal and Quebec City to cover two long-awaited, buoyant shows, and in cooler climes. Today I’ll write about Berthe Weill, Art Dealer of the Avant-Garde, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Weill (1865–1951) was the first to sell the work of the new, untested Picasso and, over the years, Matisse, Modigliani, and Chagall, among many others. She was picky, prickly, and dauntless, pushing into the hands of collectors her business card, which read, “Prepare for the young.” In her day, Weill was well respected in the Paris modern-art market and among its pioneers, but after her retirement, hastened by declining eyesight and the Nazis, and her death, her story was mostly lost to time, until now.

I love the Weill exhibition. It’s meaty, with a hundred objects, elegantly arranged, and it unfolds well but for two or three dips from which it recovers with a zestful bounce. Weill’s story appeals and impresses. And I was always learning something new. The first gallery is efficiently biographical. Weill’s father was a ragpicker, a living not without prospects, and her mother was a dressmaker. But with lots of children, the family means were modest. They were part of Paris’s mostly but not entirely downtrodden community of Jews.