Monsieur Eugene Secretan art sale catalogue Sedelmayer Paris 1889

Pierre-Eugène Secrétan, (1836, Saulx – 1899,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

), was a French industrialist and art collector.

Biography []

According to the Museum of the City of New York he was a French copper industrialist who made his fortune in copper production. He donated 60,000 kilos of copper in the 1870s to make ''Liberty Enlightening the World'', commonly known as the Statue of Liberty.The Statue of Liberty: The Museum of the City of New York, by Cara Sutherland, 2003 He later lost his wealth in the when his "Société industrielle et commerciale des métaux" went bankrupt after an attempt to corner the market on copper. After the copper crash in March 1889, he sold his extended art collection in the Paris gallery of

Charles Sedelmeyer Charles Sedelmeyer (30 April 1837, Vienna – 9 August 1925, Paris) was an Austrian and French 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 ...

after printing and publicizing a catalogue in French and English to attract American investors. He timed the sale to coincide with the peak of the Exposition Universelle (1889), exhibiting the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "' ...

, which attracted many wealthy Americans. A French-American bidding war during the auction on '' L'Angélus'', a work by the popular French painter

Jean-François Millet Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...

of the

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name ...

, forced the price up to a record-breaking amount of 553,000 francs by

Antonin Proust Antonin Proust (15 March 183220 March 1905) was a French journalist and politician. Antonin Proust was born at Niort, Deux-Sèvres. In the 1840s, Proust attended the Collège Rollin where he met lifelong friend Édouard Manet. In September 1850, ...

, who was bidding for the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

.''Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count'', by Jill Jonnes, 2009 Proust only had 180,000 francs however, and after spending a day trying to save the work for France, he called James F. Sutton of the

American Art Association The American Art Association was an art gallery and auction house with sales galleries, established in 1883. It was first located at 6 East 23rd Street (South Madison Square) in Manhattan, New York City and moved to Madison Ave and 56th St. in ...

to buy it from him for 552,000. The provenance of the work reflects that Secretan owned the painting from the time it was first shown in 1865, and the American Art Association from 1889. Other works from this sale on 1 July 1889 can be found in many American museums today.Rubens painting from the Eugène Secrétan collection sale
in the Detroit Institute of Arts according to the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

The Havemeyers: Impressionism comes to America, by Frances Weitzenhoffer, 1996 With the proceeds from this sale, Secretan, an expert in metallurgy, paid his creditors and restarted his work in copper by making a deal with an English company and founded a factory in

Dives-sur-Mer Dives-sur-Mer (, literally ''Dives on Sea''; nrf, Dives sus Mé) is a commune in the Calvados department in Normandy in northwestern France. History It was from harbour of Dives-sur-Mer that William the Conqueror set out on the Norman Conques ...

called "Elmore's French Patent Copper Depositing Company".

Notes

References

*''Catalogue of the celebrated Collection of Paintings, by Modern and Old Masters, and of Water-Colours and Drawings, formed by M. E. Secretan, sold at Sedelmeyer's Galleries, Paris, July, 1889'' *''Catalogue de tableaux anciens et modernes, aquarelles et dessins et objets d'art formant la célèbre collection M.E. Secrétan'', by Albert Wolff, 1889
Secretan'S Sale Closed; More Than A Million Dollars Realized. Some Of The Purchasers And The Prices Paid -- A Story About Millet Never Before Told.
Article from 2 July 1889 by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' *''Pamella Guerdat, Pratique de la collection et mondes de l'art à Paris : Pierre-Eugène Secrétan, le profil d'un amateur entre marché de l'art et musée, 2011, Paris : Ecole du Louvre ; Neuchâtel : Université de Neuchâtel, 2011 {{DEFAULTSORT:Secretan, Eugene 1836 births 1899 deaths French industrialists People from Haute-Saône Statue of Liberty 1889 in art French art collectors 19th-century French businesspeople