is held by the art dealer Durand-Ruel in 1904, with 178 paintings, gouaches, drawings and etchings.  The Forward to the catalogue, by Octabe Mirbeau, quotes the painter:  "Work is a marvelous regulator of moral and physical health," Pissarro said before his death in November of 1903, "for me all sorrows, all bitterness and griefs are forgotten and even cease to exist, in the joy of work."



Wildenstein & Co., October, 1945.  "A Loan Exhibition of Paintings [by] Camille Pissarro for the Benefit of the Goddard Neighborhood Center."  Citing the passage above.  Inscribed on the cover top right: 'Chas, Save This for me, Earl'.

Old catalogues are always so interesting.  Like a snapshot of a juggler in the act, several moments in time are held suspended in the air simultaneously: the various dates of creaton by the artist, and then the dates of past ownership and exhibition.  In this case, we're straddling centuries and two world wars -- Pissarro's work in this post-WWII retrospective dates from 1867 to 1900.  But the Wildenstein show does more, of course, for it conjures a New York in the autumn following the end of that War; Germany had surrendered in May, Japan in August, and you can just imagine curators and collectors opening long-closed drawing room drapes, pulling off dust sheets, uncrating prized possessions, bringing them out of storage and into the light of proud peacetime display, cognizant of what it would mean to see turn-of-the-century views of the famous boulevards of Paris which had so recently been liberated of their Nazi oppressors.

What else had been liberated?  What might have been lost or forgotten or found again in the confusion of war and occupation?  You can't help wondering.  Georges Wildenstein opened the gallery in New York in 1940, five years previous to this exhibition, which includes a significant number of works owned by the Wildenstein family.  As the obituary for Georges' son Daniel Wildenstein who died in 2001 says, "the Wildenstein genius lay in buying, not selling."  And when Daniel's son Alec Wildenstein died recently, it was again noted (along with details of Alec's lurid divorce)  that nuclear bunkers in the Catskill Mountains are reputed to be full of the family's immense collection of art. 

History itself, of course, is a series of thefts and borrowings, like any narrative.  We take the hero's journey and apply it to current events; we borrow myths with no intention of giving them back and then we dismantle them to build our own history and decorate it.  We purloin styles and images and bits and pieces of this and that for our public buildings, our art, our fiction, our religious celebrations.  We're victorious and bring home souvenirs.  We surround ourselves with the accoutrements of someone else's past in the name of history and preservation.  We make investments.  Sure, maybe we can't buy happiness, but we can always buy beauty.  And who really owns the Parthenon Marbles anyway?   

There is a Camille Pissarro not in this Wildenstein catalogue (I checked) but which is currently on display in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Spain.  It was once owned by the family of Claude Cassirer and removed from their possession by the Nazis.  It hung in the salon of Mr. Cassirer's grandmother who acquired it from the artist, and now Mr. Cassirer wants it back.  The Spanish government says no.  Learn more Here.

"Provenance" in the art world is the term used to identify the history of past ownership of a work of art.  As we all know, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.  Which can be a very long time to keep track of it.  Time and the Juggler's hands move so quickly.