Knoedler

M. Knoedler & Co.

Company type	Private
Industry	Art dealership
Founded	1846 in New York City, United States
Founder	Michel Knoedler
Defunct	2011
Fate	Closure following fraud-related litigation
Headquarters	New York City , United States
Area served	United States, Europe
Key people	Michel Knoedler, Roland Knoedler, Charles Carstairs, Armand Hammer, Michael Armand Hammer, Ann Freedman
Products	Artworks (Old Master paintings, contemporary art)
Owner	Armand Hammer Foundation (majority ownership until closure)

M. Knoedler & Co. () was an art dealership established in New York City in 1846. At the time of its closure in 2011, triggered by fraud-related litigation, it ranked among the longest-standing commercial art galleries in the United States, having operated for 165 years.

History

The origins of Knoedler trace back to 1846 when the French art firm Goupil & Cie launched a branch in New York. Founded in Paris in 1827, Goupil & Cie was a prominent print-publishing enterprise. Michel (later Michael) Knoedler (1823–1878), originally from near Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, began his career with Goupil & Cie in Paris in 1844 before relocating to New York in 1852 to lead its American branch. He acquired ownership of the U.S. operation in 1857, subsequently joined by his sons Roland (1856–1932), Edmond, and Charles, with Roland assuming leadership after Michael’s passing in 1878.

Together with dealer Charles Carstairs, Knoedler expanded internationally by opening additional branches: Paris in 1895, Pittsburgh in 1897, and London in 1908. Under Carstairs’ guidance, the gallery earned a prestigious status as a leading dealer of Old Master paintings, catering to prominent collectors such as Collis P. Huntington, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry O. Havemeyer, William Rockefeller, Walter P. Chrysler Jr., John Jacob Astor, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Clay Frick. It also supplied major institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, and the Tate Gallery. Knoedler was part of an exclusive circle that dominated the U.S. market for British paintings and forged a significant partnership with London’s gallery Colnaghi. Together, they procured European artworks for affluent American clients and played a role in discreet Soviet Hermitage sales during the 1920s and 1930s.

Following Roland’s retirement in 1928, control transitioned to his nephew Charles Henschel along with Carmen Mesmore and Carroll Carstairs, son of Charles Carstairs. After Henschel died in 1956, leadership passed to E. Coe Kerr and Roland Balay, Michael Knoedler’s grandson. In 1971, industrialist and collector Armand Hammer purchased the gallery for $2.5 million. Five years later, Roland Balay—the last family member involved—departed as the gallery shifted focus toward contemporary art starting in the late 1970s. Upon Hammer’s death in 1990, his foundation maintained majority ownership until the gallery’s closure in 2011 under chairman Michael Armand Hammer, Armand Hammer’s grandson.

Locations

Throughout its history, the gallery operated from eight different sites, initially located on Broadway. By the 1890s, it had settled into a row house at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. In 1911, due to plans to demolish that building for the construction of the B. Altman and Company Building, Knoedler moved to 556 Fifth Avenue into a structure designed by architects Carrère and Hastings. In 1925, it relocated once more to another Carrère and Hastings-designed building at 14 East 57th Street, close to Madison Avenue. In 1970, significant investment was made to renovate an Italian Renaissance-style townhouse at 19 East 70th Street.

In 1996, Knoedler presented a retrospective celebrating its 150-year legacy, featuring masterpieces such as Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley, Music by Thomas Eakins, and The Plum by Édouard Manet. The exhibition included loans from distinguished institutions like the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, marking a landmark event for a commercial gallery.

In February 2011, the gallery sold its premises at 19 East 70th Street for $31 million. By the following year, efforts were made to auction parts of its remaining collection; however, these sales fell short of expectations.

Allegations of Involvement with Nazi-Looted Art

Knoedler was embroiled in multiple prominent lawsuits concerning artworks looted during the Nazi era. Among these was a Matisse piece, confiscated in 1941 from the Rosenberg family, which Virginia and Prentice Bloedel later donated to the Seattle Art Museum in 1996. Another notable instance involved an El Greco painting titled Portrait of a Gentleman, seized by the Gestapo in 1944. Knoedler acquired this work from Viennese art dealer Frederick Mont, who, according to Anne Webber of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, had connections to Gestapo operations. Both paintings were eventually returned to their rightful owners following legal proceedings.

In 2003, Knoedler faced litigation from the Springfield Library and Museum Association regarding a $3 million artwork that had been repatriated to Italy as wartime loot.

The gallery was also implicated in the Cassirer v Thyssen case involving a Camille Pissarro painting, Rue St. Honoré, après midi, effet de pluie. This painting was consigned to Knoedler by dealer Frank Perls on behalf of Sidney Brody. Collector Sydney Schoenberg purchased it before it was sold through the Stephen Hahn Gallery to Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1976.

Art Forgery Controversy and Gallery Shutdown

In October 2009, gallery president Ann Freedman stepped down amid allegations that forged artworks had been supplied by Long Island art dealer Glafira Rosales. During Freedman’s tenure from 1994 to 2011, Knoedler sold close to 40 counterfeit Abstract Expressionist paintings falsely attributed to artists such as Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. These pieces were procured from Rosales, who sourced them from forger Pei-Shen Qian. Qian produced the fakes in a Queens garage, replicating renowned artistic styles and artificially aging them using substances like tea or dirt. He reportedly earned less than $9,000 per painting while Rosales sold them to Knoedler for multimillion-dollar sums.

On November 28, 2011, Knoedler announced its permanent closure, citing business reasons unrelated to the ongoing lawsuits concerning forged artwork sales. By 2012, the FBI had launched investigations into at least two dozen paintings provided by Rosales. Initially denying any misconduct, Rosales ultimately pled guilty in 2013 to charges including selling over 60 counterfeit artworks to New York galleries, conspiracy to commit money laundering, tax evasion, and wire fraud. She served a three-month prison sentence and was ordered in 2017 to pay $81 million in restitution but received leniency due to her cooperation with law enforcement.

Spanish art dealers José Carlos Bergantiños Díaz (Rosales’ partner) and his brother Jesús Ángel Bergantiños Díaz faced fraud charges; they were arrested in Spain and released on bail in 2014. In 2016, a Spanish court approved Jesús Díaz’s extradition to the United States but denied José Díaz’s extradition on medical grounds.

Forger Pei-Shen Qian was indicted but fled to China before facing prosecution. At trial, evidence revealed his earnings ranged from several hundred dollars up to $9,000 per forged painting.

In 2020, filmmaker Barry Avrich directed the Netflix documentary Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art, which detailed the Knoedler forgery scandal. Additionally, Daria Price’s feature-length documentary Driven to Abstraction premiered in London in 2019, providing further insight into the scandal and ensuing trial.

Lawsuits and sales-related disputes

In 2003, Jack Levy, an executive at Goldman Sachs, acquired an untitled work by Jackson Pollock for $2 million. After the International Foundation for Art Research refused to verify its authenticity, Levy received a refund.

That same year, the Springfield Library and Museum Association initiated legal action against Knoedler following the disappearance of Spring Sowing by Jacopo da Ponte (Il Bassano), a painting valued at $3 million that was returned to Italy after being identified as looted during wartime.

Shortly before the gallery's closure in November 2011, hedge-fund manager Pierre Lagrange filed a lawsuit against Knoedler concerning Untitled 1950, attributed to Pollock. Lagrange had paid $17 million in 2007 with the expectation that the piece would be included in a Pollock catalogue raisonné supplement. However, no such supplement was planned, and analysis revealed some paint dated from after Pollock’s death. This case was resolved through an out-of-court settlement in 2012.

In 2012, Domenico De Sole and his wife Eleanore claimed that Knoedler sold them a counterfeit Mark Rothko painting, Untitled 1956, for $8.3 million in 2004. Their lawsuit against both Knoedler and Ann Freedman proceeded to trial in January 2016. While they reached a settlement with Freedman in February 2015, they continued legal proceedings against the gallery.

Wall Street executive John D. Howard brought suit against Knoedler and Freedman in 2012 over a fraudulent Willem de Kooning painting purchased for $4 million in 2007. This dispute was also settled privately in December 2015.

In 2021, the estate of Eugene Thaw reached a settlement with the heirs of Margarete Eisenmann regarding The Resurrection by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which had passed through Hugo Perls and Knoedler before becoming part of Thaw’s collection. Eisenmann had been deported to Theriesenstandt in 1942 and later murdered at Treblinka.

Archive

The majority of the gallery’s archival materials dating from 1850 to 1971 were acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 2012. Portions of this collection have been digitized and made available online. Apart from the reference library—sold separately in January 2012 and overlapping with Getty’s existing holdings—this acquisition constitutes the most comprehensive archive documenting the gallery’s activities up until its acquisition by Armand Hammer in 1971. The archive includes business records; correspondence between clients, artists, and staff; files on clients and artworks; photographs; prints; rare books; sales catalogs extending back to the eighteenth century; and plans for gallery installations.

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art located in London holds the Frank Simpson Archive, which contains extensive documentation from M. Knoedler & Co.’s London branch spanning from the early twentieth century through 1971. This archive was obtained by Simpson during his tenure as Librarian (1958–1971) and comprises over five hundred files featuring correspondence, images, and provenance information on roughly four to five thousand artworks, most of which were handled through Knoedler’s salesrooms.

External links

• M. Knoedler & Co. archival materials, circa 1848-1971
• Frank Simpson Collection – Documentation from Knoedler’s London branch, approximately 1900–1970
• Reveal’s podcast on the art fraud case, featuring reports by Gisele Regatão and Emily Harris (December 2023)