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about impresario

Impresario Project publishes profiles, reviews and essays on many subjects including art, biography studies and visual culture. The website is published by author Henry Martin. 

 

This page publishes research on the little-documented history of women as art dealers in the US before 1950. 

 

Related topics include American art, exhibition history, modernism, New York art market, history of collecting, history of dealing, biography studies, museology, art historiography, and history of publishing and the material and visual cultures. ​​

resources

This list includes links to a number of databases and websites for those interested in exploring visual culture, modernism, life narrative studies, and the broader humanities. Click on the attachment link. 

about henry martin

Teaching and Writing CV

Website 

Henry Martin is author of Agnes Martin: Pioneer, Painter, Icon (Schaffner Press, 2018), Yappo (Company Cod, 2017) and contributor to Phaidon Press's Great Women Artists (2019) and Great Women Painters (2022). His book How to Love the Whole World (With Artist Agnes Martin) will be published by Cameron Kids/Abrams in 2024.

Henry has contributed to Hyperallergic, Irish Times, RTE Radio 1, Burlington Magazine, Home Cultures Journal, Irish Journal of American Studies, House Magazine, and his poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have been published in the US, UK, Mexico and Ireland. 

Henry teaches creative writing at CityLit, London, Henry was Lecturer in Art History in University College Cork in 2022-2023 and Lecturer in Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design 2021-present. He has also lectured at Camberwell College of Art, UCA Farnham and the Edinburgh College of Art. 

Henry is recipient of two Tavolozza Foundation scholarships, a NCAD Scholarship, and he was a Fulbright-Creative Ireland Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art in 2022. 

Henry has a BA in English and Philosophy (NUIG), a MA in Theatre (Royal Holloway) and a MRES in the Art Market and the History of Collecting (University of Buckingham). He is completing a PhD in Art History at NCAD.

a-z list of women art dealers

Art dealer: noun, a person who buys and sells works of art. (Collins English Dictionary, 2022)

 

Since 2015 I have collected names of women art dealers (mostly in America), with a general view on the 1900–1950 period and a focus on the 1930s.

 

I would love to hear from you if you have information on the names highlighted and/or if you are undertaking your own research on this dealer and their gallery/ activities. From January 2022 I began adding women dealers from other countries.

Notes: 

 

1. Most of these dealers, but not all, operated galleries or initiatives under their own name. Some were assistants in a gallery, or freelance "curators". 

 

2. In this list, for brevity, I have omitted gallery names. 

 

3. The below list concentrates on the period 1900–1950 and does not reflect the complete list I am working on.

 

4. The word "dealer" is an umbrella term. Early dealers were often called gallerists, managers, directors and curators.

 

For the most part I do not include the names of women collectors who also may have infrequently consigned or sold work to another dealer or customer; the main exception is Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) who I include in the below list as a point of clarification (and also because she often sold works she no longer wanted). 

 

With the exception of Stein, for the purposes of this project, I consider a dealer to be anybody who organized an exhibition—or ran an enterprise—with the express aim to "sell" art. (Dealer is distinct to Agent, though arguably agents such as Cassatt and Tyson Hallowell were proto-dealers). I have also included the names of women who founded Societies or Associations (Wheeler) or Expositions (Duane Gillespie), wherein art was sold, even if these societies looked and operated differently to our present-day concept of a dealer-gallery system.

 

If you believe more names should be added to this list, please navigate to the contact page to get in touch. 

Country designates where the dealer predominantly (and/or latterly) operated; not necessarily their nationality. Many Europeans emigrated to the US between 1900 and 1950; and some dealers, like the American, Peggy Guggenheim, established galleries (however short lived) in France, UK, and US.

 

The following people are listed as German though they operated elsewhere: Käte Perls, operated in Berlin, Paris, and New York; Grete Ring operated in Berlin, then London; Marianne Breslauer Feilchenfeldt operated in Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. 

Black = American

Blue = French

Red = German, (German-Swiss)

Green= UK

Pink = Netherlands, Scandinavia

Orange = Italy

Allendy, Colette

Annot [Jacobi]

Anneberg, Marjorie 

Asher, Betty M. 

Bachert, Hildegard

Bacon, Virginia P.

Bank, Florence

Baron, Ella

Baum, Jan

Beer-Monti, Frederica

Bondi-Jari, Lea

Boone, Mary

Borgenicht, Grace

Boughton, Alice

Brausen, Erica

Braunstein, Ruth

Bremer, Anja

Breteau, Denise

Brown, Margaret

Browse, Lillian

Bryant, Harriet C. 

Bucher, Jeanne

Cane, Florence

Cardazzo, Gabriella

Caspari, Anna

Cassatt, Mary

Castel, Jeanne

Clert, Iris

Coleman, Alannah

Coleman Manshel, Anita Colin, Christiane

ContiLydia

Cooper, Paula

Courvoisier, Moira (Wallace)

Copley, Claire

Creelman, Alice

Curttis-Gould, Leah

Cuttoli, Marie

Davidge, Clara (Potter)

Dausset, Nina

De ConinckSuzanne

Denney, Alice

Diament Sujo, Clara

Dintenfass, Terry

van Doesburg, Nelly

Dorrance, Nesta

Dreier, Katherine S.

Dunbar-Kilburn, Cecilia

Dudensing, Bibi

Dwan, Virginia

Epstein, Evan

Esman, Rosa

Ey, Johanna

Parker, Gertrud
Paris Dorothy
Parsons, Betty
Passendoit, Georgette
Payson, Joan Whitney

Pearl, Marilyn
Perls (née Kolker), Käte 
Peterson, Joan
Poindexter, Elinor
von Porada
Käthe
Prévot, Myriam
Quinn Sullivan, Mary
von Rebay, Hilla  
Reed, Alma
René, Denise  
Rigelhaupt, Eleanor
Ring, Grete
Robles, Esther
Roberts, Colette
Robinson, Increase
Rockwell, Betty

Roosevelt, Jean. S. 
Rose, Murial
Rosengart, Angela
Ross, Ann
Ross, Linda
Rouiller, Alice
Saidenberg, Eleanore B.

Schaefer, Bertha
Schaeffer, Kate

Scheyer, Galka
​Seachrest, Effie
Selick, Arlene
​Serger, Helen
Shaw, Lois
Silverman, Iris
Snyderman, Ruth
Solomon, Holly

Sonnabend, Ilena
Sonnabend, Joan
Sothmann, Magdalene

Speyer, Darthea
Stein, Gertrude (b. 1927)
Stein, Gertrude 

Sterner, Marie (Norton)
Story, Ala
Sujo, Clara Diament
Sundell, Nina (Castelli)
Talalay, Marjorie
Taylor, Mildred D.
Teschner, Ruth
Turnbull, Peggy
de Tour, Irena Urdang

Faure, Patricia

Feilchenfeldt (Breslauer), Marianne

Felsen, Rosamund

Fleischman, Martha

Force, Juliana

Fischback, Marilyn (Cole)

Francis, Emily A.

Fried, Rose

Frost, Leslie (Ballantine) Garman, Kathleen

Gechtoff, Ethel

Gee, Helen

Gibbons, Sallie (J.) (or Sadie)

Gillespie, Elizabeth (Duane)

Goodman, Marian

Granoff, Katia

Grosman, Tatyana

Gruskin, Mary J. 

Guggenheim, Peggy

Hackett, Helen (Sr.)

Hackett, Helen (Jr.)

Halpert, Edith (Gregor)

Hallowell, Sara(h) T(yson)

Harriman, Marie

Harvey, Emily

Hearn, Pat

Heap, Jane

Herzbrun, Helene

Hooks, Geri

Horne, Alice Merrill

Horne, Grace

Hutton, Dorothy

Jackson, Martha (Kellog)

Jacobi, Lotte

Juda, Annely

Judd Ryan, Beatrice

Kahn (Collinet), Simone
Kallir, Jane
Kane, Constance
Karlis, Tirca
Kasle, Gertrude
Kellen, Estella

Kornblee, Jill
Kraushaar, Antoinette
Kroll Goldsmith, Berthe "Bea"
Kuh, Katharine
Lefranc, Margaret
Leavin, Margo
Leiris, Louise

Lessore, Helen
Little, Elspeth
Lowengrund, Margaret

Lust, Elenore
Lawrence, Genevieve
Lazuk, Vera
Maeght, Isabelle

Mairet, Ethel
Mansion, Gracie
Meyer, Agnes E. 
Nalecz, Halima
Nebelung, Hella
Nicholson, Grace
NiepceHenriette
Norton, Peter

Nosei, Annina
Oppenheimer, Rosa
Orlando, Michele
Orwen, Mary

Varga, Margit
Vassilieff, Marie
Vierny, Dina

Viviano, Catherine
Vogel, Ilse-Margret
Walker, Ione (Gaul)

Walinska, Anna
Ward, Eleanor
Watson, Clarissa

Washburn, Joan
Weill, Berthe
Wertheim, Lucy Carrington
Wheeler, Candace
Whitney, Gertrude (Vanderbilt)
Widlund, Agnes
Willard, Marian

Williams, Mary
Williams, Abigail
Winer, Helene
Wittler, Lelia

Wylda, Laura
Zabriskie, Virginia
Zak, Hedvige/
Zak (née Kohn), Jadwiga

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