Pierre Gaut

Pierre Gaut was an art collector whose biography includes stints as a World War I pilot as well as a postwar movie producer. From 1934 to the late 1950s, he produced nearly all of the films of Jean Renoir, the son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, including The Rules of the Game (1939). Gaut’s main profession, however, was director of the fine oil-paint manufacturer Linel, which is still in business today. Gaut was also close friends with artists, especially Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who called him their “marchand de couleur” (color merchant).

Gaut began collecting modern art at the time of the Kahnweiler sequestration sales. He acquired works by Picasso, for instance, that sculptor Jacques Lipchitz had purchased at the second Kahnweiler sale in November 1921, likely on Gaut’s behalf. In fall 1923, Gaut was able to install his Cubist collection in his new modernist house, which he commissioned from architect August Perret, a pupil of Le Corbusier; the house was in the same Paris neighborhood as the one Le Corbusier designed for artist Amédée Ozenfant. At this time, Gaut’s collection included Picasso’s Woman with Mustard Pot (1909; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) and Braque’s Violin (1913; Museum Ludwig, Cologne). Gaut continued to collect art throughout this period, including a work by Braque identified simply as Figure, which he acquired during a 1933 sale of the collection of Cahiers d’art. He collected works by Braque and Picasso at least until the 1950s, and purchased art by Picasso for the collector Marguerite Savary, whose collection is now in the Musée national d’art moderne, Paris.

After World War II, Gaut remained close with Braque and Picasso. Brassaï recalled that in 1944, while Gaut was visiting Picasso’s Paris studio on Quai des Grands Augustins, the collector offered Picasso his property in Ménerbes in exchange for a 1941 still life painting that he had long coveted. Picasso took seriously what was perhaps a joke and accepted Gaut’s offer. The artist then gave this large house to Dora Maar, the lover with whom he had just broken up. It is now a peaceful scholars’ retreat and hosts the Brown Foundation Fellows Program from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.