Maurice Girardin

Maurice Girardin was a successful dealer who built a collection of modern art during the first half of the twentieth century, mostly through direct relationships with artists. Upon his death in 1951 he bequeathed his vast collection, which included a large number of works by Bernard Buffet, Marcel Gromaire, and Georges Rouault, among others, to the city of Paris. These works eventually formed the core of the collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris after its founding in 1961.

Before becoming a dealer, Girardin trained as a dentist in Paris and Philadelphia, and settled in the French capital around 1912. His profession provided the necessary means to build a collection, which he began toward the end of World War I by acquiring directly from artists rather than purchasing from dealers. He befriended and collected work by artists such as Maria Blanchard, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin, Maurice Utrillo, and Suzanne Valadon. Although fairly broad in his collecting scope, Girardin showed particular enthusiasm for artists such as Rouault and Gromaire, who gave expression to the human condition. His enthusiasm for Gromaire extended beyond his own acquisitions: between 1920 and 1929, he represented the artist in an exclusive contract to act as his dealer.

In autumn 1920 Girardin co-founded (with Jane Hugard and Yvonne Chastel) a short-lived gallery, La Licorne, at 110 rue de la Boétie, with the goal of discovering and promoting emerging artists. A year later Girardin held contracts with eleven artists, including André Favory, Gromaire, Andre Lhote, Jacques Lipchitz, and Ossip Zadkine. At the first auction of the Galerie Kahnweiler’s collection (June 13‒14, 1921), which had been sequestered by the French state after the outbreak of the First World War, La Licorne purchased four works by Georges Braque and two by Pablo Picasso. In 1923, Girardin scaled down the gallery’s activities and turned it into a publishing house. Beginning in 1925, La Licorne published the art, literature, and sociology journal Cahiers idéalistes until it ceased operations entirely in 1929.

Girardin’s role in the art world was widely acknowledged by the mid-1920s and he was active in many arts organizations. He joined the Société des Amateurs d’Art et Collectionneurs, founded by the collector Daniel Tzanck. The Society bought paintings as a club and organized Salons des folles enchères, in which works would be auctioned to stimulate the market and build the reputations of young painters admired by the Society. Proceeds from the auctions were divided among the artists concerned, and the Society guaranteed itself a minimum. Girardin also sat on a number of the Society’s advisory committees, including one responsible for the exhibition Les Maîtres de l’art indépendant 1895–1937, a major survey of contemporary French art organized by Raymond Escholier at the Petit Palais in 1937.

After 1942 Girardin expanded his collection with purchases of art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The Second World War did not stop his activities: Girardin managed to acquire major works by Henri Matisse (such as Pastoral, 1905, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris) and Picasso from dealers at this time, although the names of the dealers he bought from have not been recorded. From 1948 until his death in 1951, as a sign of his continued commitment to the art of his contemporaries,Girardin focused on collecting the work of the young Buffet. In three years, he purchased thirty paintings for his collection.

Already in 1926 Girardin began thinking about donating his collection to the city of Paris: when the collector offered one hundred works to the Petit Palais, however, the museum declined on the grounds that the collection was too modern. Together with other supporters, Girardin promoted the founding of a museum for contemporary art and stated in his will that he would bequeath his collection to the city of Paris. His family, however, exercised their right to retain part of the collection, which was then dispersed in two auctions in December 1953 and February 1954. Between 1954 and 1961, when the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris opened in the Palais de Tokyo, the Girardin bequest, comprising 553 works, including eighty-nine Rouaults and 110 Gromaires, was exhibited at the Petit Palais. The acquisition of the Girardin bequest was the driving force behind the opening of a museum of modern art in the city of Paris, where it is still located today.