Charles Ratton

Charles Ratton was an important dealer of art from Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific who worked to raise the profile of art from these regions as a curator and consultant.

Ratton began his career as an antiquities dealer at the Printemps department store in his hometown. Following his service in the First World War, he studied medieval art at the Ecole du Louvre and earned his degree in 1923. Four years later, he received his gallerist license and opened an eponymous gallery at 39 rue Laffitte, which he maintained until after the Second World War, when he relocated to the rue de Marignan. Very little is known about Ratton’s first years in business, including how and when he joined the circle of avant-garde artists in Paris or what sparked his interest in the so-called arts primitifs, the catchall term then used to refer to art spanning several millennia from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. The source of his stock, however, is known: Ratton rarely purchased works in the field or from colonial officials, but rather bought objects already circulating in European markets from other dealers and collectors or at auctions.

The 1930s saw the efflorescence of Ratton’s influence and activity in Paris. In 1930 he organized—along with the Dada founder and poet Tristan Tzara—the largest exhibition to date of African and Oceanic art at the Pigalle Theater. Though understudied until recently, the Pigalle show served as a model for the Museum of Modern Art’s 1935 exhibition African Negro Art. The following year, Ratton organized important sales of African and Mesoamerican art collected by three avant-garde artists—André Breton, Paul Eluard, and Georges de Miré—and, as a result, almost single-handedly revived the market for these objects, which had diminished as a result of the worldwide depression following the U.S. stock market crash. In 1936 Ratton lent his space to André Breton for the Exposition surréaliste d'objets, a landmark presentation that juxtaposed Indigenous art of the Americas and Oceania with European Surrealist works.

During the Second World War, Ratton oversaw the sales of collections such as that of Raphael Stora, a Jewish dealer whose stock was confiscated by the Nazi regime during the occupation, and sold various artworks to Maria Dietrich, the primary buyer for the National Socialist party in Paris. In the 1950s Ratton supported the Négritude poets, led by Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, and contributed financial resources to Présence Africaine, a quarterly cultural magazine founded by Alioune Diop, for its 1951 issue on African art. He also served as a consultant to filmmakers Chris Marker and Alain Resnais for their 1953 production Les Statues meurent aussi, which was eventually banned by the French government for its critical stance on colonial interventions in West Africa. Ratton’s important later sales included the collections of the critic Félix Fénéon (Paris, 1947), the artist Jacob Epstein (London, 1962), and the entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (New York, 1966). In 1984, Ratton merged his gallery with that of Guy Ladrière; after his death the gallery—renamed Galerie Ratton-Ladrière—moved to the Quai Voltaire on Paris's Left Bank.

Sixty-four objects now in The Met collection passed through Ratton's gallery, including works from Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania ranging from the second to the early twentieth century such as a female caryatid figure from the royal palace in Fumban City, Cameroon (1978.412.438) and a French medieval earthenware jug (52.21.2). Toward the end of his life, Ratton sold his collection to Ladrière after it was rejected by the Musée du Louvre.