The Famille des Saltimbanques and the Chester Dale collection
The success of the exhibition and the attention it garnered secured Dudensing’s reputation as a leading dealer of Picasso’s work. As a result, just days after Abstractions closed, he was alerted to the fact that Picasso’s 1905 masterpiece, Family of Saltimbanques (Z.I,285), was for sale. The painting had been owned since 1915 by Hertha Koenig, a private collector in Munich, who had pledged it as collateral for a loan on which she defaulted.
Consequently the bank repossessed the work intent on selling it. Dudensing immediately informed Chester Dale about the work’s availability and located an image of the painting to help convince him of its importance. Motivated by the opportunity to acquire a masterpiece at a depressed price, Dale made a low bid in cash for the painting. The bank accepted the offer and promptly shipped the painting to New York. Upon its arrival, the crated work was found to be too large to enter the Dales’ apartment and too large even to be carried up to Dudensing’s second floor gallery; ultimately it had to be dramatically hoisted up through the Valentine Gallery’s large front window during a snowfall.[i]
Since 1930 the Dales were actively involved with the Museum of French Art in New York where Maud served as Chair of the Exhibition Committee. It was here that the couple planned to show pieces from their collection on a regular basis. On February 18, 1931, three and a half weeks after the acceptance of the deal negotiated by Dudensing, the Family of Saltimbanques was placed on view at the Museum of French Art—the painting’s first public showing since the March 1914 Peau d’Ors auction preview at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.[ii] Today the painting is a highlight of the Chester Dale Collection a bequest to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
[i] Neil MacNeil, Chester Dale and His Pictures (unpublished manuscript), Chester Dale papers, (Reel 3969), Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[ii] E. A. Carmean, Picasso: The Saltimbanques (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1980), 80. In an email, Katharine Branning, Librarian at the French Institute Alliance Française, confirmed that the Museum of French Art’s large front doors and grand staircase (now replaced by elevators) would have afforded easy access for the painting to the Museum of French Art located on the 2nd floor at 22 East 60th Street. Email dated February 18, 2016.
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