Charles Sedelmeyer was an Austrian art dealer, collector, and publisher active in Paris from 1866, with premises at 6 rue de la Rochefoucauld. He is credited with popularising the Dutch artist Jan van Goyen in France. Sedelmeyer assessed the American market as important enough to send his Rubens

Rubens

Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...

 Atalanta and Meleager from the Marlborough collection for exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in the winter of 1886. He bought and sold Mihaly Munkacsy

Mihály Munkácsy

Mihály Munkácsy was a Hungarian painter, who lived in Paris and earned international reputation with his genre pictures and large scale biblical paintings.-Early Years of Munkácsy:...

's 1878 The Blind Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 Dictating Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...

 to his Daughters, and after doing so offered Munkácsy a ten-year contract, making that painter a wealthy man and a really established member of the Paris art world. Sedelmeyer wanted him to paint large-scale pictures which could be exhibited on their own. They decided that a subject taken from the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 would be most suitable. In 1882 Munkácsy painted Christ before Pilate which was followed by Golgotha in 1884. The trilogy was completed by Ecce Homo

Ecce Homo

Ecce Homo are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the , when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The original Greek is Ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος . The King James Version translates the phrase...

in 1896. These huge paintings were taken on a tour and exhibited in many European cities and also in the US. All three were bought by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 millionaire John Wanamaker

John Wanamaker

John Wanamaker was a United States merchant, religious leader, civic and political figure, considered by some to be the father of modern advertising and a "pioneer in marketing." Wanamaker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Biography:He was born on July 11, 1838.He opened his first store in...

.

A public dispute with Dr. Abraham Bredius

Abraham Bredius

Abraham Bredius , was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator.-Life:He travelled widely visiting various art collections in his youth, and worked at the Dutch Museum for History and Art before becoming director from 1889 to 1909 of the Mauritshuis...

 over the attribution to Rembrandt of the Woman Taken in Adultery sold by Sedelmeyer to the Weber collection resulted in Sedelmeyer's justificatory pamphlet, 1912. .Sedelmeyer's collection was dispersed at a series of sales in Paris.

His daughter Emilie married the sculptor and art historian Stanislas Lami

Stanislas Lami

Stanislas Lami was a French sculptor and art historian.-Life:He was born in Paris, the son of Marie Bidauld and the sculptor Alphonse Lami. On 24 June 1891 he married Émilie, the daughter of Charles Sedelmeyer, art dealer and editor. He died in Paris.Some of his works are on show in museums in Spain...

.

Works

• Charles Sedelmeyer, Illustrated Catalogue of the Eighth Series of 100 Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, French and English Schools, Paris 1902

Sources

• B. Wild, ‘Charles Sedelmeyer: Ein österreichischer Kunsthändler macht Karriere in Paris’, Parnass 14, no. 3 (1994), pp. 76–80 (cited here)
• C. Huemer, 'Charles Sedelmeyer (1837–1925): Kunst und Spekulation am Kunstmarkt in Paris', Belvedere: Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 4–19.
• C. Huemer, 'Charles Sedelmeyer’s Theatricality: Art and Speculation in Late 19th-Century Paris', Ján Bakoš (ed.) Artwork through the Market: The Past and the Present, Bratislava: Slowakische Academy of Sciences 2004, pp. 109–124.
• M. Theinhardtová, ‘Charles Sedelmeyer a Václav Brozík, cesky malír historie v Parízi’ (Charles Sedelmeyer and Václav Brozík; a Czech painter of history in Paris), in Václav Brozík (1851–1901), Národní galerie v Praze. Valdstejnská jízdárna (Prague, 2003), pp. 111–29.
• C. Huemer, 'Crossing Thresholds: The Hybrid Identity of Late Nineteenth-Century Art Dealers', Jaynie Anderson (ed.) Crossing Cultures: Conflict-Migration-Convergence, Melbourne: Miegunyah Press 2009, pp. 1007–1011.