Charles Sedelmeyer

Austrian-French art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer was born in Vienna and died in Paris, as one of the most important art dealers there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Sedelmeyer started his career as an art dealer in Vienna in 1854. He moved to Paris in 1866 and opened a gallery at 6 Rue de la Rochefoucault. He specialized in Old Masters and contemporary art. In the late 1870s, he befriended Wilhelm von Bode, curator and director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin and a Rembrandt expert.

Sedelmeyer published illustrated catalogues of his gallery’s collection from 1894 to 1913. Wealthy collectors bought paintings from him. Among his clients were the American banker J.P. Morgan (1837-1913), Paris-based industrialist Jules Porgès (1839-1921) and Maurice (1839-1906) and Rodolphe Kann (1845-1905). Adolphe Schloss was also a regular client. The last painting that Schloss purchased from Sedelmeyer, probably in 1910, was Portrait de femme, attributed to_ _the Flemish painter Cornelis de Vos (Schloss German no. 233/ French no. 276). The painting was published in Sedelmeyer’s catalogue in 1911.

Sedelmeyer married Thérèse Brünner and they had five daughters. After the death of his wife in 1907, Sedelmeyer liquidated most of his collection in four sales, spread out between May and June of 1907. He died on 9 August 1925 in Paris and was laid to rest at the Montmartre cemetery.

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