French Jewish art dealer, known for representing Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse. Both Paul and his elder brother Léonce Rosenberg were among the world’s major dealers of modern art.
From 1906 the brothers began to work as partners in their father’s dealership in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Having established their own networks, the brothers established their own separate galleries in the city’s 8th district, Paul at No. 21 Rue La Boétie (from 1910, opened 1911), and Léonce in the rue de la Baume.
In July 1940, Nazi Alfred Rosenberg established the Parisian base of the ‘Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg’ (ERR), whose purpose was to confiscate the masonic and art artefacts of the most important level for Hitler’s planned ‘Führermuseum’ in Linz, Austria. The looted artworks specifically included the collection of Paul Rosenberg.
Rosenberg and his family were able to escape Nazi-occupied France thanks to life-saving visas issued by the Portuguese Consul-General in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Rosenberg, his wife, daughter Micheline and her husband Joseph Robert Schwartz, all travelled via Lisbon, arriving at the Madison Hotel in New York in September 1940. There, with the help of well established friends and pieces that he had already disbursed around the world, he established a new gallery at No. 79 East 57th Street.
Paul Rosenberg died on 29 June 1959, aged 77, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
With much of the looted so-called “degenerate” art sold onwards via Switzerland, Rosenberg’s collection was scattered across Europe. Today, some 70 of his paintings remain missing, including: the large Picasso watercolor “Naked Woman on the Beach,” painted in Provence in 1923; seven works by Matisse; and the Portrait of Gabrielle Diot by Degas.
Link to Wikipedia biography