From Renoir to Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie

June 1 to October 15, 2000

	Poster of the exhibition

From June 1 to October 15, 2000, the Museum hosted the exhibition From Renoir to Picasso, which featured a selection of master works from the Musée de l'Orangerie. While this French museum underwent renovations, a selection of paintings was sent on a one-time world tour, of which Montreal and Fort Worth were the only North American venues.

From Renoir to Picasso presented eighty-one masterpieces from the Walter-Guillaume Collection, which was assembled primarily by an art dealer, patron and collector by the name of Paul Guillaume. But who was this visionary man?

Who Was Paul Guillaume?
When Paul Guillaume died on October 1, 1934, at the age of forty-two, he might well have uttered the last words attributed to Cardinal Mazarin: "What a pity to leave all this!" For art dealer and art lover Guillaume, "this" consisted of an impressive private collection and the choice works he reserved for his clients. Discreet to the point of secretiveness, his personality was discernible only through the objects he collected and the artists that interested him. Guillaume had grown up amid the avant-garde artistic controversies of Fauvism, Cubism, the Ballets Russes and the dawn of abstract art.

It was in a Paris largely emptied of its creators by World War I that Guillaume, whose health had exempted him from military service, embarked upon a career in which the brashness of youth was rivalled only by the shrewdness of connoisseurship. His exhibitions of Derain in 1916 and, two years later, Matisse and Picasso, lent the art scene a semblance of vitality. Next, his interest turned to De Chirico, Vlaminck, Modigliani and Utrillo, and he expended a great deal of effort promoting painters like Cézanne and Rousseau, whom the public had not yet come to terms with. Erudite, as well as innovative, he published carefully crafted catalogues to accompany his exhibitions. His magazine Les Arts à Paris, which first appeared in 1918, devoted a prominent place not only to modern art, but also to what was known as art nègre, or African art.

If we are to believe Colette Giraudon, Guillaume was still a teenager when he discovered African art. He only bought his first Picassos to sell so he could acquire African sculpture, which he later sold to - Picasso. In an undated note addressed to "Mr. Picasso, painter, 11 Blvd. De Clichy", he wrote: "Sir, I have learned from Mr. Apollinaire that you are interested in my African statues. I have six at hand that I can bring to your home at a time that is convenient to you."

Although African art was not part of the exhibition presented at the Museum, it is worth stressing its important influence on not only Guillaume but also poet-critic Apollinaire and artists like Picasso and Modigliani. (The drawings in the exhibition The Unknown Modigliani, presented at the Museum in 1996, also evoked this influence.) Guillaume, aware that very little had been written about the history of African art, produced some of the first studies on this subject, thus acquiring recognition as an authority among the specialists of the day. Unlike other dealers and collectors, he was loathe to lump together African, Oceanian, pre-Columbian and children's art, and "art by the mad", into a sort of anti-art melting pot irrespective of their distinctive particularities.

Towards the end of his life, Guillaume seemed to be entertaining the idea of putting his African collection up for sale: eternally curious, he had apparently discovered a new interest for ancient Iranian art. But he ran out of time. His premature death also prevented him from carrying out his dream of opening to the public the paintings in his home, which he had always maintained as a sort of museum at the disposal of artists and specialists.

Domenica, Guillaume's widow and heir, gave her own personal touch to this collection by adding works of her choice. Once the Musées nationaux français had acquired the collection, it was she who asked that it bear the names of both her husbands, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume.

The Walter-Guillaume collection was sent on a one-time tour of Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States. Montreal and Fort Worth, were the only North American stops on this prestigious tour. Abitibi-Consolidated was the main sponsor of the exhibition, which also received major funding from the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de la Métropole. Air France was the exhibition's official airline. This exhibition was also supported by the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Program.