Book, Glass and Bottle on a Table

Purchased from the artist by Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris, by August 1914-December 12, 1914 [1];

Confiscated from Galerie Kahnweiler by the French government, December 12, 1914-May 7, 1923 [2];

Tableaux, aquarelles, gouaches, dessins & estampes par Georges Braque, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Manolo, Pablo Picasso, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 7, 1923, lot 67 [3];

Probably Helena Rubinstein (d. 1965), New York, by 1959;

Probably acquired from Rubinstein by Sir John Richardson (b. 1924), on joint account with Knoedler and Co., New York, watercolor stock book 6, no. WCA2286, May 21, 1959-February 2, 1961 [4];

Purchased from Knoedler by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 2, 1961;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.

NOTES:

[1] Galerie Kahnweiler had an exclusive contract with Juan Gris from February 1913 until the beginning of World War I in August 1914, when owner Daniel Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979), a German citizen living France, was declared an enemy alien by the French government.

[2] Kahnweiler’s gallery stock was subject to confiscation as enemy property and was sold after the war by the French Ministry of Finance toward paying Germany’s war reparations.

[3] This piece was one of eight Gris works sold as one lot.

[4] See John Richardson, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Picasso, Provence, and Douglas Cooper (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 258. Knoedler and Co. purchased a half share in a group of six Gris works from Richardson, which may all have been part of lot 67 in the May 7, 1923 sale. Other examples thought today to have been in this lot, and subsequently in the Rubinstein and Richardson collections, are: Still Life (Bouteille, Verre et Journal sur une Table) in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (Inv. no. 565, 1976.33); Verre et carafe sur une table, sold at Christie’s New York, Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale, November 5, 2014, lot 23; and Guitare et Journal sur la Table, in a French private collection (Les Cubistes, exh. cat. (Bordeaux: S. N. Imp. Delmas, 1973), 57).