Who Paul Guillaume was
Paul Guillaume (1891-1934) started out as an employee in a Paris garage, where he stumbled upon African masks and statues shipped alongside cargoes of rubber destined for the tyre industry. This encounter with African art, in 1911, led him to Guillaume Apollinaire, who pushed him to make a profession of it: together, in 1914, the two men published an early album of "Negro sculpture." Guillaume then opened a gallery on Rue de Miromesnil and moved from African art to the living painters who interested him most: Modigliani, Soutine, Derain, Utrillo, Matisse, Picasso.
What these artists had in common at the moment Guillaume noticed them was not style, but precariousness: none of them yet had a market. The collection that now bears his name, paired with that of Jean Walter, is therefore not a collection of safe bets bought after the fact, but the result of wagers placed early, sometimes years before these painters were recognised.
1. Room 8 — The dealer and his first painter
It was the poet Max Jacob who introduced Amedeo Modigliani to Paul Guillaume in 1914. Guillaume most likely became his dealer from late 1915: he rented him a studio in Montmartre, bought and sold his canvases, and made him known in Parisian literary and artistic circles. Modigliani painted and drew his dealer several times between 1915 and 1916 — it is from this period that the portrait known as "Novo Pilota" dates. Guillaume would not, however, remain his only support: from 1916, a second dealer, Léopold Zborowski, took over and became the principal collector of his work until the end of his life.
Modigliani died on 24 January 1920, at 35, of tubercular meningitis — a disease contracted in adolescence, worsened by years of destitution and heavy drinking. His friends found him unconscious in his studio two days earlier. "Antonia" and "Woman with a Velvet Ribbon," shown in Room 8 next to André Derain’s "Harlequin and Pierrot" — another painter Guillaume was championing at the same time —, belong to this period when the dealer was trying to make a place for a painter the market still ignored.
2. Room 15 — Meat as subject
In 1925, in his studio on Rue du Saint-Gothard, Chaïm Soutine painted about a dozen canvases around beef carcasses and pieces of animal that he had delivered to him whole. He worked only from the motif, with no preparatory sketch, and deliberately let the meat decompose for several days in order to paint its changing colours — to the point where the putrefaction, the smell and the flies eventually caused conflicts with the neighbours. "Beef and Calf’s Head," held at the Orangerie, belongs to this series; the most famous painting from the same body of work, "The Flayed Ox," draws directly on the beef carcass painted by Rembrandt, which Soutine admired at the Louvre.
Soutine nonetheless remained a painter no one was buying. The turning point came in 1922-1923, when the American collector Albert Barnes discovered one of his canvases, "The Pastry Cook," in Paul Guillaume’s gallery. Barnes bought it on the spot, then returned to acquire around fifty more of Soutine’s canvases from Guillaume and a second dealer, within just a few days. This deal, arranged by Guillaume, radically changed Soutine’s financial situation and made him known simultaneously in Paris and Philadelphia by the end of 1923.
3. Room 13 — Montmartre painted from memory
Maurice Utrillo was the son of Suzanne Valadon, herself a recognised painter, former model to Renoir and Degas. It was she who, in 1904, pushed her son to paint as an outlet for an already-entrenched alcoholism. The illness nonetheless led to his first stays in a psychiatric hospital as early as 1912, then 1914, and further repeated stays afterward.
Unable to paint outdoors during these periods, Utrillo worked in the studio, sometimes from his hospital room, using postcards showing the streets of Montmartre — some of them sent to him by his own mother. "Butte Pinson," "Church of Saint-Pierre," "Church of Clignancourt" and "The Town Hall with Flag," brought together in Room 13, belong to this vein of Montmartre views reconstructed more from memory and documents than from life.
How much time
This route can be done in about half an hour, or longer if you want to spend more time in front of each room, examining the texture of Soutine’s canvases or comparing Modigliani’s portraits of Guillaume.
- Room 8 — Modigliani and Derain — 10 minutes.
- Room 15 — Soutine — 10 minutes.
- Room 13 — Utrillo — 8 minutes.
Sources and verification
The facts below have been checked against the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Barnes Foundation and cross-checked biographical sources; full links appear at the bottom of the page.
- Musée de l’Orangerie — Exhibition “Amedeo Modigliani. A Painter and his Dealer”
- France Info — Modigliani and his relationship with Paul Guillaume, his first dealer
- Wikipedia FR — Paul Guillaume (art dealer)
- Wikipedia EN — Paul Guillaume
- Wikipedia EN — Chaïm Soutine
- Musée de Grenoble — The Flayed Ox (1922)
- Lit Hub — How Albert Barnes changed the life of Chaim Soutine
- Musée de l’Orangerie — Beef and Calf’s Head, Chaïm Soutine
- POP (Ministry of Culture) — Joconde record, Beef and Calf’s Head
- Musée de l’Orangerie — History of the Jean Walter-Paul Guillaume Collection
Displays and room openings can change. Check the Musée de l’Orangerie website on the day of your visit before following a route.
Listen to the commentary in the gallery
This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.
