BIGNOU Étienne (EN)

The French art dealer Étienne Bignou (1891-1950) was a force to be reckoned with in the1930s. He was at the helm of eponymous galleries in Paris (1919-50) and New York (1934-49), and co-owned the Galeries Georges Petit¹ between 1929 and 1932 with Josse and Gaston Bernheim of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, until the Great Depression forced its closure in 1933. He had developed an impressive transnational network in the trade and worked especially closely with Reid & Lefèvre in London, M. Knoedler & Co. in New York, and Ambroise Vollard in Paris. He enjoyed enviable ties with major collectors abroad such as Albert C. Barnes and Chester Dale. But his international reputation prewar was inversely proportionate to the relative obscurity into which he fell afterwards.²

The Vollard Estate

This oblivion may have in part resulted from his unfortunate if tenuous connection with the disreputable dealer Martin Fabiani:¹ After Vollard’s death in July 1939, his estate was divided between his siblings (including their designated executor, Lucien Vollard) and his long-time friend, Mme de Galea. Bignou was the expert for de Galea; Fabiani was the expert for Lucien Vollard – that was the extent of their acquaintance until the estate was divvied up. Lucien then entrusted the liquidation of his (and his sisters’) share to Fabiani and they devised a profit-sharing agreement with the Bignou Gallery in New York and Reid & Lefèvre in London.² This perfectly legitimate arrangement stemmed from a long-standing Vollard-Bignou relationship³ and a reasonable desire to get the art out of continental Europe, as war was looming large.

Having left Paris at the end of May 1940 and reached Lisbon before the Armistice (June 22), Fabiani managed to send the pictures—702 artworks by Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Bonnard, etc.—to the Bignou Gallery on the SS Excalibur in September. However the shipment was intercepted as enemy property by the British Admiralty in Bermuda, as France was under German military Occupation by then.⁴ The artworks were seized and held at the National Gallery of Canada for the duration of the war.⁵ Nancy Karrels brilliantly elucidated this saga after careful examination of primary sources (including correspondence, museum archives, military and court records from the UK, Bermuda and Canada) in an article that:

refutes the notion that the Bermuda affair belongs to the narrative of World War II-era spoliation and argues that the collection was neither associated with looting, nor was it intended for currency conversion as was originally suspected. Fabiani was certainly a scoundrel who participated actively and willingly in the Nazi spoliation of art in France; nevertheless, his unscrupulous wartime activities stand apart from the 1940 seizure of his collection in Bermuda. By simple chronology, Fabiani could not have sent the collection to Bermuda by order of the Nazis. To wit, Great Britain never pressed ahead to legally acquire the collection as it often did with enemy property, and Fabiani’s legal ownership of the collection continued uninterrupted until its distribution in 1949.⁶

However Fabiani’s war-time schemes led to an order for his arrest in September 1945 for being a collaborationist (while he absconded to London), and Bignou’s reputation was undeservedly tainted by association.⁷

With regard to the events of fall 1940, it is worth mentioning that, when news of the seizure in Bermuda broke, Duncan McDonald—then manager of the Bignou Gallery in New York and a close partner of Bignou’s since the 1920s—wrote letters and cables that provide interesting first-witness accounts. On October 16, 1940, McDonald anxiously wrote to A.J. McNeill Reid, owner of Alex. Reid & Lefevre Ltd. in London, urging him to “take steps as quickly as you can” and “go to the highest authorities … to put the case before Mr. Winston Churchill himself.”⁸

However reprehensible Fabiani’s later activities might have been, McDonald bristled at “newspaper articles [where] someone stupidly alleged that Nazi agents might be using Fabiani.” He argued that Fabiani and Bignou “bought part of the Ambroise Vollard collection in January-February 1940,” that “Fabiani left Paris before the Germans even arrived and has been in Lisbon with his pictures,” and that he meant “to get a quota visa from the American Consul to come to New York” but this being a very long and frustrating process, he “concluded it would be safer to send the pictures ahead of him.”⁹ McDonald reasoned that if the pictures could be sold through Bignou New York, “the British Government would get our part through the dollar fund … I am probably the only Britisher in the art business in America contributing directly to the British fund on the dollar-pound exchange basis.”¹⁰

On November 1, McDonald, indignant at Reid’s recommendation that they distance themselves from Bignou’s name due to bad press, wrote:

We know very well that Bignou is still a ‘Free Frenchman’ even if he is imprisoned in France. Surely you have no more doubt about this than I? To me it makes no difference that he is imprisoned there and I am certain it is only because he was not ignoble enough to escape without his wife and two sons that he is still ‘somewhere in France.’ Bignou has always been as anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist as you or me, and was certainly forever more vocal on that subject than you. I am certain he has not changed and I, personally, can see no technical difference between E. Bignou imprisoned in France and Paul Rosenberg escaped to Lisbon and eventually New York. Do the authorities in London make such a distinction and would they consider my remaining at this Gallery “associating with the enemy” in view of the fact that it is no fault of Bignou’s? … Are we then to discard human decencies also? How would you think that I could leave the Bignou Gallery flat in view of the fact that, with your agreement and Bignou’s, I was asked to take charge of it during his absence? … We have been impatiently waiting with the hope that Bignou would send the full Power of Attorney to turn this place into an American company, for you will remember that it was his intention to try to come here in June for that purpose. I feel he must know that we are in difficulties except that we understand that no news is allowed out or into France by the Germans.¹¹

McDonald further underlined that the shipping of the Vollard pictures to the US predated the German Occupation, invalidating claims of collusion with the enemy:

I have letters from Bignou from the beginning of the year right up until the 30th of May telling me he had bought a great part of the Vollard collection with Martin Fabiani and that they were trying to get them out of the country gradually for safety and entirely with the permission of the Government, as all property had to be that came out of France since the beginning of the war. I have been receiving frequently between March and May small groups of pictures from the Vollard Collection.¹²

Bignou should thus be exculpated once and for all with regard to the Vollard works, and McDonald’s statements about Bignou being a Free French and his strong dislike of the Nazis ought to be taken into account.

Expertise and sales

Bignou’s name also appears in connection with the liquidation of Nazi-looted Bernheim-Jeune artworks¹ which were offered to the Galerie Tanner in Zurich for one million Frcs.² Among those whose name is invoked in connection with this attempted sale are the Paris-based Swiss painter Carl Montag³—who was Tanner’s agent in Paris since 1913, and had dealt with Bignou regarding the Zurich venue of the 1932 Picasso retrospective at Galeries Georges Petit—and Adolf Wüster who, as artistic advisor to the German Legation in Paris, was the leading Nazi intermediary in the Parisian art market.⁴ Bignou’s exact role is unclear, other than that he had an obvious connection to the Bernheim-Jeune gallery and may have been contacted in that capacity. It would be profoundly disturbing if he played any part in the liquidation, however if the Germans and/or Montag reached out to him, that in and out of itself does not mean that he willingly collaborated.⁵

On the other hand, Bignou undeniably sold paintings to German museums during the Nazi Occupation of France, as recorded in the papers of the Schenker Transport Company (which shipped artworks to Germany)⁶ and the Art Looting Investigation Unit’s interrogation reports produced by the United States’ Office of Strategic Services (an ancestor of the CIA).⁷ Bignou in fact voluntarily reported such sales to the French authorities in February 1945, namely gross profits of 95,642 Frcs in 1941 and 27,125 Frcs in 1942.⁸

In February 1941, Bignou sold a Corot, Le vieux port à Rouen (450,000 Frcs) to the Folkwang museum in Essen (under the directorship of Heinz Köhn),⁹ as well as a Gauguin, Vase de fleurs (300,000 Frcs),¹⁰ and a Renoir, Guernesey (220,000 Frcs),¹¹ to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld (under the directorship of Friedrich Muthmann). In June 1941, he sold a Renoir drawing, Grande baigneuse (150,000 Frcs),¹² to the Stadtisches Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Wuppertal-Elberfeld (under the directorship of Victor Dirksen).¹³ In November 1941, Bignou also sold a Renoir painting, Les grandes baigneuses (4,000,000 Frcs),¹⁴ as well as a Ingres canvas, Le Duc d'Albe à Sainte-Gudule à Bruxelles (1,800,000 Frcs),¹⁵ to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne (under the directorship of Otto H. Förster).¹⁶ In April 1942, he sold a Boudin, Plage de Trouville (400,000 Frcs),¹⁷ to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld.¹⁸ The combined sales of these six paintings and one drawing amounted to 7,420,000 Frcs, Bignou’s profits reportedly totaling 122,767 Frcs.¹⁹  

A large dossier documents the thorough post-war investigation that ensued, which shows that Bignou was sentenced to pay a hefty fine for war-time profiteering by the Comité de confiscation des profits illicites (French Committee for the Confiscation of Illicit Profits) in 1947. The Commission nationale interprofessionnelle d’épuration (National Inter-professional Purge Committee), however, which conducted its own inquiry, exonerated Bignou from any suspected collaboration on March 24, 1947, which in turn considerably lowered the aforementioned fine.²⁰

Most incriminating among the contents of the “Confiscation of Illicit Profits” dossier is a folder containing German documents, which show that Bignou availed himself of a coveted pass allowing him to use his automobile (a chauffeured Packard) freely throughout occupied France. Bignou’s original pass, signed in 1941 by Felix Kuetgens of the Kunstschutz, Paris,²¹ was renewed in 1944 by Hermann Bunjes, director of the Deutsche Kunsthistorische Forschungsstaette in Paris, who served during the Occupation as Referent für Kunstschutz und Kultur under the German military command in Paris, was Goering's first personal art agent in France, and was closely connected to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg.²² Bignou’s pass specified that he procured highly valuable paintings for German museums. The pass also stipulated that Bignou’s contact was the Munich dealer Eugen Bruschwiller – a close personal friend of Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Hoffmann who, through the personal influence of Martin Bormann, became an important buyer for the Linz museum (which Hitler envisioned).²³

That Bignou was granted such a pass can be construed as evidence of willing collaboration, or it can be ascribed to intimidation at the hands of high-ranking Germans in occupied Paris who pressured him to obtain paintings. Interestingly, the records also show that the resistance hero Henri Storoge testified that Bignou, thanks to this pass, provided transport and liaison services as member of the 6th section of Ceux de la Résistance (CDLR). Whereas doing the Germans’ bidding was not optional after France capitulated, actively helping the Résistance was a dangerous activity that one only engaged in voluntarily.

The postwar investigation mostly focused on Bignou’s wartime income, and what appears to have been offensive and suspicious was essentially Bignou’s sizable wealth—albeit demonstrably from prior business in Britain and America—which far outweighed his war-time sales.²⁴ Although during the war Bignou had no access to his accounts at the Westminster Bank and the National Bank of Scotland in London nor the Chemical Bank & Trust in New York, he regained access postwar and this accounted for his affluence. Trading with foreign nations had been his modus operandi for two decades when the war started. Trading with the enemy was of course another matter entirely, and he owned up to it.²⁵ 

On July 14, 1949, Bignou wrote a fourteen-page letter debunking the accusations leveled against him, explaining, among other things, that notwithstanding his self-reported sales to German museums during the Occupation, which were coerced and kept to the strict minimum, he worked for the Resistance during the entire length of the German Occupation, at the peril of his life, and received several medals for his services.²⁶

Perhaps he was pressured by the Germans, or perhaps the fact that he lost his sources of income when all contact with Britain and America was severed led him to trade with the enemy.²⁷ The German Occupation of France produced countless instances of ambiguous or fluid allegiance: collaboration with the Germans sometimes went hand in hand with helping the Resistance as a way of hedging one’s bets, reconciling patriotism with self-interest, attaining some degree of agency, or simply surviving.²⁸ 

In effect, the allegation that Bignou was a shameless profiteer faltered between 1947 and 1949. First, the Banque nationale pour le commerce et l'industrie (BNCI bank) certified that in 1939 Bignou (anonymously) bought “Bons d’Armement” securities worth 1,200,000 Frcs to participate in France’s war effort; secondly, the evidence showed that Bignou participed in the Résistance; thirdly, the Commission nationale interprofessionnelle d’épuration ruled that Bignou was not guilty of collaboration; and finally, a close study of his finances did not demonstrate any profitable dealings with the enemy beyond the above-mentioned sales, which Bignou had declared. Much ill will faded once the Comité understood that the gallery Bignou owned in New York (founded in 1934) had been turned into an American corporation (Bignou Gallery Inc.) on May 14, 1941, managed by Georges F. Keller, of Swiss nationality, and Duncan M. MacDonald, a British citizen, with the attorney Max Shoop as president, and that all sale profits were divided in three among Bignou, Keller, and MacDonald.²⁹ Those amounts were registered by Bignou as “profits generated abroad” (revenus encaissés à l’étranger) but had nothing to do with Germany.³⁰

The initial amounts he was to be fined in December 1947, namely the reimbursement of 3,606,028 Frcs worth of profits on German sales, plus a fine of 7,000,000 Frcs, were ultimately reduced to 1,312,000 Frcs and 2,533,759 Frcs, respectively, in June 1949. The total penalty—3,845,759 Frcs in 1949 (instead of 10,606,028)—is roughly the equivalent of $120,000 today.

Shortly thereafter, Bignou died prematurely on December 12, 1950. He was 59 years old.