Ernest Ascher (1888–1978) Ernest Ascher (1888–1978)By Philippe Bourgoin Shortly before the First World War (1914–1918), many artists from Eastern Europe, like painter, photographer and writer Walter Bondy (1880–1940), author and art critic Adolphe Basler (1876–1951), writer Carl Einstein (1885–1940), artist and publisher Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937), painter Ernest Ascher, sculptor Joseph Brummer (1883–1947) and painter, writer and journalist Béla Hein (1883–1931), began to emigrate to Paris, where they were known to meet at the famous Café du Dôme. As their careers progressed, the interest these artists had in African and Oceanic art deepened, and they became collectors and/or dealers. Ascher and Picasso, Golfe-Juan, 1952. © Family archives. A native of Prague, it was in the company of Paul Leppin (1878–1945), Max Brod (1884–1968) and Emil Faktor (1876–1942), that the young Ascher frequented the “Prague Circle”, a group of German-speaking writers. He stayed in Munich to hone his painting skills, and he probably attended a free academy there. When he arrived in Paris around 1910, he seems to have divided his time between the city and the small town of Céret in the south, where many artists were staying at the time. The catalog for the 1913 Salon d’Automne show, at which he exhibited several landscapes and still lifes, lists two residences: Céret, and 1 Quai Saint-Michel in Paris’s 5th arrondissement, while a catalog from Munich for an event at the Internationaler Künstlerbund at which he showed two paintings, lists 17 Rue Durantin in the 18th arrondissement as his address. During this period, he probably attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, one of the hotbeds of artistic activity in Montparnasse. In the aftermath of the Great War (1914-1918), he moved into a studio in the legendary Montparnasse district. Ascher soon gave up his career as a painter and, having been initiated into the trade by Brummer, began brokering artworks, paintings, antiques and African and Oceanic pieces in order to support himself. Between 1928 and 1930, he opened a gallery at 133 Boulevard du Montparnasse, where he exhibited modern artists, including Picasso (1881-1973), with whom he remained close for a long time. He frequented the Café du Dôme in the company of Brummer, Einstein, Basler, Bondy and Hein, and met many of the most famous French and foreign artists of his time. Charles Ratton, Arthur Speyer (II) and Ernest Ascher, Berlin, circa 1931. In an exchange with Monique Barbier-Mueller (1922-2019) in the late 1970s, Charles Ratton (1895-1986) spoke to her of his encounter with Ascher: “I remember the first time I went to see Ascher, who had a studio in Montparnasse. After that, he went into business and took a small shop not far from his studio on a street overlooking Boulevard Montparnasse. This is where your father [Josef Müller (1887-1977)] often came and bought paintings and Art Nègre sculptures from him (Bulletin, Musée Barbier-Mueller, 1994, pp. 3-24). Like many painters, sculptors, writers, poets, art aficionados and dealers, Müller was also a regular at the Café du Dôme. Between 1930 and 1942, before he returned to his native Solothurn, he owned a studio on Boulevard du Montparnasse, where he used to store his acquisitions, which he made as he found them among Parisian dealers like “père” (“father”) Anthony Innocent Moris (1866-1951), Charles Ratton, Louis Carré (1897-1977), Ascher, Charles Vignier (1863-1934) and Pierre Vérité (1900-1993). Ascher was friends with André Derain (1880-1954), and it was through Ascher that collector Pierre Lévy (1907-2002) made Derain’s acquaintance and assembled one of the most important collections of works by this painter. It was also thanks to his many contacts that his cousin Zika Ascher (1910-1992) and Zika’s wife Lida, who had founded a textile business in London in 1942, created original scarves and fabrics designed by the greatest artists of the period. By this time, Ascher had become an important dealer in interwar France (1919-1939), working with the major figures of the time: “He [Paul Guillaume (1891-1934)] had already set up shop on rue de la Boétie [1921]). He had a big store in front of which I [Charles Ratton] stopped one day and he had a drum from Cameroon in his window. We had seen that with Ascher and we bought it from him. [...] He [Ascher] was a lot of fun. He had an extraordinary sense of humor and his physical aspect fit his character well. We took trips together. We went to Berlin in his car. He had a big car. [...] We met up with my great colonel-collector-dealer friend Speyer in Berlin [1930?]. [...] I had become acquainted with him in Germany through Walter Bondy” (ibid). Ernest Ascher and Arthur Speyer (II) in Paris, Montmartre, 1929. Ascher and Ratton were very close, a fact that was demonstrated by Ratton’s purchase of a remarkable Lega ivory mask from Mlle. Marie-Jeanne Walschot (1896-1977) in 1934, together with Ascher and Pierre Loeb (1897-1964), probably on account of its very high price (Archives Ratton-Ladrière). In 1933, Ratton and Ascher were engaged by the Swiss Volksbank to appraise the first African art collection of Han Coray (1880-1974). Coray had gone heavily into debt to build up this large collection, and it was dispersed in 1940 to various museums (Zurich, Berlin and Frankfurt). Later, it was also Ascher, who inadvertently introduced Jean-Paul Barbier (1930-2016) to Dong Son culture: “In 1955, Ernest Ascher, an antiquarian active in the field of African, Oceanic and antique art, and an old friend of Josef Mueller, received me. Amidst the bric-a-brac in his Parisian store, there was a rather damaged bronze disc that Ascher declared to be “of Tonkin origin”. He said he had acquired it from the widow of a former colonial official, along with other furniture and objects, including one or two fine Chinese pieces. [...] Obviously considering this piece to be of no commercial value, Ascher gave it to me as a gift when I acquired an African mask from him that same day (Art de Dông Son, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, 2021, p. 6.)”. Ascher’s main suppliers for Oceanic material at the time were Alfred Flechtheim (1878-1937), who lived in Paris between 1906 and 1913 and frequented the Café du Dôme, where he met Brummer and his companions, as well as painter Hans Purrmann (1880-1966), who published an article on Oceania titled Südseekunst (in Kunst und Künstler, XXXII, p. 115) in 1933. Flechtheim’s conversion to exotic painting and “objets d’art” took place around 1907, after he had completed his commercial training at Louis Dreyfus & Cie in Paris. Masks and sculptures - Asian, African, Pre-Columbian and Oceanic, especially from Papua New Guinea - were regularly exhibited alongside modern artworks in his various galleries in Germany. In May 1926, Flechtheim organized one of the first exhibitions of Oceanic art in Europe, called Südsee-Plastiken, in his Berlin gallery. But Ascher’s main source of Oceanic objects ultimately became Arthur Speyer (II), whom he met in Paris in 1929. They became close friends, and he visited him regularly in Berlin. The Speyers were able to establish relations with the Berlin Ethnological Museums and other German institutions, which had immense collections and were at the time willing to trade off or sell “duplicates” to complete those collections. In this way, the Speyers were able to assemble an exceptional collection of works from the German South Seas colonies. Masques [Collection Ascher], bâton de chef et bol en bois (Masks [Ascher collection], chief’s staff and wooden bowl) The first generation Speyer, Arthur Karl Hans Friedrich (1858-1923), founded an institute for entomology and biology in Hamburg-Altona, probably in 1889. At first, he focused on natural history objects but soon developed an interest in ethnography. In 1910, he moved to Strasbourg, where he was put in charge of the university’s zoological collection. During the First World War, he ran a zoological institute in Berlin and later, while still in Berlin, founded an ethnological institute in 1919. Upon his death, his son Arthur Max Heinrich Speyer (II) (1894-1958) took over his institute and continued to trade in ethnographic objects and also engaged in renting out “savage” objects as set props for trade fairs and films. Around 1926, he turned his collecting activities to objects from North America. Arthur Max Heinrich Speyer’s son, Arthur Johannes Otto Jansen Speyer (III) (1922-2007), inherited his father's North American collection and his mother Marie Speyer’s collection of Oceanic objects. Within a few years, while still working in the textile industry, he managed to make significant additions to the collection. Lintel, Maprik, Abelam, Waignakum village, Papua New Guinea Ascher’s interest in Oceanic art was clear, and demonstrated by his participation in the famous exhibition organized by Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Pierre Loeb and Charles Ratton at the Galerie du Théâtre Pigalle (February 27- mid-April 1930), with the loan, for Oceania, of six Melanesian objects: an ancestor figure, a wickerwork mask, a shield, a house post (Musée Barbier-Mueller, inv.4081 ) and a drum from the Sepik River region, an Abelam lintel, (Musée du Quai Branly, inv. 70.2006.28.1), all from Papua New Guinea, as well as of three objects from New Ireland: an ancestor figure, a house ornament (ex Paul Éluard (1895-1952) collection, Musée du Quai Branly, inv. 70.2013.23.11) and a wooden sculpture of a bird with spread wings. Nguzu nguzu, canoe prow ornament, New Georgia, Solomon Islands Several of Ascher’s objects were reproduced in André Portier’s (1886-1963) and François Poncetton’s (1875-1950) folio publication, Décoration Océanienne (A. Calavas, Paris, Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, 1931): a shield, three drums, two masks, the lintel now in the Musée du Quai Branly, a canoe prow from the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea and an architectural ornament from New Ireland. Malagan figure. New Ireland, Papua New Guinea Ascher was also very active on the public auctions scene. Between 1927 and 1937, he participated, as a buyer, in at least fifteen sales of extra-European art, and seemed to acquire as many pre-colonial American pieces as African or Oceanic ones, without favoring one region over another (E. Vaudry, Les arts précolombiens, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 143-169, 2019). In 1930, he moved to 16 Rue Jacques Callot, above the La Palette café, a famous meeting place for Beaux-Arts students, and opened a gallery a few steps away at 1 Rue des Beaux-arts, whose address appears in an advertisement in the catalog for Exposition de Bronzes et Ivoires du Royaume du Bénin (Exhibition of Bronzes and Ivories from the Kingdom of Benin) (Musée d'Ethnographie, Palais du Trocadéro, 1932), a show organized by Ratton. Ascher’s ex-wife, Suzanne Metthey, had by then renewed her relationship with him and sold ethnic jewelry there. The antiquarian’s reputation having now been well established, many French, European and foreign personalities and institutions came to him to add to their collections. In New York, the Galerie Pierre Matisse (named after its founder, the youngest son of Henri Matisse (1869-1954)) opened its doors in 1931. Pierre Matisse (1900-1989) was a long-time supporter in America of European artists and painters associated with the Surrealist avant-garde and had himself been exposed to non-European artistic creations at an early age by his father. The latter had also been a collector of ethnographic objects, like so many pioneering artists of the early 20th century. In the 1930s, Pierre Matisse turned to long-established Parisian dealers like Ratton, Brummer and Picasso’s friend Ascher, and began working with them. Ridge post, Melanesia, Solomon Islands, Gupuna village In November 1934, Loeb and Ratton convinced Matisse to organize an exhibition of Oceanic art in his New York gallery. In the United States, Ascher was in contact with Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who bought an Egyptian sculpture from him in 1935 (The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, inv. A409) and a Magna Graecia group of bronze animals in 1937. Ascher was also one of the lenders to the exhibition organized by Ratton in December 1936 at the Édouard VII cinema to coincide with the screening of the American film The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly (1890-1980) and William Keighley (1889-1984), which presented scenes from the Old Testament as seen by African Americans. Ascher was close to Jean Roudillon (1923-2020), with whom he traveled regularly in search of bargains. As German troops prepared to invade Czechoslovakia, Ascher helped his nephew Matti Cohen and his family financially to leave Prague for Israel. Meanwhile, during the German occupation of France in World War II (1940-1944), his gallery was closed due to Nazi looting (Archives des services français de Récupération artistique, La Courneuve, 209SUP/45 and 618 and 13BIP/84). After taking refuge in a hospital for the mentally ill and finding it impossible to reach Switzerland, Ascher went into hiding in Normandy. Being bilingual (Czech and German), he served as a translator for the Czech resistance and then for the Americans after the liberation. He subsequently returned to his gallery and renewed his relationships with his contacts in the art world, and in particular with Picasso. Ascher and Picasso, Golfe-Juan, 1952. © Family archives. In 1952, Ascher followed Picasso down to the beach at Golfe-Juan on the French Riviera to buy a painting from him. Picasso famously borrowed a tube of lipstick from a lady bather there and turned Ascher’s man-breasts and ample stomach into a portrait. He also painted his knees and left him there to go swimming: “You wanted one Picasso, you got three!” (Pierre Daix, Le nouveau dictionnaire Picasso, R. Laffont, Paris, 2012, pp. 59-60). The archives of the Musée National Picasso, Paris contain various letters and telegrams addressed to the painter, offering him various objects as well as New Year’s greeting cards (1953-1965, 515AP/C/206). Orator’s stool, Sepik, Papua New Guinea Ascher kept his gallery until the end of his life but never regained the position as a top-level dealer that he had enjoyed before the war. Today, his name appears as a provenance in many prestigious museum collections, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Barbier-Müller Museum in Geneva, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Brooklyn Museum, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, the Fondation Gandur in Geneva, and the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia.
