Provenance

Stendahl Galleries, Hollywood, California; David Stuart (1910–1984), California, early 1970s; sale, Arte Primitivo, New York, May 26, 2020, lot 88; sold to Peter David Joralemon, New York, May 26, 2020 (on loan to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., from 2021)

Stendahl Galleries:

Stendahl Gallery: Earl Stendahl (1887–1966);

- Erle Stendahlwas a pioneering American art dealer who in 1911 founded the influential Stendahl Art Galleries in Los Angeles, initially focusing on California impressionists of the early 20th century such as Nicolai Fechin, Joseph Kleitsch, Edgar Payne, Guy Rose, and William Wendt. The gallery eventually expanded its scope to include works by European and Latin American modern artists such as Constantin Brâncu?i, Marc Chagall, Lorser Feitelson, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Stendahl was a pioneer in the promotion of abstract art in California in the late 1920s. In 1939 he hosted one of only two non-museum exhibitions of Pablo Picasso's masterwork, Guernica, to benefit Spanish war orphans. Stendahl worked with significant collectors including George Gershwin, William Randolph Hearst, Vincent Price, Nelson Rockefeller, David O. Selznick, and Frank Lloyd Wright. During the mid-1930s, Diego Rivera's pre-Hispanic art collection inspired Stendahl to start working with pre-Columbian objects from the Americas. The first clients for ancient artifacts from Mexico and Central America were the Los Angeles collectors Louise and Walter Conrad Arensberg, who became friends with Stendahl as he assisted them in putting together one of the most significant private collections in North America. As evidenced in the archival materials, Stendahl traveled extensively throughout Latin America both for research purposes and in pursuit of pre-Hispanic art.

David Stuart, California:

- Dave Stuart was the third husband of renowned Los Angeles gallerist, Jacqueline Stuart (1921-2016), wife of Los Angeles gallery impresario David Stuart of the seminal early 1960’s Primus-Stuart Gallery, and later, David Stuart Galleries. After the dissolution of her first marriage in the early 1960s, Jacqueline married Academy Award-winning screenwriter and producer Edward Anhalt. Soon afterwards she opened her eponymous Los Angeles-based gallery where she showed the work of numerous innovative young artists including Peter Voulkos, Bruce Conner, Martin Lubner, Alan Wolfson, Lukman Glasgow, David Furman, and a host of others.
Jacqueline’s third marriage was to the highly influential founder of Jazz Man Records, David Stuart (1910-1984). Immersed in the art world since his expat days in Paris (where he befriended such art world luminaries as Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst) Stuart founded the now iconic Primus-Stuart Gallery in 1961 together with his good friend Edward Primus. In 1963 David Stuart opened David Stuart Galleries, focusing on an eclectic mix of Pre-Columbian artifacts and emerging contemporary artists like Vija Celmins and Manuel Neri. Jacqueline joined ranks with her husband in the mid 60s and together the couple championed the work of such acclaimed artists as John Altoon, Dennis Hopper, David Furman, William King, Helen Lundeberg, Hassel Smith, Mel Ramos and Joan Brown, to name a few.

Next steps (long-term):

- Stendahl and Stuart records at the AAA
- Inquiry to Andrew Turner about contents of Stendahl gallery records