The Steins' Collection and lessons for collectors

Gertrude Stein, her two brothers Leo and Michael, and Sarah (Michael's wife) were all patrons of modern art in Paris during the first few decades of the 20th century. A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art unites about 200 works to demonstrate the impact that the Steins' patronage had on the then artists and the way the family could disseminate a new standard of eclectic taste for modern art.

A generation of keen visitors to recent developments in the domain of art were introduced to the Steins' Saturday evening salons, in particular the works of their close friends Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, long before they were on view in prime museums.

Beginning with the art Leo Stein collected after he arrived in the city in 1903, including prints and paintings by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition tries to trace the evolution of the Steins' languid taste and also examine the relationships formed between the family’s individual members and their artist friends.

Even while focusing on works by Picasso and Matisse, the exhibit also includes paintings and sculptures as well as paper works by a host of artists like Maurice Denis, Juan Gris, Pierre Bonnard, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, Marie Laurencin, Elie Nadelman, Francis Picabia, and André Masson, among others.

‘The Steins Collect’ is rather fragmented with flashes of brilliance. It comes to the Met by way of the Paris-based and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It casts these influential American expatriates as visionary art patrons, whose social networks and tastes shaped Modernism.

But ‘The Steins Collect’ is also clear-eyed about the persisting divisions within the collectors’ family, the shifting alliances and competing egos. It provides some candid biographies of individual members of the Steins family.

Buried within some of the anecdotes are vital lessons for collectors. From Sarah and Michael: Treat the artists you love like family. From Gertrude: “Buy the people of your own age. There are always good new serious painters.” And From Leo: A limited budget is an excuse to be creative.