Loan Exhibition: 24 Masterpieces

In November 1946, M. Knoedler and Co. marked a centenary milestone with a loan exhibition of twenty-four paintings drawn from distinguished private American collections. The gallery had been founded in 1846 when Michael Knoedler arrived in New York to manage a branch of the Paris firm Goupil and Co., and the centennial show was organised to honour that hundred-year span while simultaneously celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Proceeds benefited the Women’s Committee of the Metropolitan Museum.

Vermeer’s A Lady Writing appeared as catalogue number 15, illustrated in the exhibition booklet. At the time of the show the painting was being offered for sale through Knoedler on behalf of Lady Eunice Oakes of Nassau, Bahamas, whose husband Sir Harry Oakes had acquired it from the gallery in 1940. Following the exhibition the canvas was purchased by Horace Havemeyer of New York, through whose estate it passed to his sons Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer, Jr., who gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1962.

The double anniversary context made this a notably celebratory occasion for the New York art world. The twenty-four works spanned several centuries of European painting and represented the calibre of Old Master material Knoedler had handled across its century of dealing. The exhibition ran for three weeks, from 4 November to 23 November 1946, at the gallery’s premises at 556 Fifth Avenue.