The twentieth century businessman Henry Pearlman purchased his first work of art in 1945 and it changed his life. It was a landscape painting by Chaim Soutine, a brilliant post-impressionist and expressionist French artist, and it provided him with such an unknowable delight that he would spend the rest of his life reliving that feeling with every new purchase.
His taste was decidedly modernist, extending from early impressionists to their successors, the post-impressionists, and so it is that the Pearlman Collection as it is known today, includes works by Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse, and Henri deToulouse-Lautrec.
It was Cézanne though, who has the biggest impact on him. Pearlman actively began collecting watercolours by the groundbreaking artists in the 1950s and he forms a huge part of the collection today. And now we can get a chance to experience it, even from away.
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation has announced that its collection is now accessible online (it has, since the late seventies, been on a long-loan to The Princeton University Art Museum, where many of the works are on display), free for all to access.
“Our aim is to share these works of art with those who cannot view them in person,” said Daniel Edelman, president of the foundation. “This website, independent of the spatial, geographical, environmental and political constraints of exhibition, is designed to provide the virtual means for visitors to explore, study and enjoy our collection.”
What makes it remarkably captivating and interesting as a collection is Mr Pearlman’s artistic nous – he collected because he loved art. As the noted art historian John Rewald once said, where he most succeeded was in his ability to curate works that are more than just aesthetics on a wall, they are companions.
Art can exist as a purely visual stimulus, but, for individuals like Mr Pearlman, they go far deeper and tap into the human condition. There is something honest and profound about paintings and sculptures you feel a rapport with. The Pearlman Collection is exemplary of this.
“As a collector, Henry Pearlman was guided by his enjoyment,” Mr Rewald explained in 1959. “He remained true to his discovery that art is meant to be lived with, and that to those who give it their love it returns a full measure of joy.”
Cadogan Tate can ship works of art to your chosen destination anywhere in the world.