A groundbreaking exhibition at Paris's Musée de l'Orangerie is finally giving long-overdue recognition to Berthe Weill, the first female gallery owner in Paris who discovered and exhibited many of the greatest artists of the modern era when they were still unknown. The show, titled "Berthe Weill, Galeriste de l'avant-garde parisienne," highlights her crucial role as a driving force behind the modern art movement, despite being largely forgotten by art history for decades.
"Place aux Jeunes" (Make Way for Youth) was the motto printed on Berthe Weill's business card when she founded her art dealership in 1901, becoming the first to use the term "Gallery" and ushering in the 20th century art world. She was determined to showcase exclusively avant-garde artists in her exhibition space on Rue Victor Massé in the Pigalle district. However, she strategically chose to name her gallery "B. Weill" rather than using her full first name, hoping to avoid scaring away her predominantly male clientele before they even walked through her doors.
Being a woman was just one of the obstacles Weill faced in the exclusive and often hostile Parisian art scene. Unlike her competitors, she came neither from an established art dealer family nor from the bourgeois collector circles that typically dominated the business. Born in 1865 to a lower-middle-class Jewish family, Weill first worked as an employee in an antique shop near the famous Drouot auction house, where she made contact with collectors and developed her passion for art.
"I'll set myself up with fifty francs," she wrote in her memoirs. "What do I risk by not succeeding? I will succeed." This determination and passion were essential as she fought to establish herself as the first female gallery owner in Paris's notoriously exclusive and sharp-tongued art world. Over nearly four decades of operation, including a period on the prestigious gallery street Rue Laffitte, Weill demonstrated an almost seismographic instinct for new styles and radical artistic breaks.
Weill's gallery became legendary for launching careers that would define modern art. She was the first to exhibit works by Pablo Picasso in spring 1902, when he was still completely unknown. That same year, she sold the earliest still life by Henri Matisse, and two years later she displayed paintings by the Fauvist artists who were being scorned by critics at the time, including works by Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Henri Manguin. As a gallery owner, she played an important but previously little-studied role in promoting Cubism and painters like Fernand Léger, Albert Gleizes, and Jean Metzinger, whom she exhibited over many years.
Perhaps most notably, Weill gave Amedeo Modigliani his only solo exhibition during his lifetime, a show that would remain unique until his early death in 1920. In 1917, she displayed 34 of his works, including four nude paintings visible through the shop window that caused such a scandal they had to be removed. Despite the controversy, not a single work was sold. This exhibition exemplified Weill's willingness to take risks on misunderstood artists, even when it meant financial loss.
Weill's gallery closed in June 1940 with the Nazi occupation of Paris. As a Jewish woman, she was forced to hide in her apartment to escape deportation, successfully evading capture until the war's end. She died in 1951, having dedicated her life to promoting artists who would later be recognized as masters of modern art.
The current exhibition, developed jointly with New York's Grey Art Museum and Montreal's Musée des beaux-arts, demonstrates once again how art history has long allowed the work of female pioneers to fade into obscurity. While names like Ambroise Vollard, Paul Durand-Ruel, Paul Rosenberg, and the Bernheim Brothers are well-known as supporters of early modern art in Paris, Weill's equally important contributions have only recently begun to receive proper recognition.
The renewed interest in Weill's legacy reflects broader changes in the art world. Only as more women have assumed senior positions in museums and institutions, working as historians and curators alongside their male colleagues to reassess art history, has the perspective broadened to bring protagonists like Berthe Weill back into the light.
Despite limited documentation, curators Sophie Eloy, Anne Grace, Lynn Gumpert, and Marianne Le Morvan have successfully reconstructed the gallery owner's life and impact through extensive research. A crucial source was Weill's 1933 memoir titled "Pan! Right in the Eye!" The book's bold and humorous title, which refers to the visual shock that modern art triggered in many viewers, matches the anecdote-rich style of the text, providing valuable information about her exhibitions and individual works.
Weill made a particular effort to promote female artists, regularly exhibiting works by Suzanne Valadon. Valadon's remarkable 1923 painting "La chambre bleue" hangs in the Paris exhibition directly opposite Modigliani's large nude "Nu au collier de corail" from 1917. Most frequently, Weill presented paintings by Émilie Charmy, who became a close friend and created an impressive portrait of the gallery owner.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Weill had no business acumen and no inclination to enrich herself through art and collecting. Artists like Picasso and Matisse eventually moved to more financially powerful galleries as they rose in the Parisian art market. However, a drawing by César Abín, showing Berthe Weill sitting proudly in the center as a caring matron surrounded by her artists - Picasso, Léger, Marc Chagall, André Derain - like a brood of children, reveals much about the influence and character of the first gallery owner of the modern era.
The exhibition "Berthe Weill, Galeriste de l'avant-garde parisienne" runs at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris until January 26, 2026, with an accompanying catalog available for 39 euros.
