Portrait of René du Puy du Fou

Walter Gay [1856-1937], Paris by 1904.{1} Possibly Jules Strauss, Paris.{2} Germain Seligmann of (J. Seligmann et Fils, Paris and New York) by 1931;{3} (Pierre F. Nesi, Beverly Hills, California) by 1947;{4} purchased by George Henry Alexander Clowes [1877-1958] in 1947;{5} Clowes Fund Collection, Indianapolis, since 1958; on long-term loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Courtesy of the Clowes Fund, since 1971 (C10028); given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2014. {1} The American painter Walter Gay, residing in France, loaned the painting to the Exposition des Primitifs Français au Palais du Louvre, Paris, 1904, catalogue no. 177. The painting is included in Anne Dubois de Groër, Corneille de La Haye dit Corneille de Lyon, Paris, 1996, catalogue no. 119 (illustration). {2} Provenance information provided by both Seligman and Nesi give Jules Strauss, a major collector of Impressionism, as a former owner. Although inconclusive, e-mail correspondence with his grandson Michel Strauss in December 2010 revealed that the painting is not listed in Jules Strauss’s notebooks, still in the possession of his grandson. {3} The painting was loaned by Seligmann to an exhibition “Art through the Ages” at the Cleveland Museum of Art in fall 1931. Although there was no catalogue for this exhibition, files in the Registration Department confirm this painting’s inclusion in the exhibition; correspondence with Cleveland Museum of Art, December 2010, in IMA Provenance file (C10028). {4} The painting is documented as being sold by Seligmann to Nesi in the Jacques Seligmann & Co. records at the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., Box 180, folder “G.H.A. Clewes (sic)”; see copy in IMA Provenance file (C10028). Germain Seligman, in a letter to Nesi, dated 10 June 1947 about the painting, indicates that he visited both Walter Gay and Jules Strauss, the two successive earlier owners, quite often in Paris; see IMA Clowes Archive (C10028). {5} Bill of Sale from Nesi to Clowes, dated 26 July 1947; see IMA Clowes Archive (C10028).