Wilhelm Uhde

Wilhelm Uhde (28 October 1874, Friedeberg, Province of Brandenburg (now Poland) – 17 August 1947, Paris) was a German art collector, dealer, author, and critic, an early collector of modernist painting, and a significant figure in the career of Henri Rousseau. Born into a Jewish family, Uhde studied law in Dresden but switched to art history, studying in Munich and Florence before moving to Paris in 1904. He purchased his first Picasso in 1905, and was one of the first collectors of the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He met the artists Robert Delaunay, Sonia Terk, and Henri Rousseau in 1907. Uhde and Sonia Terk married in 1908, reportedly a marriage of convenience, they divorced in 1910 and Terk married Robert Delaunay. Uhde established his art dealership in Paris, opening his own art gallery in 1908 to exhibit Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Sonia Delaunay, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Auguste Herbin, Jules Pascin, and Pablo Picasso. Uhde commissioned Picasso to paint his portrait in 1910. Uhde promoted naïve art and in particular the work of Henri Rousseau in France and abroad. Uhde exhibited art in naïve style as well as fauvism style in his own gallery at rue Notre Dame des Champs during Montparnasse's heyday. In 1908 he launched a traveling exhibition of Impressionist art in Basel and Zürich.