The Senn family, collectors and patrons

Olivier Senn’s father-in-law, Ernest Siegfried, hated contemporary painting and found his son-in-law’s artistic tastes questionable, not to say dubious. So he decided to give him some of the paintings exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, and carefully chose the art that seemed to him "the wackiest and ugliest [1]". Nevertheless, taking care not to exceed 100 francs per painting, he acquired five, by André Derain (ill. 1), Maurice de Vlaminck, and Auguste Matisse, whom he also seems to have mistaken for Henri; a confusion due solely to their homonymy, which seemed to recur since Auguste was made a knight of the Legion of Honour instead of Henri Matisse.

Olivier Senn must have been delighted with his gift; in any case, he kept these paintings for almost forty years. Born in Le Havre in 1864, this cotton merchant was an avid collector, as was Charles-Auguste Marande. With him and a few other businessmen, as well as a number of artists - Braque, Dufy, Friesz, etc. - he founded in 1906, the Cercle de l’Art Moderne, whose aim was to bring together in Normandy "painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, writers and art lovers attracted by a common sympathy for modern artistic trends"[Statuts of 1906, art.1]]. The Musée du Luxembourg in Paris devoted an exhibition (see article) to this artistic effervescence in Le Havre due to the presence of wealthy merchants: "No cotton, no paintings" was how Boudin summed it up.

Olivier Senn amassed a collection of over 500 works - paintings, drawings and sculptures - in which the Impressionists figured prominently. After his death, his two children Édouard and Alice inherited the collection, his eldest son Édouard-Ernest having been killed in action during the First World War. In 2004, Édouard’s daughter Hélène Senn-Foulds decided to donate the…