Valentine Gallery stamp
Several works in the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, a promised gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were sold by Dudensing and one, a work on paper, has a Valentine Gallery label on its backboard.
As part of the 2014-15 exhibition of the Lauder collection, the Met created a microsite on its website dedicated to the archival labels found on the works in the collection. Labels and markings offer critical clues for the provenance researcher and I was fortunate to have been a member of the research team tasked with identifying and discovering the significance of the labels.
Tracking the provenance of works on paper is challenging for the researcher because labels are not affixed to the back of the work but rather to the backboard of the frame. As works are reframed by different owners over the years labels are often lost. Fortunately, the 1908 gouache by Picasso, Landscape, still had the original backboard. Not only does it have the Valentine Gallery stamp from 1944 but it also has the label affixed by Picasso's dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, sometime before he left Paris on holiday in July 1914 just weeks before the start of WWI. The label, located in the upper left corner of the backboard, has the title and date of the work: Paysage, 1908 written in Kahnweiler's distinctive handwriting.