Richard L. Feigen's reputation is based on his collecting of Old Masters, especially Italian masters and British landscape painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. He engaged in academic dialogue with art historians researching in these fields and rediscovered paintings by Fra Angelico and Nicolas Poussin, among others. But Feigen's spectrum was much broader and more forward-looking; he was particularly committed to the reception of Max Beckmann, whose works were donated to major museums in the 1950s, but they did not want to exhibit them. In the 1960s, Feigen was the first to open a gallery in New York's Soho district, which was still a young artists' neighborhood. Finally, when Old Masters were back in demand and selling at record prices in the late 1980s, Feigen's forward-thinking collecting paid off.
Sotheby's is now offering 55 Old Master works of art for sale tomorrow in the auction »Collector, Dealer, Connoisseur: The Vision of Richard L. Feigen«. Among them are works of Italian Baroque, French Romanticism and British portraiture.
