Alfred Lindon
| Alfred Lindon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Alfred Lindenbaum c. 1867 Kraków, Prussia |
| Died | 1948 (aged 80–81) |
| Occupation | Jeweller, art collector |
| Spouse(s) | Fernande Citroën |
| Children |
|
| Parent(s) | Moses Lindenbaum Caroline Weil |
| Relatives |
André Citroën (brother-in-law) Jerome Lindon (grandson) Vincent Lindon (great-grandson) |
Alfred Lindon (born Abner Lindenbaum; c. 1867 – 1948) was a Polish jeweller from a poor Jewish background who became an expert on pearls. He married into the Citroën family and built an important collection of modern art that was looted by the Nazis in occupied Paris during the Second World War. He lived to see some of his paintings returned, although others were returned to his heirs after his death.
Lindon was born Abner Lindenbaum around 1867 in Kraków, Prussia, a region that is now in Poland. His father was Moses Lindenbaum and his mother was Caroline Weil. He married Fernande Citroën (1874–1963), sister of the motor manufacturer André Citroën, and they had five sons, among them, Lucien, Sonja, Raymond and Jacques. His grandson Jérôme Lindon (died 2001), Raymond's son, became an important figure in French publishing. His great grandsons are the journalist and writer Mathieu Lindon, and the actor Vincent Lindon.
Lindenbaum worked in the jewellery business, becoming an expert in pearls. He was in partnership with Adolf Weil and Lewis Lindenbaum as a diamond merchant at 25 Hatton Garden, London, and 48 rue La Fayette, Paris, where they traded as Lindenbaum and Weil. The firm had been trading since at least the early 1890s. In 1901 it was the buyer of a six-row Napoleonic necklace of pearls for £20,000 at Christie's in London. That partnership was dissolved at the end of 1911. Thereafter, Weil and the Lindenbaums bid separately for expensive pearls in London auctions. In 1916, a Lindenbaum was the under bidder on a pearl necklace at Christie's that sold for £24,000.
Lindenbaum changed his name to Alfred Lindon during the First World War as he thought that name would be more acceptable than a German-sounding name. He also abandoned his Polish nationality and became a British citizen.
Provenance records suggest that Linden began to be a serious buyer of art around the late 1920s or early 1930s. In 2006, his grandson Denis Lindon (Raymond's son) remembered visiting Alfred at his home in Paris (Avenue Foch) when he would have been in his 60s or 70s: "He was a bon vivant, we should call him. He liked his food. He was rather fat because he ate too much. He was also fond of music and he read – but art was really the center of his life."
...
Wikipedia