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.

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 Robert Delaunay, Sonia Terk and Henri Rousseau in 1907, and opened his art gallery in 1908, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs (Paris) where he exhibited Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Sonia Delaunay, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Auguste Herbin, Jules Pascin and Pablo Picasso. Uhde commissioned Picasso to paint his portrait (1910) and produced the first monograph on Rousseau in 1911.

Uhde and Sonia Terk married in 1908 (London), reportedly a marriage of convenience which masked his homosexuality. They divorced 1910 and Terk married Robert Delaunay.

At the outbreak of World War I, many German nationals living in France had their possessions sequestered by the French state. As a result, Uhde's collection (including works by Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Marie Laurencin, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Puy and Henri Rousseau) was confiscated in 1914 and sold by the government in a series of auctions at the Hôtel Drouot in 1921.

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