Siegfried Bing
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Siegfried "Samuel" Bing (1838 – September 1905) was a German art dealer in Paris, who was prominent in the introduction of Japanese art and artworks to the West and the development of the Art Nouveau style in the late nineteenth century.
Bing was born in Hamburg, a member of a large family with diverse commercial interests. He moved to France in 1854, to help manage the ceramics manufacturing business of Bing family in-laws, and resided in France for the remainder of his life. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1876. Bing married a second cousin, Johanna Baer, in July 1868. Their son Marcel Bing eventually became a business associate of his father's, as well as a jewelry designer in the Art Nouveau movement.
In 1873, on the death of his elder brother Michael, Siegfried Bing became the head of Bing family enterprises in France. Bing developed a flourishing import-export business from the 1870s onward, working through several commercial entities with various partners and family members; he concentrated on the importation and sale of Japanese and other Asian objets d'art, though his business also exported French goods to Japan, working through a Yokohama office run by his younger brother August. In December 1895 he opened his famous gallery, the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, which showed works of artists of what would become known as the Art Nouveau movement. Henry van de Velde designed the interiors of the gallery, while Louis Comfort Tiffany supplied stained glass. Bing's gallery featured entire rooms designed in the Art Nouveau style by his stable of in-house designers.
During the gallery's most successful period, 1896–1902, Bing handled a wide range of artistic work, included fabrics designed by William Morris, glassware by Tiffany, jewelry, paintings, ceramics, stained glass, and furniture in the Art Nouveau style. At its height, Bing's commercial enterprise reached from the Far East to the United States; he dealt with customers ranging from private collectors to major museums, and helped to promote a global art market. His pavilion at the 1900 Paris World's Fair was especially notable. By this time Bing was the primary European dealer for the Rookwood Pottery Co. of Cincinnati and the Grueby Faience Co. of Boston, as well as the wares of Tiffany.
Bing advanced the careers of a wide range of artists, including Louis Bonnier, Frank Brangwyn, and Edouard Vuillard, the designers Eugène Gaillard, Edward Colonna, William Benson, and Georges de Feure, and the sculptor Constantin Meunier. Bing closed his gallery in 1904, a year before his death, when the fashion for Art Nouveau was already beginning to wane.
Bing's activities were important, perhaps crucial, to the Japanese influence on Art Nouveau. He published a monthly journal, Le Japon Artistique, which began in 1888 and was collected in three volumes in 1891. The journal influenced figures like Gustav Klimt.
Siegfried Bing has often been mis-named Samuel, perhaps in confusion with his brother, Samuel Otto Bing (1850–1905). (Siegfried consistently signed his name "S. Bing," facilitating the confusion.) Although Elias Bing, the American Biological Art Metal artist, produces Art-Nouveau inspired jewelry, there is no family relationship.
Bibliography
- Dam, Peter van. "Siegfried Bing 1838-1905." Andon, Summer 1983, pp. 10-14.
- Miyajima Hisao. "S. Bing’s visit to Japan." In: Bulletin of the Study of Japonisme 2 (1982), S. 29-33.
- Weisberg, Gabriel P., Edwin Becker, and Évelyne Possémé, eds. The Origins of L'Art Nouveau: The Bing Empire. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, distributed by Cornell University Press 2004. ISBN 0-8014-4387-3
