Founded by the influential Jewish art dealer Paul Cassirer (1871–1926), Kunstsalon Paul Cassirer played a leading role in promoting French and German Impressionism at the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s.  

Paul [FIG. 1,  FIG. 2] and his cousin Bruno Cassirer (1872–1941) [FIG. 3] founded their art salon and publishing house, Kunstsalon Bruno & Paul Cassirer, on 20 September, 1898, a joint enterprise which would last till 1901.

Their first gallery was located in the upper-class residential area of Berlin’s Tiergartenviertel at Victoriastrasse 35 [FIGS. 4-5, 7-8]. The premises — discrete from the outside, with no shop windows —was partly furnished by the Belgian Art Nouveau artist Henry van de Velde [FIG. 6]. This understated approach drew their first clients from their wealthy circle of family and friends.

After Bruno and Paul went their separate ways, Bruno established himself as an independent publisher at Derfflinger Strasse 15. A year later he founded the art magazine Kunst und Künstler, one of Germany’s most prestigious art magazines at the time. In 1938, Bruno and his wife Else (1874-1943) emigrated to England.

Paul was a dynamic tastemaker with close ties to the Paris art market, especially the Galerie Durand-Ruel. He was secretary of the Berlin Secession, an association established in 1898 in reaction to the academic and governmental restrictions imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II. He also introduced modernism to Germany, with groundbreaking exhibitions bringing many artists, especially the French Impressionists, to the attention of German collectors for the first time.

From November to December 1900 Paul Cassirer showed Paul Cézanne’s work, [FIG. 9, FIG. 10] including Boîte à lait et pommes, Petites maisons à Pontoise, près d'Auvers-sur-Oise, Arlequin [FIGS. 11-13]. From 28 December 1901 to 12 January 1902, he exhibited 11 paintings of Vincent van Gogh, including La Moisson, bought directly from Cassirer at the exhibition by prominent art patron and collector Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921), and Orchard in Blossom [FIG. 14, FIG. 15]. A Claude Monet retrospective followed in 1905; major exhibitions on Eugène Delacroix and Francisco de Goya took place in 1907; and a comprehensive show was dedicated to Ferdinand Hodler. In 1910, Paul held the first major Edouard Manet exhibition in Berlin, followed by a Oskar Kokoschka show. He also frequently included the German Impressionists such as Max Liebermann and Lovis Corinth [FIG. 16] in his program, as well as Max Beckmann and Edvard Munch.