Paul Wengraf was born into a Jewish family of antique dealers in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1894. Following his father's death, his mother Rosa took over the business and Wengraf joined as a partner in 1930. Following the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany), Wengraf fled to London, England in 1938 and, in 1939, opened the Arcade Gallery at 15 Royal Arcade, Old Bond Street, London W1, with a wide exhibiting remit, showing Old Master paintings and antique sculpture, as well as contemporary British and artists.
Art dealer Paul Wengraf was born into a Jewish family of antique dealers in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) on 15 June 1894. Following the death of his father in 1907, his mother Rosa took over the antiques shop on Seilerstätte in the centre of Vienna, renaming it ‘Wengrafs’ Alexander Witwe’ (Alexander Wengraf’s widow). By 1924 Rosa had been named as the sole proprietor of the business and it was listed in the Vienna trade directory as Kunsthandlung R. Wengraf. Paul Wengraf joined the business as a partner in 1930, two years after his brother Fritz. Prior to this date, Wengraf had been focused on writing novels and short stories and contributing to periodicals. His novel Garantiert Echt: Eine Geschichte von Bildern und Antiquitäten (published in 1935 under the pseudonym Paul Harrison) satirised the Nazi government. In 1917 Wengraf had met the artist Egon Schiele through bookshop owner and art collector Richard Lanyi, and commissioned a portrait, which resulted in the creation of three drawings (gouache, charcoal and chalk). Following the Anschluss (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938) the Wengraf family were forced to register their business holdings under mandatory Jewish property laws and, unsuccessfully, attempted to sell the company to a sympathetic Aryan successor to manage it for them.
Wengraf fled to London, England in July 1938, with 72 art objects as seed capital for a new business, where he was later joined by his brother and mother. The company in Vienna was eventually taken over by the Nazi agent Alois Smarzari and former employee Anton Riha in March 1939. In the same month, Wengraf opened the Arcade Gallery at 15 Royal Arcade, Old Bond Street, London W1, with financial support from his friend, the Danish engineer, Ove Arup. The Arcade Gallery had a wide exhibiting remit, showing Old Master paintings from the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo periods and antique sculpture, as well as contemporary British and European artists, with a particular focus on Surrealism and primitivism. In its early years it gave crucial support to refugee artists, with notable exhibitions including John Heartfield’s only solo show in Britain, One Man’s War Against Hitler in December 1939; works by Friedl Dicker in August 1940; and new sculpture and drawings by Georg Ehrlich in August 1945. Wengraf was exempted from internment and able to keep the gallery open throughout the Blitz. From c.1939–45 the gallery published a series of small monographs on individual pictures titled Gallery Books; subjects included Velasquez’s Rokeby Venus, Seurat’s Bathers at Asnieres, Botticelli’s Nativity and the Wilton Diptych. This was followed by a further series, Cathedrals and Apropos, which focused more broadly on painting genres and subjects.
Wengraf became a naturalised British citizen in 1947. In 1963 he made a restitution claim to the Austrian state for compensation for assets taken in Vienna, which was paid on 25 September 1964. In the 1960s he was joined at the gallery by his children Monika and Peter, who in 1974, organised a commemorative 70th birthday exhibition, Garantiert Echt, celebrating Wengraf’s art dealing career and displaying artworks which had passed through his hands, among them two sculptures acquired by Henry Moore: an Eastern Mediterranean marble Lynx and Tino da Camaino’s Angel. Paul Wengraf died in Wandsworth, London, England in 1978, aged 84. In summer 2024 Ben Uri Gallery and Museum featured Wengraf in its exhibition, Cosmopolis: Refugee Art Dealers in Twentieth-Century London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Paul Wengraf]
Publications related to [Paul Wengraf] in the Ben Uri Library