Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1913 Vaucresson, France

Died: 1973 Woodbridge, Suffolk

Year of Migration to the UK: 1945

Other name/s: Ernest Gimpel , Charles Beauchamp, Cercle and Doucet, Ernest Richard Charles Gimpel

Biography

Art dealer and gallerist Charles (Ernest Richard Charles) Gimpel was born into an Anglo-French Jewish familyof art dealers in Vaucresson, France on 5 August 1913. His younger brother, Peter followed the same profession, while the youngest brother, Jean, was in the diamond business. The three brothers enjoyed a privileged childhood in a Bois-de-Boulogne home on the west side of Paris, with many servants and a focus on cultural refinement. Their grandfather, Ernst, was a picture dealer and their father, René Albert Gimpel (1881-1945), from an Alsatian Jewish family, was a distinguished French art dealer. In 1912, René Gimpel married Florence Duveen, sister of the Englishman, Joseph Duveen, 1st Baron Duveen, son of a prosperous Dutch-Jewish immigrant, considered one of the most influential art dealers and patrons in England. A member of the Resistance during the Second World War, René perished in Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany and most of his collection was lost in Paris during the war years.

During the war, Charles Gimpel fought in the Battle of France in 1940, was injured, and captured. He broke out of hospital in August and began gathering information for the Resistance (following in his father's footsteps - and with his fluency in French). In 1941, he was caught by the Vichy government, but escaped again, travelling first to Gibraltar and then to London, England, where he joined the French Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action, which worked with British intelligence. In the intelligence network, he met his future wife, Kay, a Canadian of Irish descent, who worked in London for the War Office, MI5, and Canada House. She encountered Gimpel, who was using the alias Charles Beauchamp, while handing him secret codes. On 12 January 1944, the Gestapo caught Gimpel. After enduring torture and two months in Compiègne, he was sent to Germany on 27 April 1944. He was moved to Buchenwald, then Auschwitz, and finally to Flossenbürg concentration camp on 25 May 1944, from where he was freed by Allied forces on 24 April 1945. Kay tracked him down, and he returned to France. He retired from the army as a Commandant and immigrated to England that year.

In November 1946, the brothers co-founded the London gallery, Gimpel Fils, named to honour their father, located first in Mayfair's South Molton Street, before moving to significantly larger premises in nearby Davies Street. The gallery entered the art world with the exhibition Five Centuries of French Painting (1946), which included pieces from René Gimpel’s collection which had survived the War. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the gallery earned a reputation for promoting the avant-garde and quickly rose to prominence, representing artists from both the UK and abroad.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Gimpel Fils promoted contemporary British artists, particularly those associated with St Ives, as well as abstract painters from the Ecole de Paris and, to a lesser extent, emerging American artists, thereby enhancing their global position. The gallery managed several major figures, including Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, the latter moving to Gimpel Fils from the rival Lefevre Gallery, and remaining until the early 1960s. In 1962, the Gimpels partnered with German émigré gallerist, Erica Brausen, to open the Gimpel und Hanover Galerie in Zurich, Switzerland, and in 1969, with Max Weitzenhoffer, to establish Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer in New York, USA. The gallery also organised large-scale sculpture shows in Syon Park, Isleworth and financially assisted artists, such as Hepworth, Lynn Chadwick, and Kenneth Armitage. The Gimpel family remained involved in the gallery’s operations, with René Gimpel, fourth-generation art dealer and son of Charles, serving as co-director into the 21st century.

Charles Gimpel was also a photographer who travelled to the Canadian Arctic to photograph indiginous ommunities. Some of these trips were sponsored by the Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources Canada. Together with a partner, he established a system to secure income for the Inuit while sending their artworks to Gimpel Fils, the Smithsonian in Washington DC, and the Bezalel National Museum in Israel (now the Israel Museum). Gimpel also photographed artists, such as Ben Nicholson, and regularly exhibited his work at Gimpel Fils under his old agent name. Charles Gimpel died in Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, on 26 January 1973. In the UK public domain, portrait photographs of Peter and Charles Gimpel, by Russian-Armenian émigré, Ida Kar, are held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Charles Gimpel's King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom is held in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, and some of his photographs are held in the Tate Collection. Gimpel Fils is listed on Digital Benin - a website that researches, among other issues, the destiny and sales of Benin Bronzes looted by British forces in the now-infamous Benin Expedition of 1897. Gimpel Fils featured in Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who Transformed the British Art World, held at Sotheby's London in 2019 and in Ben Uri's summer 2024 exhibition Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London.

Related books

Cherith Summers, ‘Gimpel Fils’, in Monica Bohm-Duchen, ed., Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who Transformed the British Art World, exh. cat. (London: Sotheby's, 2019), pp. 16-17
Cherith Summers, Erica Brausen & The Hanover Gallery (1948-1973), (MA Thesis: St. Andrews University, 2018), p.14
Alice Correia, ‘Gimpel Fils, Barbara Hepworth and the promotion of British sculpture in the 1950s’, Sculpture Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 2015, pp. 97-112
Diana J. Kostyrko, 'René Gimpel's Diary of an Art Dealer ', The Burlington Magazine, No. 1350, Vol. 157, 2015, pp. 615-619
Alice Correia, ‘Barbara Hepworth and Gimpel Fils: The Rise and Fall of an Artist-Dealer Relationship’,Tate Papers, No. 22, 2014, unpaginated (https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/22/barbara-hepworth-and-gimpel-fils-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-artist-dealer-relationship)
Colin Gleadell, ‘SALESROOMS: London-Spain and Spin." Art Monthly (Archive: 1976-2005), No. 236, 2000, p. 60
Maria Tippett and Charles Gimpel (photographs), Between Two Cultures: A Photographer among the Inuit (Toronto: Viking, 1994)

Public collections

Related organisations

Gimpel Fils (co-founder)

Selected exhibitions

Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2024)
Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who Transformed the British Art World, Sotheby's London (2019)
Charles Beauchamp: Recent Work (solo exhibition by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1989)
Charles Beauchamp: Iguanas in the City (solo exhibition by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1986)
Charles Beauchamp (solo exhibition by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1980)
Charles Beauchamp: Colombian Impressions (solo exhibition by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1976)
Barbara Hepworth: 1903-1975 (50 Sculptures from 1935 to 1970), Gimpel Fils, London (1975)
Germaine Richier, 1904-1959: Retrospective, Gimpel Fils, London (1973)
Charles Beauchamp: Paintings, Drawings, Engravings (solo exhibition by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1974)
The Canadian eastern Arctic (with photograph by Charles Gimpel), Gimpel Fils, London (1959)
Recent Works by Brenda Chamberlain, Gimpel Fils, London (1955)
Five Centuries of French Painting, Gimpel Fils, London (1946)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Charles Gimpel ]