Leo Stein

Investor

• Born: May 11, 1872
• Birthplace: Allegheny (now in Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania
• Died: July 29, 1947
• Place of death: Near Florence, Italy

Art collector, critic, and brother of writer Gertrude Stein, Leo Stein became a force in the art world when he amassed a brilliant collection of paintings with his sister.

Early Life

Leo Stein (stin) was born in 1872 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the oldest of five children. His parents were Amelia and Daniel, a railroad executive. Stein’s father amassed a considerable fortune through his investments, and the family was wealthy. He spent a short time during Stein’s childhood traveling to different countries for business purposes, first to Vienna when Stein was five and later to Paris. The family returned to the United States in 1878, and Stein was able to continue his education in America.

Stein’s life in higher education was spent in prestigious universities: Starting in 1892, Stein attended Harvard University. He then took a short hiatus, traveling the world with his cousin. In the late 1890’s, Stein transferred to Johns Hopkins University, and he graduated in 1898.

While Stein’s early life was certainly unconventional, it would be his relationship—personal and professional—with his sister Gertrude for which Stein would be remembered. While Stein and Gertrude had been close for a number of years before the start of the twentieth century, it was their art gallery in 1904 that helped bring the Steins to fame.

Life’s Work

Stein and Gertrude’s private modern art gallery was established in Paris in 1904, and it ran until 1913. The gallery began as a result of Stein’s knowledge of modern art and his adept accumulation of famous acquaintances. In 1902, Stein and Gertrude met with famed art historian Bernard Berenson, who helped the two budding art collectors become acquainted with other art galleries. The Stein gallery was founded just two years later, when Stein and Gertrude used some of the family’s wealth to buy multiple paintings by such artists as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin.

The siblings’ business picked up rapidly. Within only a few years, they filled their studio with paintings from the likes of Pablo Picasso, Henri Manguin, and others. The Steins even loaned pieces to prestigious art exhibitions. Picasso and Henri Matisse became a part of Stein and Gertrude’s elite social circle.

Even more famous than the siblings’ art gallery was their eventual feud, which would separate the two for the rest of their lives. Many accounts list the cause of the hostile split as Stein’s love interest and future wife Nina Auzias. Another potential cause of the acrimony was Stein’s mean-spirited criticism of Gertrude’s writing; some historical accounts even suggest that it might have been Gertrude’s indulgence in writing that made Stein leave in 1914, first for the United States and then for Florence, Italy. No matter what the cause, Stein’s departure meant an end to his fame in the Parisian social circles.

Stein and Auzias married in 1921, and Stein never spoke again to his sister, in the feud that lasted about thirty years until Gertrude died in 1946. Stein, already detached from Gertrude, found out about his sister’s death in a newspaper article. Stein died from cancer the following year. Auzias took her own life two years later.

Significance

While Stein never achieved the fame and success of his sister Gertrude, with her poetry and modernist literature, his art investments had an astounding impact on the art world in the early twentieth century. While Gertrude’s involvement with modernist paintings remains a notable inclusion in many biographies written about her, Stein was responsible for Gertrude’s acquisition of modern art in the first place. Stein’s associations with painters and his study of modern art were enough to jump-start the siblings’ art collection, staking them both a place in Parisian, and even European, art history.

One might also argue that Stein’s involvement with modern art helped inspire Gertrude’s later work. Her art collection, which she kept after Stein’s departure in 1912, even helped her attract the attention of such famous writers as Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway in the 1920’s.

Because of Stein’s patronage and promotion of many art pieces, his sister and other artists were propelled to cultural relevance.

Bibliography

Lipton, Eunice. “Gertrude’s Sorry Sibling.” The Nation (May 6, 1996): 22-24. An examination of Stein’s life in relation to his sister Gertrude; relates the reasons why Stein and Gertrude’s relationship deteriorated in the mid-1910’s.

Pineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996. A detailed look at the relationship between Stein and his sister Gertrude, and how the two created an artistic empire that slowly deteriorated.

Stein, Leo, and Brenda Pineapple. Appreciation: Painting, Poetry and Prose. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Stein’s only moderately successful published work, originally released not long before his death in 1947. Pineapple, the writer of the Stein siblings’ biography Sister Brother, provides an introduction for Stein’s work.