THE ORMOLU LATE 18TH CENTURY, THE PORCELAIN KANGXI PERIOD (1622-1722), NOW MOUNTED AS LAMPS

Rodolphe Kann began collecting in 1880, with the purchase of the first of eleven paintings by Rembrandt; during the next twenty years he built an important collection of French furniture and works of art as well as old master paintings, which he purchased, following his own judgement, in Paris and London. Kann's collection was displayed in his house on the Avenue d'Iéna in Paris. After his death, the collection, which had been inherited by his two sons, was sold en bloc in August 1907 for almost £900,000 to Duveen Brothers, who opened the Kann house in Paris to important clients. These included the American collectors Benjamin Altman, J. Pierpont Morgan and John G. Johnson; it was through them that much of Kann's collection entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other public collections in the United States.