A COLLECTION OF LOCAL GREATS

Collectors are the secret heroes of the art world, serving as patrons, custodians and evangelists for the works they gather. In Montreal, Jack Lazare has been far from alone in his mission. Here are a few of his fellow devotees.

Blema and Arnold Steinberg

The late couple (he was McGill University’s first Jewish chancellor, she a professor emeritus at the same school) were models of enlightened philanthropy, and were among only a handful of Canadians ever named by ArtNews magazine to its prestigious worldwide list of Top 200 Collectors.

Paul Maréchal

An art historian, gallery owner and pop art enthusiast, Maréchal is an international authority on Andy Warhol. This year his extensive collection was mined for Andy Warhol Ephemera, an acclaimed exhibition of the artist’s illustration work at the Musée de l’imprimerie in Lyon.

Robert Landau

A stone’s throw from the MMFA on Sherbrooke St., Landau Fine Art is the local public manifestation of an international life in art that has seen Landau rise to the highest echelons of a high-rolling world. In 2015 a Montreal Gazette feature described him offering a Henry Moore for auction in Europe at $35 million, and that’s not atypical.

Lillian Mauer

Former proprietor of the gallery Lillian Mauer Contemporary Art, her tastes run to the contemporary cutting edge, with a particular fondness for the multidisciplinary and the socially engaged.

François Rochon

President and founder of Giverny Capital, Rochon started collecting as a child, and his interests range from impressionism to the most challenging of contemporary sub-genres. In a 2011 interview with La Presse, he said: “Buying a work of art is not an investment. It shows how we see life at a given moment.”