FOR THE LOVE OF MONET
Meet Gallery’s ‘anonymous donor’
An exhibition of Claude Monet paintings at the National Gallery of Canada is being held this fall thanks largely to the generosity of a previously anonymous benefactor who has just been unmasked as Jozef Straus, former CEO of the once booming Ottawa high-tech company JDS Uniphase.
The exhibition, Monet: A Bridge to Modernity, is being built around Monet’s 1872 sombre painting Le pont de bois. Straus has confirmed in an interview that he owns the painting, having bought it through an intermediary June 19, 2013, during an auction at Sotheby’s London. The painting sold for £6,242,500, which is about $11.4 million Cdn, according to current exchange rates.
After the acquisition, the painting was delivered to the National Gallery, where it is on view and is deemed to be on a long-term loan. The gallery was so delighted with the painting that it decided to stage an exhibition of just Monet bridge paintings from Oct. 30 until Feb. 15 next year. The 12 Monets will be the main feature at the National Gallery this fall.
The gallery said back in 2013 that the lender of the Monet wished to remain anonymous. But the name of the owner was hardly treated as top secret. A check of some fine print on the National Gallery’s website shows the painting is owned by a company called VKS Art Inc., which is owned by Straus and carries the initials of his wife, Vera Koval Straus, an accomplished artist herself.
When contacted, Straus said he wanted to share the Monet painting with a large audience.
“I love art,” Straus said. “Let them enjoy it; let everybody enjoy it. It is as simple as that.”
Straus said he wanted to be “lowkey” and, therefore, be anonymous.
“What’s the big deal? The bottom line is I don’t need any accolades. Let the painting stand on its own.”
In the interview, Straus thanked the National Gallery for having alerted him to the fact the painting was about to be sold in 2013. The gallery had its eye on the Monet for several years, believing it would come up for auction after its previous owner, German collector Gustav Rau, died in 2002. Rau’s estate donated the proceeds of the sale to the United Nations children’s charity UNICEF.
The National Gallery would obviously love to own Le pont de bois, which shows a bridge across the Seine River near the artist’s then home in Argenteuil near Paris. The bridge was rebuilt after being destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Straus indicated the fate of the painting may be decided only after his death.
“At the end, something has to happen. I don’t know. Currently, I’m enjoying the scenery. Maybe my kids will have to deal with it.”
This is not the first time Straus has lent a hand to the National Gallery.
He helped pay expensive insurance costs for the Vincent van Gogh exhibition in 2012.
And, he indicated there are other donations.
I love art. Let them enjoy it; let everybody enjoy it. It is as simple as that.
“If you walk by the National Gallery, you see the walls, you may see some spots by VKS. Low-key. Lowkey.”
A visit to the VKS website reveals paintings by a who’s who of the top French impressionist and post-impressionist artists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Boudin, Camille Pissaro, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Édouard Vuillard. Other works listed are by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso and a few contemporary artists including David Hockney and Peter Doig.
Does Straus own all these paintings? “More or less,” he said enigmatically. They are all for sale, he added.
Also on the website are almost two dozen paintings by Ottawa artist Karen Bailey from a series called Triage completed after the artist’s visit in 2007 to a Canadian military hospital in Afghanistan. This series had so impressed the then governor general Michaëlle Jean that she commissioned Bailey to paint her official portrait for Rideau Hall. The portrait shows Jean surrounded by many people, including some soldiers resembling figures in the Triage series.
Bailey had said years ago a person who wished to remain anonymous had bought the complete set of paintings.
It is only now that Straus has said he was that person.
The extent of Straus’s philanthropy is not known because of his penchant for secrecy. However, in 2000, the Community Foundation of Ottawa received three gifts totalling almost $40 million from three living donors who insisted on anonymity. One of them was believed to be Straus, who did not deny a Citizen report that his gift was $18 million.
And, in December 2004, Straus was among a group of several dozen current or former members of JDS Uniphase who donated $15 million to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.