Oral history interview with Rebecca Reis, 1980

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Rebecca Reis, 1980, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Rebecca Reis
Conducted by William McNaught
March 24, April 29, May 6, May 15, May 22, June 5, July 14, September 8, and September 9, 1980

March 24, 1980 session
April 29, 1980 session
May 6, 1980 session
May 15, 1980 session
May 22, 1980 session
June 5, 1980 session
July 14, 1980 session
September 8, 1980 session
September 9, 1980 session

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Rebecca Reis on March 24, April 29, May 6, May 15, May 22, June 5, July 14, September 8, and September 9, 1980. The interview took was conducted by William McNaught for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by the Smithsoinian Institution's Women's Committee.

The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

WILLIAM McNAUGHT: This is tape 1, side 1, William McNaught speaking to Rebecca Reis, Mrs. Bernard Reis, on Monday, March 24, 1980. Mrs. Reis, when was it that your husband died?

REBECCA REIS: It was a Sunday morning, December 3rd, 1978. And his death was one of the most tragic endings to a noble and very interesting life.

MR. McNAUGHT: He certainly did have a fascinating life, in view of the people you both knew together, the things he did, his varying interests.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Should we talk a bit about how those interests came to be? When was Bernard Reis born, and what was his schooling and background?

MRS. REIS: Right. He was born in 1895. His date is around May 27th, 1895. And we were married 58 years. And from the very beginning, for some strange reason, we both took a great interest in works of art. We determined then, from the very beginning, that instead of having wall-to-wall carpeting and yards of window drapery, we would concentrate on works of art which we found beautiful, gifted, interesting, and almost worldwide. We both seemed to like the same sort of things. So that was our beginning.

MR. McNAUGHT: How do you think it happened, I mean, that from a relatively early age, from the time of your marriage, you were interested, both interested, in art? Had either of you studied it, or had your families collected it? Or how do you think this came about?

MRS. REIS: Well, I think that's the most curious thing in the world because neither of us ever took a course in art in any of our schooling or university training. My husband's specialty was accounting, and that's how he earned his livelihood during all these years.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where did he study?

MRS. REIS: He studied at New York University. And he also, as a young man, went to med school and was a graduate lawyer. As for myself, I went to a variety of schools, and finished off at the University of Michigan, taking a degree cum laude at Michigan. I think it was the year 1919. We were married in 1920, and -

MR. McNAUGHT: In New York City?

MRS. REIS: In New York City, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: You were both New Yorkers. Is that right?

MRS. REIS: We were, except that my education was not concentrated in New York. I had gone to various boarding schools, and as I say, went to the University of Michigan because I thought I was discovering the West, I think. Then, upon our marriage, we got along so very well because we seemed to like the same sort of things. We seemed to like to have a capacity of aesthetic things in almost every field. I remember we were fascinated by paintings. We were fascinated by sculpture. We were fascinated by the theater, which was very good in those days, and continued our interest in those fields. And then there were other fields in which my husband had a good deal to do with, and that is that he was one of the originators of Consumers Union. He always had an interest in the public good, if you know what I mean.

MR. McNAUGHT: When was this that he took this interest in -

MRS. REIS: That was rather early in our married life. I don't remember the date.

MR. McNAUGHT: In the 1920s, probably?

MRS. REIS: I would say so. Though I could give you the precise dates if I just -

MR. McNAUGHT: No. It's not -

MRS. REIS: It doesn't really matter. But he did have a very keen interest in the public good.

MR. McNAUGHT: Was he at this time working as an accountant; as a lawyer?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes. He had started as a young accountant with a then-famous firm, if they still exist, called Hoskins & Sells. And then he went out on his own and obtained some very important clients, among them Albert Lasker, who many people know as a very prominent businessman in the advertising field, and later, a very fine collector of very fine art.

MR. McNAUGHT: They had a great collection.

MRS. REIS: Yes. As time developed. He and Mary Lasker, once married, really built a beautiful, magnificent collection of paintings. The Lasker interest was really not only paintings, but in basic research to cure or to discover the cures for heart ailment and for cancer. And they established the now-well-known Lasker Foundation more than 30 years ago. My husband, being associated with Albert, became treasurer of the Lasker Foundation from the beginning and sat on the board. They valued him, his opinions and his knowledge, very much. And they were fond of each other. He contributed a great deal to the thinking and the development of that foundation. Now, in our private lives, we never did what most people do, go to restaurants and splurge or have a country home, which some people buy, or do the various meaningless extravagances that people indulge in. On the contrary, we were fascinated with the world and traveled a great deal, going abroad at least once or twice every year. And those trips abroad were not just casual. Since we liked art, we haunted museums. The unique quality Bernard Reis had was that he could tell when a picture was moved or removed in any museum he'd ever been to.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: He had an extraordinary memory, both visual and literary. I remember that when we would have [inaudible] and we wanted to refer to a particular thing, he could say to me, "Becky, in the library on the third shelf, you will find thus and so. Go get it." I would, and bring it down to the dining table. And he would turn to a given page in the very book he referred to, remembering precisely what he wished to tell.

MR. McNAUGHT: Extraordinary.

MRS. REIS: He had a magnificent memory. And as for his reading ability, which I always admired, he could read a page in one-eighth the time I could or most people could in a sort of triangular way. You would show him a sheet of figures, let's say, and he could go to the left - the top of the left page and read diagonally down to the bottom and get the whole sense of it in no time.

MR. McNAUGHT: Extraordinary.

MRS. REIS: Everybody admired him.

MR. McNAUGHT: Sort of his own kind of speed reading. Amazing.

MRS. REIS: It was amazing. He had a superb memory.

MR. McNAUGHT: It was - was it in the 1920s, right after your marriage, that you first started making these trips abroad?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: And abroad, you looked at museums and so on. Tell me, in New York, did you do the same sort of things, going to the museums?

MRS. REIS: Absolutely.

MR. McNAUGHT: And did you go to galleries at that time, early on? Were you - did you go to Stieglitz and that sort of thing?

MRS. REIS: Yes. We did all of that because we really were interested.

MR. McNAUGHT: And did you collect at that early stage?

MRS. REIS: Very early. Very early. I'll tell you how that was, too. I remember that we used to go to galleries, sometimes separately, only to come home and compare our impressions. And invariably, we liked the same things.

MR. McNAUGHT: That was lucky.

MRS. REIS: So there was a great communication between us.

MR. McNAUGHT: What did - when did you first start buying works of art?

MRS. REIS: I believe that it was - let's see now. I believe that our first purchase was of a painter we had no idea about. I had been looking at exhibitions that afternoon - oh, that could have been, what, in the middle '20s, let's say - and I went up to the gallery owned by J.B. Neumann.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes?

MRS. REIS: Many people still remember him. He had great taste in art. As a matter of fact, I remember his telling us that Clifford Odets bought all of his art through him, and a lot of it was of Paul Klee. So J.B. was a known character. We knew him, how I don't quite remember. But I went up to his gallery that afternoon, and he had a show of a painter called Ben Kopman, K-o-p-m-a-n. And it struck me as being interesting. Strong, though unknown to me. Still, I was impressed by the show. So I phoned my husband and said, "Bernard, on your way home, stop off at J.B. Neumann and look at a show by a man named Kopman which impressed me very much." He did that. And came 8:00 at night, he appeared with J.B. Neumann and two paintings of the very man, Kopman, which he bought like on the spot.

MR. McNAUGHT: He bought them on the spot. How fascinating. Was this your first venture as collectors?

MRS. REIS: Yes. That was really our first - our first major acquisition, I think.

MR. McNAUGHT: And then you kept -

MRS. REIS: Previous to that, however, Bill, I think we had gone to a sale one night at the Park Benet, and it was a mixed sale. But in it were three Japanese prints by the famous Utamaro. We didn't know very much about Japanese prints except that we found them beautiful. And we did know that the modern French painter had been very impressed and influenced by Japanese prints, particularly, I think, Toulouse-Lautrec. So we bought them just because we found them aesthetically beautiful, and still have them.

MR. McNAUGHT: Still have them?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: How marvelous.

MRS. REIS: Well, so that was an incidental purchase. But after the purchase of paintings in the large, we seemed to keep on doing it. And when in Paris, we always subscribed to the main art publications that existed at the time. We found that very essential and very fascinating because they were fascinating. I mean, publications like the Caillé d'Art [phonetic] or Minotaur or 20th Century. These were French paintings - French publications which you scarcely ever saw in the States.

MR. McNAUGHT: They were difficult to get in New York?

MRS. REIS: Well, you scarcely ever saw them.

MR. McNAUGHT: So you subscribed, and they were sent to you?

MRS. REIS: And we resubscribed, and made contact with a very fine art book dealer in Paris with instructions that any good editions that would come out of a special nature, they were to reserve one for us.

MR. McNAUGHT: So your real network of travels took you mostly to Paris, where you got involved to a certain degree with the art scene. Did you meet any artists in Paris at that time, in the '20s, say, early on?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes, we did. The first artist we ever got to know was Jacques Lipchitz.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, really?

MRS. REIS: Yes. It so happened that we had a friend in Philadelphia who was an art collector, and a good one. He is now dead. He had known Jacques Lipchitz before anybody in the United States seemed to have known him. And as a matter of fact, I think it was due to his influence that Albert Barnes of the Barnes Foundation first got acquainted with the work of Jacques Lipchitz and looked him up in Paris when he went there. With us, our Philadelphia friend gave us a letter of introduction to Jacques Lipchitz. And we called him, and he and his wife invited us to come, oh, I think for a drink or whatever.

MR. McNAUGHT: Do you - do you remember what year this was?

MRS. REIS: I would have to look it up precisely to tell you because my years get very kind of mixed up.

MR. McNAUGHT: But do you think it was in the '20s or -

MRS. REIS: I think it was in the '20s.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. Yes. But in any case, you had a letter if introduction.

MRS. REIS: Yes. So we had a letter to his office. And when we went there, upon - after the telephone conversation, we somehow struck a common note and became friends from the very beginning. We immediately bought one of his works, and during our total stay in Paris that year we saw a great deal of Jacques Lipchitz and his wife. We really became friends. And we got to know also his dealer, who was Jeanne Bucher. I don't know whether you would know that name. I think you're too young, Bill. But it's still going. And Bucher is B-u-c-h-e-r. Jeanne Bucher was a Swiss, of Swiss origin, but had a gallery in Paris for many years and superb taste, and showed young avant-garde painters and sculptors, as you can imagine, because he did show Jacques Lipchitz.

MR. McNAUGHT: Jacques Lipchitz.

MRS. REIS: So we got acquainted with her gallery, with Lipchitz, with all the dealers in Paris on the Right Bank, on the Left Bank, and just had the time of our lives of discovery, as it were.

MR. McNAUGHT: It must have been a very exciting period.

MRS. REIS: It was marvelous because in those days, nobody, nobody at all, ever dreamt of buying art as a form of investment. You bought art because you fell in love with it. And luckily, prices were somehow acceptable. If you had any money at all, and we did, you were in a position to buy. Well, that's how we spent our money. We lived well when we were abroad, ate well, I assure you, because aesthetics even extended to good eating, and then we really haunted the museums. That was our major interest. A great many people go abroad to get the atmosphere, to sit at cafés, to have good food. But that's not the way we spent our time. We spent our time, without fail - after breakfast at the hotel, we would spend the entire day going to exhibitions or museums, and they're endless in Paris, or interesting areas in Paris, and of course every other city wherever we went, and took no social engagements at noontime.

MR. McNAUGHT: So you had the whole day free?

MRS. REIS: Yes. But then the evening, the dinnertime, was the social time for us and for whichever friends we made or had or found. Then this kind of life continued, and we got to know various artists, especially when we had any contact with them about buying.

MR. McNAUGHT: Well, if Jacques Lipchitz was the first artist that you really got to know - that was in Paris - what about New York, which is, after all, where you lived?

MRS. REIS: Right.

MR. McNAUGHT: How did you first get to meet the artists here? Was it through the galleries after, say, perhaps you might have bought one of their works? And who was it? Which artists in New York at that relatively early time did you get to know?

MRS. REIS: I believe the most active period was about 1940 and '41.

MR. McNAUGHT: What about before that? Were you active in the '30s in New York?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you know artists then?

MRS. REIS: I can't remember whom we did know. But we were very interested in the Museum of Modern Art.

MR. McNAUGHT: Do you remember when that opened? Were you involved in it in any way?

MRS. REIS: We were involved. We were involved with the Museum of Modern Art by contribution, by membership, and by a very warm regard for the whole idea because that was the unique period for American development and absorption with art in the right sense, in the big sense.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. Well, it's fascinating to me because one thinks of the Bernard Reis collection. One should say the Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Reis collection because, as you said, it was both of yours, a mutual taste. But one thinks of the important postwar painter, abstract American painters. And that's why I wondered if you could go back to the '30s and think what happened in the period. I mean, one thinks of Rothko, and I see a Gottlieb on the wall there, and those kinds of painters. Did you know them earlier in the '30s, or were you involved in other kinds of galleries, in other kinds of art, or was it not your main focus at that time in New York?

MRS. REIS: I am trying to remember chronologically, which I'm not sure -

MR. McNAUGHT: It gets difficult, I know. But I -

MRS. REIS: Yes. I'm not sure that I can.

MR. McNAUGHT: A sort of before the war kind of thing.

MRS. REIS: Yes. We seemed to get acquainted with a good number of the avant-garde American artists I think by virtue of the fact that we went to exhibitions always. And we were particular about the artists who interested us, which is important. Otherwise, your head gets into a muddle. So we had a - we had a tendency toward what we considered beautiful art and interesting art. Now, how - with whom it started, I cannot quite tell you.

MR. McNAUGHT: I just wondered if, for example, you had been interested in the American abstract artists, or if the galleries you visited in New York tended to be those that might -

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: - display Europeans, or if you were particularly friendly early on with Stieglitz, if you want to his galleries, or if it was just a matter of going where you went.

MRS. REIS: Well, I'll tell you. At that period, various galleries cropped up and we would always go to openings.

MR. McNAUGHT: See what kinds of things they showed?

MRS. REIS: To see, yes. We would go largely to galleries which concentrated on European art of the 20th Century. That does not mean to say that we didn't haunt with pleasure the Metropolitan Museum and the Frick Museum and of course the Museum of Modern Art, which was then located in a building at Fifth Avenue and, what, 57th, I think it was.

MR. McNAUGHT: 5th Street.

MRS. REIS: Yes, at the beginning.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: In a regular office building because they started quite modestly, as I think people remember who go back that far. And so we got to know - you know, we got involved in the whole - in the whole area. Who - which artist was our first acquaintance in America, I can't swear [inaudible]. But I do remember vividly that came 1940 and '41, after Hitler had entered France and it was essential to get the advanced artists out of France in order not to be subject to imprisonment or concentration camps by the Pétain regime at the time, the Museum of Modern Art raised a fund to rescue those people. And by slow degrees, they managed, by the most intriguing ways you can possibly imagine. I remember they sent over a man by the name of Varian Frey. He may still be living. But he was a marvelous person because he had a lot of ingenuity. He could forge passports. Maybe he stole a few. I don't know. But whatever he did was to the purpose of getting all of the advanced - the avant-garde painters out of Europe.

MR. McNAUGHT: And many of them indeed, as we know, came.

MRS. REIS: Oh, indeed they did. Oh, yes. They came -

MR. McNAUGHT: And did you get to know them then?

MRS. REIS: Yes, we did. Now -

MR. McNAUGHT: How did this occur? Because I know you also became very good friends with Peggy Guggenheim and all of -

MRS. REIS: Yes. Whenever any of them came, somehow we got acquainted. I think that when the exodus occurred from Europe in 1941 and thereafter, we of course contributed to the fund of rescue. That stands to reason. But whenever any of them arrived, for some strange reason they were always referred to ourselves from the very beginning by somebody or other, first because we were buying art; secondly because my daughter, who had been educated abroad and who spoke a very rapid and colloquial French, as it were, got to know them. She was only 17 when she came back from Europe. But she was a painter ever since she was a child of 3, and she got to know all the surrealists. I might tell you that we were also aware of the surrealists before this exodus because there was a gallery owned by Julian Levy on East 57th who, for the first time here in America, had shown the surrealists. And we as well as a number of imaginative people were very intrigued by that movement. It's something that tickles the imagination. And so that we had an acquaintance that way.

MR. McNAUGHT: And then all of a sudden you were meeting them when they came here.

MRS. REIS: And then we were - yes. And then we were meeting them. And since my husband had this bent toward the arts and toward the creative quality of the artist, whenever any of these men needed anybody to get them out of trouble - well, trouble is not quite the word, but to smooth out something that had to do either with contracts with galleries or, in one case, with government suspicion that one of them may be communicating with the Nazis, or peculiar little things like that, they always came to my husband because he knew the law and he had the ingenuity to get them out of any jam that did arise. And soon that there was a mutuality of interests and affection.

MR. McNAUGHT: And they probably also came here, and you cooked them wonderful meals.

MRS. REIS: Well, I'll tell you how that was. In those days, I assure you, you could scarcely get a decent French meal. I don't know why. But we've advanced hundreds of eons since that day. But for a Frenchman, what you could get in restaurants was really very - oh, how shall I say? Very disagreeable. Nothing that seemed familiar. It so happened that I had at the time a French cook, Madeleine, who was divine. And since my husband and my daughter loved company daily, nightly, I had these people, largely artists, come all the time, whenever, so that it was an open household. And they found that the art that we had acquired was beautiful. They found the arrangement beautiful. They found the food delectable. And they found us having a lot of fun with them.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where did you live at this time?

MRS. REIS: We had a large apartment at 91st Street and Central Park West overlooking the reservoir.

MR. McNAUGHT: Marvelous.

MRS. REIS: So that from our apartment, from our windows, which stretched all along the front, it looked like the Italian lakes. And what had happened there, we lived there 20 years, and we happened to take that apartment because a year previous to taking the apartment, we had been abroad and had stayed in Florence, Italy, oh, for about four months at a stretch. We were in love with Florence. And while there, my husband was called back to New York on a case he had, so that I was there alone for, oh, I guess a stretch of two months, and fell deeply in love with antique Italian furniture in a curious sort of way. I knew a man, quite an old man, by the name of Bengujat who had owned, who had bought and owned, a beautiful little palazzo, as we call it, called the Palazzo Davanzati in a little square off the Via Tornabuoni called the Piazza Davanzati. And he took me to see it. And fell so terribly in love with that little palace. It was the kind of palace that any private family could easily live in with pleasure. However, Bengujat himself, being an unmarried man, I think, or a widow [sic] - in any case, not a married man, did not live in the palace because the government had declared it an historic monument. He couldn't touch a nail in it. I don't remember seeing a bathroom in the palace. I can't remember that. But it was so adorable, and just the size you'd like to have, that I would often say to him, oh, I'd like to see the palace again. And we went three, four, five times. And finally he gave me a set of photos of the Palazzo Davanzati just to keep as a memory, large photos, actually. He was awfully nice about it. And I began to look around for - among the art dealers, the antique art dealers, for antique Italian pieces. And during my husband's absence, I collected I can't tell you how many beautiful pieces, most of which we - some of which I gave to my daughter, some of which I gave to Jacques Lipchitz when he needed to have -

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: - a table and some benches up in Hastings. And then when my husband came, he returned to Florence. I said, "Bernard, I have collected some beautiful Italian pieces, and I think - if you like them as much as I do, I think we should ship them to New York and really get started with something." He looked a little amazed, I think. But he did look at the pieces and said to the dealer, who had now become a good friend of mine, "Well," he said, "Voltara [phonetic], if the pieces are genuine - that means to say that if the pieces are admitted to New York as being more than 300 years old, as you say they are - then that's fine. The check will be paid you upon admission." And so it happened that we acquired practically all of our basic furniture all at one - in one fell swoop.

MR. McNAUGHT: And those are still the pieces I see here now?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: In your house on 68th Street?

MRS. REIS: You see that beautiful, beautiful table.

MR. McNAUGHT: Marvelous.

MRS. REIS: And you see this beautiful predieu up here in the living room, and that marvelous credenza downstairs in the dining room.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes, I do.

MRS. REIS: And the chairs and the table in the dining room. Well, that was fine to have it come. But then I began to think what kind of space we would want in New York. So I returned home a bit earlier than I intended and began to look for space, and found, in an apartment house which belonged to Julian Levy's father, as it happened, at 91st Street and Central Park West, all of the windows giving out on the reservoir, which looked like an Italian lake. And so it happened also that a friend of ours had an apartment in that house. And I stopped searching then because I could see by the layout that that would be good space, provided we took out a lot of doors and impedimenta that I disliked. Well, we did it. And instead of having imitation French doors between the dining room and the living room - they came out - instead we built deep arches which were open. No doors, no gates, no anything of that kind, so that it was continuous space, and very handsome indeed. And I'll never forget that a friend of ours who designed the sets for the Theater Guild, namely, Cleon Throckmorton, he and I made the walls ourselves to look like the well-aged walls of the Davanzati Palace. How did we do it? First I had the painter give us a rough, undulating feeling in the surface of the walls. Then Throckmorton and I, with cloths, put in pale tones of pale blue, pale green, pale pinks, all blended so that it looked like nicely aged -

MR. McNAUGHT: Sort of mottled?

MRS. REIS: Yes. But it was done by hand and not by a paintbrush. It made all the difference in the world, and the result was absolutely beautiful.

MR. McNAUGHT: How long did you have the apartment on Central Park West?

MRS. REIS: Twenty years. Then the furniture began to arrive. And before the furniture came, we had to deal with the floors. Throckmorton and I said we cannot have parquet floors. That's out. So we began to treat the floors by first painting them a deep red, and possibly you could call it a Venetian red, but it was a deep red. Then, when that dried, we worked in, by hand again and with cloths, areas of black which would not give us a solid red surface, which would have been wrong. But we blended by our instincts so that after the blending and that was dry, we had it shellacked once, then rubbed down, shellacked again and rubbed down, and finally various coats of wax.

MR. McNAUGHT: It must have been like lacquer.

MRS. REIS: It looked absolutely beautiful. Really on the theory that the Japanese have of putting on one coat after another in the fashion if lacquer. It was a very beautiful floor as a result. And the floors were going to be very visible for the simple reason that we didn't want, as you remember my telling you, wall-to-wall carpeting. It would have been awful. So what we did have was a magnificent long rug which my mother had given me as a wedding present because she had asked me at the time, what do I most want? And I said we had seen a rug at an antique dealer by the name, I think, of Kevorkian, not existing any more, which was a beautiful shape, namely, about 7-1/2 feet wide and 13 long. It had a beautiful blue base, a lovely border, and long jewels of a delicious red on the blue surface. Well, you can imagine that rug on that kind of floor. It was absolutely stunning. That rug, I might tell you, Bill, now is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: I'll tell you how that happened. And this was some years later. I said to my husband one day, "Bernard, that beautiful 300-year-old rug has done its duty, and I don't know why we should wear it threadbare. Why don't we give it to some institution that wants it and get a rug which would be a 19th Century Persian rug but can stand the traffic of the art tours," of which we had so many, "and, you know, the general wear and tear of living?" And he said, "All right." And so I said, "But, you know, I don't know to whom to give it." And he said, "Well, the Cooper Union is known for its textiles section. Why don't you call someone there and see whether they would want it?" Which I did. And a man came. He said, "That's a beautiful rug." It really was a 300-year-old rug when I bought it, and it was older now that we'd used it. He said, "It's very beautiful but," he said, "you know, Mrs. Reis, we have a good textile section which we teach and accent, but we never - we have no collection."

MR. McNAUGHT: [Inaudible.]

MRS. REIS: "Oh, I didn't know that," said I. "Well," I said, "to whom shall I offer it?" And he said, "Well, I know that the Smithsonian in Washington would gladly take it because it's a unique piece." And he said, "Maybe the Metropolitan would want it." "But," he said, "you know, Mr. Hoving likes gift rugs to be in pristine order, condition, because - rugs that have never been stepped on, literally, because when he shows them, he hangs them, et cetera." So I said to myself, well, why not try the nearest place first. So I did call the Metropolitan, and they sent the head of the rug department, a lady whose name I've long forgotten. And when she came, she flipped again for the beauty of that rug. "Oh," she said, "I'd love to have it. But," she said, "you know, Mr. Hoving, he likes things that have never been stepped on, in pristine order." I said, "I know that, and I don't blame him if you can get them. But you tell him that since you like the rug so much, that if he'll allow you to accept it, it's yours. If not, then I'll offer it to the Smithsonian in Washington." Two days later she called and she said, "Mr. Hoving says okay." And the following day, they called for it. [Coughs] Pardon me. And two or three days later, I get a document declaring me a life fellow of the Metropolitan Museum for the gift of the rug."

MR. McNAUGHT: Really? It was that important a rug, obviously?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes, it was.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: It was a perfectly beautiful rug. And its shape was so marvelous. You know, this 9 by 12 business was nothing for me. I can't bear the thought of a 9 by 12 anything. Well, in any case, that's the story of that rug. And the whole combination was simply wonderful. We didn't want to obliterate the view from the windows because we wanted the beauty of the lake, let us call it.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. The park there is beautiful.

MRS. REIS: Yes. So we didn't want to cover that with drapes. And besides, no one could look into the windows unless he had hawk's eyes from the east side across the park. So we had side drapes of fortuni material, and they did not at all interfere with the view. But then, having been going to Venice year after year - we always somehow managed to get to Venice in the course of our travels every year - I thought to myself, the next time we go to Venice, I'm going to take the measurements of the upper part of the window and the entrance door and have them make me leaded glass windows. Now, that was a pretty nice touch, wasn't it? And I did it. And then they did. And we had them installed in the upper part of the window so that we wouldn't have nearly an uninteresting modern window, but you know how beautiful those leaded [inaudible] are. I don't know how -

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. Yes. It must have been splendid.

MRS. REIS: It was splendid.

MR. McNAUGHT: Why did you leave that apartment to come here?

MRS. REIS: Well, I referred Julian Levy's father owning the building. Julian Levy was a friend of ours and the owner of a very important art gallery in New York.

MR. McNAUGHT: Uh-huh. Yes, indeed.

MRS. REIS: And then his father wanted to sell the building. I think he was retiring or something of that kind. And as he wanted to sell the building, he sold it to one man, and then that man would sell it to another man, I presume, at a profit, so that instead of having the house, the whole house, run beautifully and -

MR. McNAUGHT: As it had?

MRS. REIS: Yes, as it had been, it got to be so careless that I said to my husband, "Well, I really find that it's disturbing to me to have the elevator suddenly conk out when your guests are coming to dinner. And the general order of the house is getting to be worse and worse. We ought to find another way to live." And I said, "I wonder, would you like it if I looked around for a private house?" And he said, "Do exactly as you like. If you find something, I'll come and see it and say what I think," and so on. Well, for two years I did look, and finally found this house that we have now. And that was in 1945. And it was a good year for buying houses. When we bought the house, it was in a rather good state but not our style. So we began to change. Took the stoop down. It was really a more or less ugly brownstone. We took the stoop down. We made the entrance on the level with the stoop, as you see it now. We took all the gimcracks off that the brownstones have, and we had a fine firm resurface the house, Getty & Lopez, the Tiffany of resurfacing houses on the East Side. And they gave us a beautiful beige surface, which made the house look very fine in its approach. And then came the time of moving. And the thing that puzzled me terribly was since the house was going to be conceived as a modern house, what about furnishing? We had taken all of the moldings off and made simple walls; converted the second floor, which is now our living room, from four rooms, which it was, into one. We never had an architect. Every one of our friends had another idea. And finally, I became the main architect, one room laid with a beautiful wide board oak floor with the pegs; and two beautiful fireplaces, which we had done in Belgian black marble. And in the dining room, we changed the fireplace mantle into an Italian terrazzo marble. We changed the back of the house, which had been merely a door leading into a back yard. We had the house shored, put in wide glasses, wide - totally wide glass, and just a door leading out into what became a very beautiful garden. We remade the garden. Mr. and Mrs. Perkins lived largely in the country at that time, and they didn't have a garden at all. They usually -

MR. McNAUGHT: Who were they? The previous owners of the house?

MRS. REIS: They were the previous owners. And it simply was a back yard, and ugly as sin, of course. So we remade that, and in due time acquired the beautiful Lipchitz sculpture which stands outside there on the blue pedestal, which was the centerpiece for the garden, and planted in relationship to it.

MR. McNAUGHT: But it was 1945 that you bought the house?

MRS. REIS: Yes. 1945.

MR. McNAUGHT: I didn't realize it had been that long that you lived here.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: So a great many of the artists and people that you came to know over the years, it was in this very room that you gave your dinner parties -

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: - with Mark Rothko or with Robert Motherwell or [inaudible].

MRS. REIS: Yes. With all the artists we knew, and we got to know them in a great variety of ways because for some reason, we were genial people. We knew good food and served it that way, and my husband was a great - a beautiful connoisseur of good wines, so that a nice atmosphere -

MR. McNAUGHT: People liked to come?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Which is what we had started talking about a bit before, of how your daughter particularly got to know some of the surrealist painters who came to New York during the war. And then you got to know them. They came here. Could we talk about some of them? Who did you get to know then?

MRS. REIS: Well, I'll tell you that happened.

MR. McNAUGHT: Max Ernst?

MRS. REIS: Since Barbara, my daughter -

MR. McNAUGHT: Barbara Poe?

MRS. REIS: Barbara as she now - yes, Barbara Poe - spoke French very well. It was an easy communication between her and the surrealist artists. And they eventually all gravitated here from Europe. And that was Max Ernst, André Breton, Duthuit - what is Duthuit's first name? Anyway, the son-in-law of Matisse. Kurt Seligmann. [Inaudible] we knew, but he had been resident in New York before that. And through them, we got to know Marcel Duchamp very well, though he had been resident here for a long time. He was not one of the 1940 imports.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. Yes. Did he used to come here, Marcel Duchamp?

MRS. REIS: A great deal. In other words, it was open house, and so that what - between the French artists whom we got to know so very well - Matta was one of them, too, you know, Matta, the Chilean who had been trained in France, had been painting and trained in France. Well, then who among the American artists we got to know first, I don't remember. We got to know Robert Motherwell very well because he was very intrigued with the French surrealist ideas. We got to know David Hare, who was also involved. In due time, we got to know Baziotes, who was a surrealist in his inclination. I'm trying to think of everybody quickly. Franz Kline. Jackson Pollock.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did he used to come here as well?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. I'll tell you a delicious story about him, Jackson Pollock. George Grosz, when he came to this country, though he came early in 1933.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you know him ever since 1933?

MRS. REIS: We met him at the boat through - we went down with - we had known his work and had some of his work, his European work. But we knew a man who knew him personally, and asked us whether we'd like to go down with him to meet him -

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: - coming in on the boat.

MR. McNAUGHT: This was in 1933?

MRS. REIS: 1933.

[END TAPE 1, SIDE A]

MR. McNAUGHT: This is William McNaught talking to Rebecca Reis. Today is Tuesday, April 29th, 1980. This is tape 1, side 2. Mrs. Reis, just being here for these several days over the last few months, I can't help but notice all the works of art you have. And of all the painters represented, it seems you have more George Grosz than practically anything. I'm sure you've got a fascinating story to tell about your relationship with that important artist. When did you first meet him?

MRS. REIS: Well, we knew his work through publications. And we recognized long ago that here was an artist of superb technical quality who recorded the German scene of the '20s and - you know, that wild period in Germany.

MR. McNAUGHT: Were you and Mr. Reis ever in Berlin at that period?

MRS. REIS: No. No, not at all. We only knew about it through publications. And in those publications, we admired the work of George Grosz because he really was outstanding. And we liked his point of view. We liked his style of expression. And he was not known very well in this country except by, I suppose, a certain number of people who know everything. And so it was not exceptional that when he was due to arrive because he had received a commission to teach at the school of art on West 57th Street - what's it called?

MR. McNAUGHT: The Art Students League?

MRS. REIS: New York Art Students League. Right. So he arrived on the ship, which I don't remember. But we had a friend who knew him personally and asked whether we'd like to go down to meet him at the boat. And we said, oh, we certainly would. Whereupon we went with our friend, and there at the customs was George Grosz, a fairly tall man, sort of round face but good-looking, and his wife and two small children. And so we all had the proper introductions, and he could tell, or we may have mentioned, that we admired his work. And then very shortly thereafter, we bought works from him. And it immediately established a friendship, sort of a spiritual contact which was very warm and loveable because we liked him right away.

MR. McNAUGHT: What year was it that you met him?

MRS. REIS: I think it was exactly 1933. And you see, as you can see by the date, he was not escaping the Nazis, but he came on a specific commission.

MR. McNAUGHT: To teach?

MRS. REIS: To teach here. And there's a wonderful story that lies behind that because a great man of the faculty of the Art Students League didn't approve of asking George Grosz to teach because of his very left point of view. But John Sloan insisted that he be asked to come to teach, and said that he would resign unless he were invited. That speaks well for John Sloan. I didn't know him, but he was evidently a very good guy in our light. Well, as things went on, we got to see a great deal of the Groszes. They would come often to dinner, and we would go to see them.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where were they living? Do you remember?

MRS. REIS: I think they were living in - right outside of New York, later in Huntington, Long Island, but before that at Bayside, I think. In any case, he was - I speak about his wife, too, because she was really very sympathetic. And he used her many, many times as a model so that she's not to be disregarded. But the electricity that existed was between ourselves and George Grosz. So what was delightful about them when they came to dinner was that he enjoyed every moment. He enjoyed what he considered, and I hope was true, a cultivated household with works of art accented in the house. And as a matter of fact, at that time it was really an apartment, which was also very handsome, accenting works of art.

MR. McNAUGHT: Was this at Central Park West -

MRS. REIS: Yes, it was.

MR. McNAUGHT: - that we'd spoken about earlier?

MRS. REIS: Yes, it was. But when - we had hanging on the walls even there a magnificent Modigliani, a wonderful figure piece of Soutine, you know, important people of that kind. And, well, of course that was George Grosz's dish, you know. Well, in any case, whenever they came to dinner, we always had company that they'd enjoy. And their pleasure and the conversation was always so animated and agreeable and so lovely and full of tales of one kind or another, and natural, his art situation in this country. At that time, he did - first of all, he was earning a livelihood by teaching at the Students League, Art Students League, which was fine.

MR. McNAUGHT: Were many people buying his work here?

MRS. REIS: Not at all. Not at all.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did he have a dealer?

MRS. REIS: He had a dealer, and I believe the dealer at that time was the - oh, dear, don't let me hesitate - an American - if I may come back to it, I'll get you the exact name because they're still in business. But they were more interested in works of art then than in setting big prices, which is the common factor at the present time. In any case, his dealer seemed to want him to paint nudes, largely, because he did them very well. And those were the things that sold more readily than anything else. But we were interested in his drawings he made in Germany on the German scene. As you can see, these café scenes were these typical German types. And you see one which is a beggar with a little boy at his feet. This was the underside of life in Germany. And in one of his large portfolios, of which he made many great ones, you could also see the large rich businessman taking advantage of the poor fellow who was applying for a job or something of that kind. Now -

MR. McNAUGHT: Were pictures of that sort or drawings of that sort things that he had brought with him here, or did he continue to do those kinds of works once in New York?

MRS. REIS: No. Things he had brought with him. And, well, we acquired a great many of those things. And everything we acquired he would always write a special inscription in his magnificent handwriting, which he colored as well, making even of his inscription to us a work of art.

MR. McNAUGHT: A work of art.

MRS. REIS: It was marvelous. And so what was interesting was that my husband, as usual, wanted to make it possible for the artist to earn a decent living. And we did everything we could to sell works of his, especially the works he made in this country, because that was now difficult. The works he made in this country were largely watercolors of the American scene, as he would, but not in that critical, harsh, disapproving attitude that he had toward the German scene.

MR. McNAUGHT: His things were less caustic here? Less satirical?

MRS. REIS: Oh, far less. Because he told me many times that he fell in love with America. And for years while living in Germany, he even used to buy those tan or yellow shoes with the big bows in the front. You know the kind of thing that we used to see people wear? "Well," he said, "they were American shoes, and just because they were American, I used to buy them." Then he said - so that his attitude toward America was one of love. It was far different from Germany. And here was a free country with types which interested him. But he rendered them sympathetically and lovingly - not sweetly, but sympathetically. You understand. So we bought a great many. Whenever he made watercolors of that kind, we bought from him. And we have quite a large number. We may have as many as ten, if not more. And I used to get friends to buy them as well. And we used to try to get publications, such as Esquire, for example, to commission him to do work. In other words, my husband Bernard, growing up a poor boy himself, realized that the artist is the most unprotected creature in the world, especially the artist of great ideas and difficult for the common herd to get to understand or to love or to want, so that it reflects on my husband's character throughout his total life. I remember his telling me that as a little boy, though his father was in business running a sort of a stationery shop on East 10th Street, that he himself when he was a little boy of maybe 8 or 10 used to earn over the weekend a salary. He would take care of the umbrellas on wet days, and he received 5 cents a day. So that you can understand that he knew the substance of life. And since he was in love and admired artists and their ability and what they have that is so intriguing, he always sought their protection and gave them help in every possible way. It was not only for Grosz, but it was for even Chagall, who didn't - who wasn't too difficult to sell, you understand, or among the Americans -

[Audio Break.]

MR. McNAUGHT: Did Mr. Reis act as accountant or advisor for George Grosz during the years he was in America?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Or was it merely a personal sort of friendship?

MRS. REIS: No, he did everything possible. He took care of his income tax matters. He took care of any kind of business matter on which he needed help. And he always did, of course, because -

MR. McNAUGHT: He didn't understand the system here?

MRS. REIS: Well, no artist really is equipped. At least no artist had been equipped to take care of his financial complications or whatever you wish to call them. Oh, I'm sure that there was a time when Rubens didn't need anybody's help. He was ambassador and became a very great, rich man and all that. But that was not quite true of the modern artist as we knew him. However, with Grosz and with all of the other artists we knew, that meant to say with Lipchitz, with Max Ernst, with Miro, among the fine artists; with Kline, the American, Franz Kline, with Philip Guston, with - I'm trying to think of all of these famous names - Baziotes. I'm trying to think of all of them, in God's name. I haven't mentioned Helen Frankenthaler, Marca-Relli, almost all of the young American painters making - oh, with Rothko, of course - making a career for themselves in difficult times when people were really not buying art. And the way he concerned himself with them was that he not only advised them when they came to any problem whatsoever, whether it was financial or whether it was a gift they made or whether it was a decision to make, you know, yes or no or what to do, because he somehow always could find a solution. And it was great for them because otherwise, they really were puzzled. And in Bernard, they had a wise and completely informed and a loveable human being who understood the problem of living, and loved and understood their talents, their position in life - which was of course not easy at all then - and their ambitions toward continuing their arts. That's what they wanted to do and should have done.

MR. McNAUGHT: So he would take care of their financial affairs?

MRS. REIS: Their financial affairs.

MR. McNAUGHT: He would prepare their income tax?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Without charge, by the way.

MR. McNAUGHT: Without charge?

MRS. REIS: Without charge.

MR. McNAUGHT: I was going to say, did they -

MRS. REIS: Not at all.

MR. McNAUGHT: - pay him by works of art?

MRS. REIS: Occasionally, but no demands were made. It was only a question of sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it was -

MR. McNAUGHT: And one artist would refer another artist, presumably?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Yes. You know, that goes around like wildfire. Why don't you ask Bernard Reis? He'll tell you what to do. And then he did other kinds of things that were very helpful and sympathetic. I remember that the first public show Helen Frankenthaler had was at the Jewish Museum. And her then-dealer, John Myer, Myers, said to Bernard, "Bernard, if you would buy one of Helen's paintings and make it a gift to the Carnegie Institute, I could interest them in wanting it because I think they would want it. And that would put her - give her a first step into a museum." And by Jove, he did it. The tax advantage thing was very trifling because, you know, he paid $1,000 for it. So his tax advantage was not a great deal. But he liked the idea of getting the artist recognized, getting the artist whom he liked placed in museums or in prominent collections, bringing everything to further their [inaudible], you know, their professional life. Well, in any case, we knew the dealers of all of them. And whatever - any kind of problem you can possibly imagine, whether the dealer or the artist himself, he somehow always had a way out. And it was the greatest comfort to them in the world. Max Ernst had a problem, he would take it to Bernard. Jacques Lipchitz had many problems, he would take them to Bernard. Bernard was a sort of oracle.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did he act as a lawyer to them, or just a financial advisor, or the actual accountant?

MRS. REIS: I believe that's not the essential thing. He acted as a very knowledgeable friend.

MR. McNAUGHT: Who understood the art world?

MRS. REIS: Who understood the artist's career, how to further it where possible, what kind of arrangement to make with his dealer. Because the dealers were not the most honorable of people for the artist to deal with. That you can understand. And he would very often oversee their contracts with dealers and make suggestions which would work preferably -

MR. McNAUGHT: Benefit the artist?

MRS. REIS: Preferably for the benefit of the artist, of course. So that when I say he was an oracle, he was. Any problems they had he took as seriously as if it were his own life problem, in fact, better. I'm sure that Bernard neglected many of the things that he could have paid attention to in his own affairs, but really devoted himself and helped in any way the artist considering, as I told you before, that the artist was a helpless man in matters of practicality and needed a guiding spirit and a lovable one, one who really cared for them.

MR. McNAUGHT: Getting back to George Grosz, which is how we started this -

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: - he was in New York for a certain amount of time, during which time you bought works from both his earlier German period and things he was doing while in America.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: And Bernard Reis was acting as a financial advisor and helped him with - helping him with taxes and so on.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Then after the war, he went back to Germany. Is that correct?

MRS. REIS: Well, wait a minute. Before he went back to Germany - yes, that is correct. But before he was going back to Germany, his whole life here was fascinating. I'll tell you a few incidents. This is one small incident, but I'll tell you a better one in a second. One incident was that Fortune magazine asked for - asked us for the privilege of reproducing one of Grosz's drawings.

MR. McNAUGHT: One that you owned?

MRS. REIS: Which we owned.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: And we said, "We" - I remember saying to Deborah someone - I don't remember her last name - but I remember saying to her, "We don't object to your reproducing it. But we do think that rich Fortune magazine can well afford to pay the artist for the privilege of reproducing his work." And Deborah, a nice woman indeed - she doesn't work there any more, even if she's alive - saw that. And I remember to this day she sent him a check for $150 for the privilege of reproduction.

MR. McNAUGHT: What do you know.

MRS. REIS: That was pretty good. And that was our feeling, that it was not the owner who counted in these matters, but it was the man who produced them. And he needed it anyway very much. Now, another delightful incident was this one which I think everybody will love. One day we had a large cocktail party right upstairs in our living room here. And among the guests was Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner. And in some way, Grosz attached himself - gravitated toward Jackson. And they were getting on very well in conversation. They both were rather shy people, by the way, but they clicked. And finally - and they must have stood talking to each other for a good three-quarters of an hour, if not longer. And Jackson was not known, really. Peggy Guggenheim had exhibited him, given him his first show.

MR. McNAUGHT: When was this? About the early '40s?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Should have been 1942, roughly. And so Grosz and Jackson were hitting it off very well, whereupon the last remark I heard said was that Grosz said, "I hope we can meet again." And hearing that, I said, "Well, that's the easiest thing in the world. Why don't you all come and have dinner together right here." And that pleased them. So we immediately made a dinner date. And the dinner date was for something a week or ten days away at 8:00 for dinner. Well, on that day, Grosz and his wife came in from Huntington - they were then out on Long Island - for dinner and were here well ahead of 8:00. But came 8:00, and no Jackson and no Lee Pollock. And just then, the telephone rings and it's Lee Pollock on the wire saying, "Becky, Jackson has just come into the door, having been out with his cronies drinking at the" - oh, there was a bar called the Cedar Bar, I think, yes - "all afternoon. He's as tight as a coot. And I don't think we can make it." And I said, "Oh, Lee, you're taking it all too seriously. Put Jackson on." And he gets on the phone, and I said to him, "Jackson, Grosz came in from the country purposely to have a chance to see you again, and I don't care whether you feel like it or not or are able to or not, why don't you and Lee get into a taxi and come?" He said, "Okay." And in 20 minutes they were here. The minute they came too the door, Jackson said to me, "Becky, give me a good swig of whiskey." And I said, "Just a minute, young man." And I did. I gave him, I think, a quarter of a glass of Scotch. And he throws it right down, he came in, greeted everybody very civilly, not really - not gaga at all. And the whole evening was enchanting. He was not one bit drunk. Now, explain it.

MR. McNAUGHT: Extraordinary.

MRS. REIS: Extraordinary. Because I think that with Jackson as I knew him, since we used to talk a lot together, you know, about personal matters, I always said about Jackson that he was so shy and so afraid that people may not be sympathetic to him that he would drink to overcome that feeling. But I never, honest to God, saw him drunk.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did he and Grosz get on well that night at dinner?

MRS. REIS: Oh, my God, we had a delicious time. They all liked the dinner. We always had a superb wine because Bernard somehow thought a superb wine - if not two, because I used to say a fish course first with a fine white Burgundy, and the meat course would come with a very fine old Burgundy or Bordeaux, whichever Bernard thought was more suitable for the dinner. And they all enjoyed it, particularly Grosz, who knew a good deal about both eating and drinking. His mother had been the cook for a famous military regiment in Berlin.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: Yes. That's how she earned her livelihood. And you were not careless about how you fed the military in Germany, as you can well imagine. And she held that position for many, many years. I think she had the ambition for her son not that he be restaurateur but maybe a mailman, something connected with the government with a good, steady salary. She little suspected that he was going in the direction that he did go.

MR. McNAUGHT: To become an artist.

MRS. REIS: Well, and by the way, he painted his mother very often. I don't think we have a portrait of his mother, but I remember seeing at his home drawings he made of his mother.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you keep up with him when he went back to Europe?

MRS. REIS: When he went back to Europe, he went not because he wanted to go. His wife Eva had family in Germany whom she hadn't seen ever since they were here.

MR. McNAUGHT: More than ten years.

MRS. REIS: Yes. And it was now the end of the war. And she had a yearning to see them again. So we saw them off. Again, we saw them at a steamer. And I said, "George, I hate to see you go." And he said, "But I'll be back in the spring. I have a new contract with the Art Students League, so I'm bound to be back in the spring." In the course of that time, he never did get back in the spring. In the course of time abroad back to Germany, his wife died, and he fell down - as I'm told, though I can't verify everything - it appears he fell down a staircase and was dead when he landed, so that we really knew nothing about his return to Germany except that was one of the things he hated to do. But he expected to be back again, so it wasn't as painful as it might have been. He certainly never thought he would want to spend the rest of his years in Germany.

MR. McNAUGHT: No. But in any case, during that period of his life here, you and Bernard were amongst his closest friends.

MRS. REIS: Very good friends. He adored us because we thought we were civilized people. We adored going to him because it was a delight. Always good company. And he and his wife were the most remarkable hosts in the world. Bernard used to send them cases of wine, so the wine was taken care of easily. But his wife knew how to cook, and we never could understand how people who had very limited sums of money and two children to bring up, how they could produce such delightful food. It wasn't that it was extravagant, but it was extremely good. I remember that Eva, if you don't mind my telling you that, used to do what the Swedish call a gravlax. What is a gravlax? A gravlax is smoked salmon, which the Swedish do at home. In other words, they buy the fresh salmon and they cook it with herbs, with the liquor called - you know it - liqueur, and salt, a little sugar. That would get wrapped, and it would stay in a cool place in the house with a heavy instrument on it, heavy, to sort of press it. And then the second - it took about three days. The second day, you would turn it to the other side and put the heavy weight on it again. And by the third day, it became smoked salmon done at home. Now, how did Eva know that? She told me that Flechtheim, the famous, famous, famous German dealer, who had perhaps the most important gallery in Berlin, represented George Grosz when he was living there. And he told Eva that in his will, he was going to will her the recipe for gravlax. So she could do that. And to buy a smoked salmon - to buy a fresh salmon was nothing, nothing as expensive as buying a smoked salmon.

MR. McNAUGHT: Of course.

MRS. REIS: So she would have that. And then she would have some - everything she did was so very good without a terrific costliness, if you understand. And it was feasible in those days to do a roast or a stew or what have you without spending a fortune on it. But it all turned out that the food was good, the drink was good, the company was good -

MR. McNAUGHT: They sound like marvelous people. Some of the other artists who came here from Europe, amongst them were Kurt Seligmann.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Can you tell me about your relationship with him?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you collect any of his work? Do you have -

MRS. REIS: We had no previous introduction to Kurt. What happened one night was that we had gone out to the World's Fair. There was a grand World's -

MR. McNAUGHT: So this would have been '39?

MRS. REIS: Yes, I think. I guess so. You know the date better than I because I never remember precise dates. And it so happened that we were seated at the same table at the Brazilian building having coffee. And in the course of conversation, without introduction, we learned who he and his wife was, or were. And they got to know us.

MR. McNAUGHT: So it was completely by chance?

MRS. REIS: Completely by chance. We had no intermediary at all.

MR. McNAUGHT: Fascinating.

MRS. REIS: And then they both - his wife was French; Kurt, as you know, is Swiss. And his wife, I believe, came from a wealthy family. So later, as I thought about it, I don't think that Kurt had a financial problem here. And he had a marvelous studio, as we learned later, in the building that's now gone at 40th Street and 6th Avenue, then called, a marvelous large studio. Well, that we learned later. But we seemed to invite them to dinner right away. And when they came, there may have been company with them. I don't remember quite. But anyway, they came as dinner guests, and we had a very harmonious good time. And I think my daughter Barbara had by that time returned from Europe, from her school, the famous school in the French part of Geneva called École Internationale, just in time before the war started. And she was here, but at school in Philadelphia at Temple University. As we were talking about her, I remember that Bernard, my husband, must have suggested that I show Kurt Barbara's childhood work because she painted remarkably, both as a child and as she developed in years, from the time she was 3. And we always kept every smidge of things she did because we were fascinated. And so - whereas, by the way, most parents in the same class at school must have thrown them away.

MR. McNAUGHT: Threw everything away.

MRS. REIS: Well, we never saw those at all. But we kept everything, and we still had them. So for some reason, Bernard must have suggested it. And I showed Kurt Barbara's work from age 3 on to age 17. And at that time at Temple University, it was a very run-of-the-mill art school. By that, I mean they were training or teaching, whatever you call it, art students to do - to work in a conventional manner. And when he saw something that she had painted at Temple as contrasted to her early work, he said right away, "Take her out. They'll ruin her." Now, you must forgive - Temple will have to forgive me, but that was really the way it was. He said, "They'll ruin her native imaginative talent."

MR. McNAUGHT: This is Kurt Seligmann, you said?

MRS. REIS: Yes. And by Jove, we did, almost immediately. And he said further something that was extremely wonderful. He said, "I have no desire to be an art teacher." As a matter of fact, he didn't need to be. "But I have a studio where someone else can paint. Barbara can come to my studio, work in her own fashion without my instructing her at all unless she asks me something, and I'm not in a position of teacher to her. There's no money involved. She simply will have a place to paint in an agreeable atmosphere, in a studio atmosphere." And we certainly took him up on that. And he extended the same generous offer to Bob Motherwell, whom he got to know, I believe, through - I'll have to fill in; terribly [inaudible] - who, as you know, is a scholar and very -

MR. McNAUGHT: Were Robert Motherwell and your daughter Barbara -

MRS. REIS: Friends?

MR. McNAUGHT: - friends owing to Kurt Seligmann, or did they know one another before that?

MRS. REIS: They knew each other before that.

MR. McNAUGHT: But did they in fact both go to Seligmann's studio and paint?

MRS. REIS: Constantly. Every day.

MR. McNAUGHT: Both of them?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Were they the only two young artists that he took up?

MRS. REIS: Yes. The only two.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: And it occurred because, in the first place, he was very intrigued with her early work. And then he knew Bob Motherwell through -

MR. McNAUGHT: Well, when you think of the person, we can bring that up again.

MRS. REIS: I'll put him in, yes. But everybody knows him now. Well, and that went on for a long time so that it meant quite a warm relationship between the Seligmanns and ourselves also. And as a matter of fact, Kurt and his wife and we had two summer holidays together.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, really? Where?

MRS. REIS: One was in Vermont at a farmhouse, and another was in Mexico City another year. And in both instances, we liked the same things at the farmhouse. It was a question of getting sort of acquainted with American farm life. And besides, it was not far away from Tchelitchew's home up in Maine, I think he was, so that he would come over for lunch and we would go walking in the woods around the house. And Pavel Tchelitchew was not only witty, but he was somehow a typical Russian despite his long years in America. And something delightfully childish remained in him so that I remember when we were walking through deep woods, and he and I together, he said, "Oh, Becky, hold on to me. I'm scared of the mystery of what might be in deep woods." It was charming, you know.

MR. McNAUGHT: [Laughing.]

MRS. REIS: Well, that was that summer. Then -

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you buy Seligmann's work?

MRS. REIS: Yes, we did.

MR. McNAUGHT: You did?

MRS. REIS: Yes. And quite a number of things [inaudible].

MR. McNAUGHT: Was he having a success here as an artist?

MRS. REIS: I don't think Seligmann had great success, either. I must say that I think that none of the artists, none, had what you call success.

MR. McNAUGHT: Real success?

MRS. REIS: No. They had to rely on people like James Sweeney, like James -

MR. McNAUGHT: Sobey [phonetic]?

MRS. REIS: Sobey, yes, or other people like that. Ourselves. The Museum of Modern Art's interest in them. The museum was then something marvelous for new talents. But success didn't exist in the vocabulary at all. Minor approval or acquisition by people who liked them was as joyous as money. It so happens, I think, with Seligmann that his wife's family had money. I never talked with him about that.

MR. McNAUGHT: Bernard and he weren't - he did not come to Bernard for [inaudible]?

MRS. REIS: He may have. I don't know that specifically. I think that - if he needed it, he did.

MR. McNAUGHT: He might have?

MRS. REIS: He might have.

MR. McNAUGHT: How long did Barbara stay working in his studio?

MRS. REIS: Oh, I don't know. Two, three years.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, that long?

MRS. REIS: Uh-huh [affirmative]. It continued.

MR. McNAUGHT: At which time did you all become closer to Robert Motherwell owing to this?

MRS. REIS: Well, that - I believe it was not that. I think that we became close with the interesting American painters when the surrealists and the advanced painters came out of France by virtue of a fund which the Museum of Modern Art raised to rescue advanced painters who had been clapped into concentration camps in France during the Pétain government. And I remember they did a remarkable job. They sent over a man called Varian Frey, F-r-e-y, who was lovely in every way. And he and his wife devised such means of getting these men out of France by hook or crook - false passports, bribes, anything you can think of. I never knew all of his techniques. But he succeeded.

MR. McNAUGHT: It worked.

MRS. REIS: It worked. So when they came here, not that the surrealists had not had some previous representation through the Julian Levy gallery I talked about previously.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: But here they were on our territory. And that made a them resident now. And we got to know them for a variety of reasons. One, we were an artistic and sympathetic household. Two, I had a French cook, and in New York City at that time, I don't think there was a single veritable French restaurant. Three, they were working at very modest pay, some of them, as interpreters of the American scene for the French radio.

MR. McNAUGHT: Ah-hah [affirmative].

MRS. REIS: They got some income that way. And then whatever they could sell, that was all to the good. But it was all a modest affair. And our household was open to them all the time. That meant Marcel Duchamp would have been here a long time, anyway. And it meant André Breton, who was really the pope of the surrealist movement and a wonderful man and a fine writer as well. And Matta, who was a very good painter. Though he was born in Chile, his artistic life took place in France.

MR. McNAUGHT: In France?

MRS. REIS: Yes. And Marc Chagall, who had come over as a rescued painter, and his wife and his daughter. Now, wait, I've got to think of everybody.

MR. McNAUGHT: Max Ernst?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Max Ernst, absolutely. Peggy Guggenheim, of course. And somehow, I was given to giving parties. I don't think I'd have the energy again to do what I did then. But it so happened that people enjoyed them.

MR. McNAUGHT: It must have been a marvelous time and a marvelous house for you to have all these people here.

MRS. REIS: Yes. It was fun because we always had people who kind of mixed well together. And that included the fine artists and most of the advanced American artists, people with whom we had grown to be friendly in one way or another.

MR. McNAUGHT: So you would mix the two groups?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Which was quite a contribution in the sense of their getting to know one another.

MRS. REIS: It was very fine because I think that the surrealists had enormous impact on the American painter.

MR. McNAUGHT: [Inaudible.] I think one of the most intriguing thinkers at this time of this whole group of people was Peggy Guggenheim, who I know that you and your husband Bernard knew terribly well.

MRS. REIS: Very, very well.

MR. McNAUGHT: And I wondered if we might talk a bit about her.

MRS. REIS: Well, I'll tell you -

MR. McNAUGHT: When did you first meet Peggy Guggenheim?

MRS. REIS: I don't remember the occasion. All I can tell you is that she came over from France in a private plane she had commissioned, a private plane carrying, I believe, 13 people, her own family - herself, her two children, her divorced husband Laurence Vail, his new wife - now, the name - a well-known writer of short stories. But these names escape me. But I'll supply you with them.

MR. McNAUGHT: When we think of them, we can add them.

MRS. REIS: Yes. And, well, there was Max Ernst. Anyway, there was an assemblage about 13 in the private plane. So Peggy gets to New York. Now, it had been her intention before the war to establish a Peggy Guggenheim gallery called Guggenheim Jeune, J-e-u-n-e, Young Guggenheim, in London.

MR. McNAUGHT: In London?

MRS. REIS: Yes. So Peggy had made quite a fabulous collection in France with the advice of Marcel Duchamp, than which you could not have had better. And she had to stop operations, the war having broken out. Her director of the London museum was the Sir Herbert Read. He was not knighted then, but as you know, a famous critic and poet of modern paintings.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: And it didn't occur. So when she came to New York, her paintings were shipped to New York, quite miraculously, and she determined to open an advanced gallery here. And she took space on the second floor on West 57th, right above Hicks Fruit establishment. Hicks was a famous fruiterer, you know, who made those fancy baskets that go to the sick and the departing.

MR. McNAUGHT: Exactly.

MRS. REIS: Well, she wanted it designed in a modern way. And she engaged Frederick Kiesler, whose name you may or may not know.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes, indeed.

MRS. REIS: But he was a known name. Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Certainly.

MRS. REIS: And he designed the gallery for her, which was certainly very far out, very avant-garde. And he introduced the idea of no frames on paintings. He had the walls done - in the exhibition rooms - done in wood. He had invented a chair which is now very rare, though I think a few artists own them, which could be converted into a chair, into a table if you turned it another way, into nearly a bed. You know, that was Kiesler. He always had inventive ideas. And the whole atmosphere was really very unique.

[Tape stops, restarts]

MR. McNAUGHT: This is William McNaught talking to Rebecca Reis. It's Tuesday, May 6, 1980. This is tape 1, side 2, continued. We were talking about Peggy Guggenheim, Mrs. Reis. Could you tell me when you and Bernard first met her?

MRS. REIS: I think not until she arrived here sometime between the end of 1941 and early 1942. I'm not dead sure of the date, but it was in that area. Are you listening to me?

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. It's on.

MRS. REIS: And did you know her first through her gallery, or did you meet her through friends and get to know her personally that way? Was it Peggy Guggenheim the gallery owner and friend of artists, or was it -

MRS. REIS: For some reason, I think we knew her from the moment she arrived here and planned her gallery in New York. I don't quite remember the occasion.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you buy things from the gallery?

MRS. REIS: A lot.

MR. McNAUGHT: The Art of This Century?

MRS. REIS: Yes. All of her artists were very avant-garde. She was the first one to show, for example, Joseph Cornell's boxes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you buy Cornell boxes from her?

MRS. REIS: Many of them.

MR. McNAUGHT: You did?

MRS. REIS: In fact, all that we ever owned we bought from Peggy.

MR. McNAUGHT: Ah-hah [affirmative].

MRS. REIS: She was the first one to show Jackson Pollock. As a matter of fact, she commissioned him on an annual salary to paint and to let her have the paintings of the year.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: If I remember correctly, she gave him $2500 a year, on which he and his wife Lee Krasner managed somehow to live. Those were other days.

MR. McNAUGHT: Had you known Jackson Pollock before that, or did you meet him through Peggy Guggenheim and her gallery?

MRS. REIS: I think through Peggy Guggenheim and her gallery.

MR. McNAUGHT: When you first started going to her gallery, did you just start talking to her and then become good friends? Or what was the connection that made you and Peggy Guggenheim such good friends, and was it an initial connection or was it in later years that you became very close?

MRS. REIS: No. I think that the surrealist artists had already arrived before she turned up on the scene. And unless I'm very wrong - it's a long time ago; what is it, 20, 30 years, 35 -

MR. McNAUGHT: Forty years.

MRS. REIS: Forty years ago? How time flies.

MR. McNAUGHT: Indeed.

MRS. REIS: I think we got to know her through the surrealists who came from France.

MR. McNAUGHT: And she became a good friend right away?

MRS. REIS: We became good friends right away because we did see eye to eye. And when she commissioned Kiesler to design her gallery, I'm pretty sure she sought Bernard's advice, my husband's advice, on all sorts of business.

MR. McNAUGHT: I wondered if he had helped her with financial and business -

MRS. REIS: He not only helped -

MR. McNAUGHT: - affairs in establishing that gallery.

MRS. REIS: Right. He not only helped her then, when she needed help, of course, as so many of these American people did need, and he advised her and cared for her artistic setup and artistic interests, and the whole negotiation with the Italian government as to the gift of her collection to the government. He attended to practically everything of an artistic nature.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really? But this was in later years, more recently.

MRS. REIS: All the way through from the time -

MR. McNAUGHT: From the time you got to know her, Bernard Reis was active in her affairs?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Very.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: He was probably the only advisor on how to do things she practically had. She had other advisors, but they were of a different nature. But when she - even when she purchased her palace in Venice, after 1945 had gone back to Venice to live, it was Bernard who told her how to go about it.

MR. McNAUGHT: Even the purchase of the palace?

MRS. REIS: The purchase of the palace and how she was to raise the money to buy that palace. And she - and it worked.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating. And did he draw up her wills and that sort of thing as well?

MRS. REIS: No. No. That was not what she needed at all because there is a firm, a law firm, which handled her mother's estate, out of which Peggy lived.

MR. McNAUGHT: I see.

MRS. REIS: Yes. That firm -

[END TAPE 1 SIDE B]

MR. McNAUGHT: This is William McNaught talking to Rebecca Reis Tuesday, May 6, 1980, the continuation of the tape. This is tape 2, side 1. We were talking about Peggy Guggenheim and about -

MRS. REIS: Our association with her.

MR. McNAUGHT: - the association of the Reises with her, and how Bernard Reis handled Peggy Guggenheim's affairs. And you were talking about her family lawyer and how he handled her basic day-to-day affairs, I gather.

MRS. REIS: Her basic money - business affairs. You know, whatever income she was to receive from her mother's legacy, I guess. But the artistic matters he never had anything to do with. But there are a lot of amusing incidents about Peggy and her artistic matters in New York. When she received the bill from Frederick Kiesler, the architect, it was a bill of $6,000.

MR. McNAUGHT: A considerable sum in those days.

MRS. REIS: A considerable sum, but really terribly inexpensive even for those days. As she said to my husband Bernard, "He's robbing me. Kiesler is robbing me. What do you think, Bernard?" And he said, "Peggy, this is not a big bill. He did you the whole job, a very unique job, and you should not object to paying it. He did not rob you, I assure you." Well, every matter of that kind of thing that related to the gallery she discussed with Bernard. Now, finally the gallery was completed, paid for, and I remember that she took great pleasure in charging a fee for admission. And that fee was 25 cents a person. And it was something that would kill you with laughter because, Bill, she enjoyed so taking in those quarters and counting them over, which I presume was the only money she ever earned in her life herself -

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: - that she couldn't give up the thought of charging a 25-cent admission. Whereupon Bernard and Lawrence Vail, her first husband and father of her children, incidentally, convinced her that it was very penurious attitude to take, that she ought to forget about those quarters and have people come in. And I do remember that occasionally I would sit for her in the gallery.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, really?

MRS. REIS: Yes, when she was either bored sitting there herself or when she had something else she wanted to do. So I would substitute for her. And I must tell you this nice little tale. One day at about 12:00 noon, a young man comes in and gives me his quarter. Then, in about half an hour, he comes racing out. And I said, "What's the matter? Don't you like the exhibition?" He said, "No. It's a wonderful exhibition. It's fascinating. But I have to rush back to my job." And I said to him, "Now, what is your job?" He said, "I pack hats for" - then he gave me the name. I don't remember. But it was a well-known men's hat establishment. I was very touched by that. I said, "Now, look here. If at any time you wish to come back and look at the exhibition again, no matter who sits here at the desk, you are to say that I said" - and I gave him my name - "that you are not to pay an admission charge, that I allow you to come back whenever you have the time and look at the exhibition again. Well, that's the way I thought about those quarters.

MR. McNAUGHT: Marvelous.

MRS. REIS: Well, finally Peggy reluctantly gave up those quarters and people were admitted free of charge. Now, of course I think, though, many people who found it a little far out, if you know what I mean, in the setup and the design, the fact that the pictures had no frames at all, that he had - that Kiesler invented a wheel on which were placed maybe twelve small Schwitters, valuable paintings. And heaven's name, it was too tempting to people. Two of them disappeared.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: Which Peggy never regained. Well, that was changed. Somehow they were finally attached to the wheel more safely, more protectively. And then she continued to show always the young, avant-garde painters. Robert Motherwell was shown there. She had a show - I'm sure she had a show of Max Ernst, who then was her husband to come. And as I mentioned, Jackson Pollock was first shown there. Cornell. Motherwell. Then she had a show that was very interesting of 30 women painters, in which my own daughter Barbara had one of her paintings. And instead of 30, it developed into 31. The 31st one turned out to be Dorothea Tanning, an American surrealist painter who later became the wife of Max Ernst. In the interim somewhere, Peggy had married Max. He was very good-looking. Charming to a degree.

MR. McNAUGHT: Had you known him well at this point?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes?

MRS. REIS: And so now we were a gang, as it were. And actually, he was so attractive that women would come up to him who never knew him at all - would come up to him in a restaurant at his table, introduce themselves just to meet him. He had blue eyes, very blue, I mean, really sky blue eyes, a big nose, a slim face, a wonderful slim figure. Looked grand when he used a lorgnette which Peggy gave him, a diamond-studded lorgnette which had belonged to her mother. And she gave it to Max. She was terribly in love with Max, as you can imagine. She gave it to Max as a gift. I don't remember whether after the divorce he had to give it back or not. It wouldn't surprise me that he may have had to. But he looked pretty grand, as you can imagine.

MR. McNAUGHT: I can.

MRS. REIS: And he certainly didn't hesitate to use that diamond-studded lorgnette. Now, after they were married - and I can't give you the date; I don't remember precisely the date, but somewhere around 1943, shall I say - they went for a honeymoon trip to the Southwest. And Max loved that kind of terrain, that kind of landscape. And essentially, some of his most beautiful paintings were landscapes. Oh, he did so many imaginative things as you can't imagine. But landscapes fascinated him and he loved them. And the strangeness of the American Southwest was something he never put out of his mind.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you ever travel with Peggy and Max Ernst on any of these outings [inaudible]?

MRS. REIS: No. No. No.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you collect Max Ernst work at this time?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes. We bought from Peggy. We always liked Max Ernst and bought a number of very handsome canvases, large canvases, lithographs, drawings, books.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you discover a lot of artists through Peggy Guggenheim and her gallery?

MRS. REIS: I think so. I really think so.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you put any artists her way? Were you and Bernard responsible for her showing any particular artist?

MRS. REIS: I don't think so. I can't remember, in any case. I only know that we were in accord with the sort of -

MR. McNAUGHT: Work she was showing?

MRS. REIS: - work she was showing. Yes. And -

MR. McNAUGHT: It must have been an extraordinary time in New York, with all the artists here and that gallery and -

MRS. REIS: It was fascinating. It was somehow the most vibrant spot.

MR. McNAUGHT: Do you think, of all your careers as collectors and important figures in the art world, that that was one of the most exciting periods? Or do you think -

MRS. REIS: Oh, absolutely.

MR. McNAUGHT: - the period of the '50s or [inaudible]?

MRS. REIS: Now, mark you, previous to knowing Peggy and the surrealists, we had already a very fine collection. By that, I -

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes. I know.

MRS. REIS: Yes. By that, I mean we owned a very beautiful Modigliani, which - a large one, a portrait he made of his own mistress and later wife, I think, called Madame Hébuterne.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where is that painting now?

MRS. REIS: We sold that painting to Norton Simon I think in 1972, and it now hangs looking -

MR. McNAUGHT: In Pasadena?

MRS. REIS: In Pasadena at his museum, looking absolutely beautiful.

MR. McNAUGHT: Marvelous.

MRS. REIS: So that every time I am in that gallery, in that museum, it seems to me that my heart bleeds. I can't bear the thought that it's away from us. But one sells occasionally, thinking what? Thinking that if you get a great big price for something, you should sell and use the money in the stock market, let's say? Well, evidently a mistaken notion, if you ask me. We also owned one of those beautiful figure pieces of Soutine. He was called Le Chasseur. That is the little fellow who always gets you a taxicab in Paris. That was a beauty. Now, what else did we own? Yes, we owned a lovely Clay painting, quite a good size, called The Green Shepherd. Well, as you see, we owned certain -

MR. McNAUGHT: A substantial collection.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Major pictures.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Those pictures were French paintings which belonged to the great period of French modern art. And what we acquired from the surrealists really took place in this country.

MR. McNAUGHT: And in this particular period [inaudible]?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes. I think largely, then, from then on we never stopped. We bought Ernst, as you - as I said. We bought Masson. We bought Tanguy. Beautiful painters and very imaginative, as you know.

MR. McNAUGHT: You bought Cornell, you said?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you ever buy Jackson Pollock? I know you were friends. Did you ever own any Pollocks?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. We owned - oh, we must have owned one, two - we must have owned at least six Pollocks.

MR. McNAUGHT: Really?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Now, I'm trying to remember what else we owned. But this period was very fascinating to us because it was a fascinating period. The surrealists, you know -

MR. McNAUGHT: And you were at the very heart of the group.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: As you were such close friends with Peggy.

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: And that really blossomed in New York after she arrived. And do you actually remember how you met?

MRS. REIS: Now, let me explain something. I think the surrealists reached New York before Peggy did, unless I'm mistaken about dates. I don't - I never kept a diary, alas. But in a rough sort of way, it's my recollection that they were rescued and brought to America before Peggy established here gallery here. And we had known surrealist work at least ten years previous due to the fact that Julian Levy, a very excellent dealer who was then on West 57th, showed the surrealists. He started with Dalí and went on with others. And we knew Julian Levy and his gallery very well. And that was a long time previous to Peggy's gallery here and previous to the arrival, easily ten years previous to the arrival, of the surrealists here. Julian Levy made a private association of people at the tremendous cost of $10 a year who were privileged to see surrealist moving pictures, which could not be shown publicly. And they were shown by him to members, which makes the difference, you see.

MR. McNAUGHT: You were members?

MRS. REIS: And of course we were members. And a lot of other interesting people were members. It was always exciting. And we saw those marvelous Dalí and Buñuel early surrealist films, marvelous things, so exciting and so beautifully done, so that we knew Buñuel. We never knew Dalí, curiously enough. But we knew - got to know Buñuel very well.

MR. McNAUGHT: How fascinating.

MRS. REIS: There was a man to be proud of because there's nothing that was so - there was no person, it seems to me, that had such integrity as Buñuel. He did everything in movies with a conscience. He never played to the public. When he and Dalí did - I think the first one they did together was called Un Chien Andalou, and then later did he do it alone or did they - did he and Dalí do it together? And it was called - if only I could be sure. I'll have to try to remember and fill this in for you. But it was a very controversial film, very - filmed with remarkable sex episodes, and shown privately, as I explained, so that we always continued to follow Buñuel no matter -

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you see him in later years?

MRS. REIS: We kept seeing each other the whole time until he went to Mexico to do films independently because in this country, the only job he succeeded in getting was re-setting from the French into English with one o the film companies in Hollywood. And of course, that was no job for a man like Luis Buñuel. So he decided - but we kept knowing him all that time. And my daughter, who lived in California, saw him constantly while he was working for, what, the United Artists, I think it was. Then he decided that he and his family were going to Mexico for him to do original films. He stayed there a number of years, and some of his finest were done there. I would like to supply you with all the names of the ones that were so great, and -

MR. McNAUGHT: Well, those can be found.

MRS. REIS: Those we'll find.

MR. McNAUGHT: I must say I've seen quite a few of his films. They are marvelous.

MRS. REIS: We never miss them if we can.

MR. McNAUGHT: If we took all the surrealists, do you think - who would you think is the best?

MRS. REIS: Well, you may remember that I mentioned André Breton previously.

MR. McNAUGHT: Certainly. Yes.

MRS. REIS: Breton was trained as a psychiatrist, and I don't know whether he was trained as a doctor as well. I don't quite know the whole background of his medical training. But he was a surrealist heart and soul. Wrote a marvelous surrealist book called - that I'll supply you with; I've got it upstairs. And he somehow had the respect and the love of all of the surrealist group. He was a man of great integrity and felt that none - no surrealist painter had the privilege of being needlessly outrageous. Can you understand what I mean?

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: He felt that the actions, the morality - I don't mean in a strict sense but I mean in a deep sense - were never to be taken lightly or abused. And I must tell you something that I found marvelous about him. I'll mention names because it'll interest you. When our good friend Matta - Matta was a Chilean who was brought up artistically in Paris - when Matta divorced his first wife, an American girl, she had just then given birth to a pair of boy twins. He divorced Ann without cause, I assure you. There we have Matta. You know, he was something special. But he did that, and he married an American girl, I think of a good deal of wealth. Something like that may have influenced him. She later became the wife of Pierre Matisse, incidentally. But when he divorced his wife and mother to his two children, Breton was so outraged that he said to him, "Matta, that was an abominable thing to do, and I'll never talk to you again." For more than a year, he did not talk to him, and I don't know how they resumed relationship. I don't remember that. But Breton was that kind of man.

MR. McNAUGHT: And you knew him very well.

MRS. REIS: Terribly well. He had a wife and - Georgette, I think her name was - and a little daughter about 5 years of age called Aube, A-u-b-e, meaning in French "dawn." And they would come to dinner many times with other of their friends, many times, and enjoy their dinner because you couldn't go to a French restaurant in New York in those days. They just didn't seem to exist.

MR. McNAUGHT: The best French food was probably right here.

MRS. REIS: The best French food was right here in our house, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Were you at 252 then?

MRS. REIS: No.

MR. McNAUGHT: In those days, or Central Park West?

MRS. REIS: We were on 315 Central Park West.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes.

MRS. REIS: Well, they liked the atmosphere. At that time, I didn't know how to cook, but I had a marvelous French cook, Madeleine, who still comes to see me.

MR. McNAUGHT: Still now?

MRS. REIS: Yes, though she is nearly entirely blind, but was a wonderful person and a wonderful cook. Well, in any case, our home meant a great deal to them, and the freedom here; the atmosphere of art, which they liked; the books, which they liked; the very fine wine my husband always had, which they liked; and not to mention the fine cooking and good conversation, so that it was a kind of -

MR. McNAUGHT: It was the real meeting place, this home.

MRS. REIS: Yes. It was a retreat. It was a great retreat. I remember that I wondered at the time how they earn money to live because you couldn't take money out of France in those days. And they largely earned money by translating the American radio into French for the French public.

MR. McNAUGHT: Ah-hah [affirmative].

MRS. REIS: And they were paid, I think, small amounts. I don't think they received a great deal of money. I don't know what it was. One doesn't ask. But that was the main source of their support. Nevertheless, they knew and were involved in all sorts of wonderful American Northwestern art. When Max Ernst walked by Carlebach Gallery, which at one time was very well known but in its infancy then, it existed on the second floor of a gallery somewhere, I think, on West 56th Street. And he had in his window some of those Northwest American Indian masks. When Max Ernst saw those, he flew in. How Carlebach procured them one never knows because the dealers wouldn't tell you. But we think somehow that it was in exchange for one thing and another with the High Foundation, which contained both the aesthetic and the ethnographic work of the Northwest American Indian, largely old pieces and marvelous pieces, complicated masks that opened, vivid color.

MR. McNAUGHT: Being from the Northwest - I grew up in Oregon - I recognize the things you mean.

MRS. REIS: You know something about it.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you ever buy those kinds of things?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: You did?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. We had masks. We had objects, carved objects of utility. Oh, yes. We fell in love with that entirely. They're marvelous pieces.

MR. McNAUGHT: At the same time?

MRS. REIS: All at the same time. And as for Max, he made a vast collection of those things because he said to Carlebach, "Can you get me more of those?" And Carlebach said, "I'll try." Now, I don't know how he arranged with High, with Mr. High, who was then living, a very old man. But he certainly didn't steal them, you understand. But some arrangement seemed to have been made between him and the High Foundation.

MR. McNAUGHT: And Max Ernst would then buy them?

MRS. REIS: Max bought them. Max earned very little because he saved very little. But every penny he earned, he bought. He bought vast things. I remember he once bought a thing that looked like a bathtub but which was half the size of this room. He was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. They were living in a lovely triplex house, the triplex of a house.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where?

MRS. REIS: On the corner of 50th Street and Beekman Place, a beautiful house. They had the triplex with balcony. Clifford Odets had the apartment above them. And I don't remember who went on. But it was a house of possibly five stories, a private house. And I've always regretted not having bought the house when it came on the market. But that was our mistake because at some time later, it did come on the market. It needed a lot of things done to it, but nevertheless, we really should have bought it. That's our major mistake.

MR. McNAUGHT: Ah-hah [affirmative].

MRS. REIS: Well, in any case -

MR. McNAUGHT: In any case, this whole [inaudible] was over, basically, after the war when they went back to -

MRS. REIS: Yes. After the war, they practically all went back, with the exception of Tanguy, who had been in this country anyway before the rest of the surrealists. A beautiful painter, married to an American woman and also a surrealist painter, namely Kay Sage. And they lived in Connecticut, a converted prison, which they did beautifully. And Tanguy stayed here because he had become resident here. But Chagall went back. Masson went back. Max Ernst did not go back. He was here, married and later divorced right here in America. And instead of staying in New York, he went out to Sedona, Arizona, where he lived after his marriage to Dorothea Tanning. And there he bought a piece of land with $5,000 which he won in a competitive painting exhibition done for one of the large moving picture firms, and it was - the subject of it was The Temptations of St. Anthony. It was just -

MR. McNAUGHT: A very traditional subject.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Just his dish. He won $5,000, and that he used to buy land in Sedona. Then he, with the help of one worker, a local worker, built himself a house for residence, a studio for himself, and a studio for his wife Dorothea.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you ever go out and visit them?

MRS. REIS: No. We've never been out there. It must -

MR. McNAUGHT: It must be a marvelous place.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Max later, when he went back to Europe - that was a number of years later - left that house to his son Jimmy Ernst, who lives in this country and is a painter.

MR. McNAUGHT: Yes indeed.

MRS. REIS: And Jimmy sold that house to someone I don't know. but the sculpture which Max had made and had shown on the out-of-doors, the grounds of his house, Jimmy removed, naturally, and I suppose put them in storage. I haven't seen Jimmy in quite a while. He doesn't live in town.

MR. McNAUGHT: He lives in East Hampton.

MRS. REIS: Yes. And I never knew quite exactly what became of those really beautiful and unusual sculptures. I'm sure they must have been sold by now. But that was the end of the house in Sedona.

MR. McNAUGHT: When Peggy Guggenheim went back to Europe, did you start going right away to Europe on a yearly basis or something?

MRS. REIS: No.

MR. McNAUGHT: Or less often than that?

MRS. REIS: No, Bill. We always went to Europe every single year.

MR. McNAUGHT: Every year you went?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: And did you stay with Peggy?

MRS. REIS: After we got to know Peggy so well in New York, and she returned to Venice where she always wanted to live. And my husband Bernard made it feasible by his plan for her to buy the Palazzo Non Finito, as it's called, because it was never finished.

MR. McNAUGHT: Never finished?

MRS. REIS: No.

MR. McNAUGHT: He made it possible, made it feasible, by a plan. What was that?

MRS. REIS: That plan was an interesting plan.

MR. McNAUGHT: It was Bernard's idea?

MRS. REIS: Yes. He said, "Peggy, the only way you can do it is to get your children to allow you to use the money which was in trust for them, and for you to pay them back out of your income that you would receive from the trust left to you." Because her income came yearly, not in a volume, not in a volume enough to buy that palace. I believe that palace cost in the area of 80,000 American dollars. And as soon as she had that palace, in fact a year or possibly two years previous, she would rent one floor from an American family who had quite a handsome palace in Venice, and she would rent the main floor, the living room floor. But the Italians call it piano -

MR. McNAUGHT: Piano nobile?

MRS. REIS: Piano qua -

MR. McNAUGHT: Nobile, is it?

MRS. REIS: I don't remember the next word, though I would remember if we said it right. But I don't - it could have been piano nobile. But it was the main floor. It was the entertaining floor in the palace. She rented that floor, I think, for two successive years while looking for a palace to buy. And when she finally - and we spent summers with her those two years.

MR. McNAUGHT: Even while she looked?

MRS. REIS: Even while she looked. Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, how fascinating. Well, you must have seen some interesting Venetian real estate.

MRS. REIS: You have no idea, all the way down the line of the Grand Canal, down as far as the Rialto, if not further down. But in any case, she finally had the palace her heart desired, and had very little to do with it to convert it, very little, because it was ideal for her inasmuch as you could enter the front of the palace by gondola. And there's a series of handsome steps going onto a large terrace and then into the house. And you go through the house into the garden. You went from canal through the house right into a very handsome garden. Well, it couldn't have been better.

MR. McNAUGHT: Were you with her when she first saw it?

MRS. REIS: No. I think not. No, I think not. But later, when we saw it, we [inaudible] on the spot.

MR. McNAUGHT: [Inaudible.]

MRS. REIS: Well, in any case, she - I remember she had very little altering to do, very little, because it was - no structural changes at all. And it was - had been owned by an English lady who had installed in her day even black marble bathtubs. All of that was very [inaudible], as you might know. I don't say the water flowed very rapidly, but the black bathtubs were there.

MR. McNAUGHT: You stayed there many a time, I suppose?

MRS. REIS: We stayed there for years, one summer after the other, I can tell you.

MR. McNAUGHT: I remember seeing when we were going with photographs so many photographs of you with Peggy.

MRS. REIS: [Laughing.] And it was really marvelous because not only did we see Venice at leisure and repeatedly, the other palaces, the homes of friends that she made there, Peggy then owned a car and we used to motor along the river - called the what? Or we would go visiting Betty Landsburg in the Palazzo Malcontenta, a famous place.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, marvelous. One of the great Palladian villas [inaudible].

MRS. REIS: Yes. Marvelous. We would - oh, where else would we go? Oh, we would go by her motorboat to Chioto [phonetic], they call it. That's a fishing port not far from Venice. Then a few years later, two or three years later, she ordered a private gondola. The gondola was a traditional gondola, but built by a very fine gondola builder, shipyard, and it was just a little longer than the traditional gondola.

MR. McNAUGHT: Oh, really?

MRS. REIS: So that as we were riding in the gondola with Peggy to go to one palace or another or to explore all the waterways of Venice -

[Tape stops, restarts]

MR. McNAUGHT: This is William McNaught talking to Rebecca Reis. It's Thursday, May 15, 1980. This is tape 2, continuation of side 1. We were talking last time about Peggy Guggenheim. And you had just started telling us a story about her gondola and the fact that it was longer than most gondolas.

MRS. REIS: Yes. Well, that gondola is now, I'm sure, willed to the city of Venice. And I would - that was her intention, in any case. And I would be certain that they would always keep it as a special museum item - not to be put in the museum, of course, but undoubtedly maybe in their - down, down toward the arsenal, in the arsenal down toward the Lido.

MR. McNAUGHT: Where they have the Museum of Venice, perhaps, or the Gondola Museum?

MRS. REIS: Where they have kept all of their traditional old boats, you know, which they bring out once a year for the ceremony - called the what, now? Well, I'll introduce that some other time. And these old boats that they keep in the arsenal are rowed by possibly 20 or 22 men at one time. And when the - when that event takes place, all the ordinary citizens get dressed up in costumes of the - what, the 16th Century, that is, Venice in its heyday. However, about Peggy's life in Venice. She loved it and we loved it because for years we would spend two, three months with her at a time.

MR. McNAUGHT: You stayed that long at a time?

MRS. REIS: Yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: How long ago was your last visit to Venice with her?

MRS. REIS: Well, probably six years ago, before my husband was too ill to travel, to terribly ill to travel. But it was always great fun.

MR. McNAUGHT: You were obviously very familiar with her art collection.

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you and Bernard have much to do with the actual formation of that? Did you ever look at pictures with her before she decided? Did you ever influence her buying in any way, do you think?

MRS. REIS: That's a good question. But I think, by and large, it wasn't so because her collection is very longstanding and was bought from 1940 on. And the only time Bernard tried to influence her toward the good was to buy Picasso's Fishing by Night, which is a beautiful canvas. And I think she could have bought it for something like $15,000, some ridiculous sum through our eyes today, of course.

MR. McNAUGHT: But she did not buy it?

MRS. REIS: She did not buy it because she said she didn't have the cash.

MR. McNAUGHT: When was this? Was this early on in the '40s or later?

MRS. REIS: Well, it was - it had to be -

MR. McNAUGHT: Was it in New York?

MRS. REIS: No. It was in Venice.

MR. McNAUGHT: In Venice?

MRS. REIS: Yes. And there was one other instance that was very interesting, and that was that a man from Belgium, from Brussels, had offered her $2,000 for her famous Brach [phonetic]. And she had verbally sort of agreed. And when she told Bernard about that, he said, "In God's name, stop it, if you can. That's no price for a great Brach, and stop it." The man sued her a bit, but somehow she wormed out of the bargain, which was of course wonderful.

MR. McNAUGHT: Bernard did help her with various financial -

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. He always did. Whenever she was in doubt about anything at all, she resorted to Bernard's advice. And he always seemed to give her good advice, and she appreciate that. She relied on - she would show him from time to time paper figures relating to taxes or what have you. And looking very distressed, she would say, "What does this mean?" And he would take one look at it in his way of seeing things quickly, that diagonal way that he had of reading. "Oh," he said, "that's all right, Peggy. I'll take care of it. It's nothing. Don't worry about that." Well, then she'd laugh and say to me, "This puzzled me for weeks before your arrival. I'm sorry relieved Bernard said it's nothing serious."

MR. McNAUGHT: Well, was he actually just giving advice, or did he actually handle her affairs?

MRS. REIS: He would handle it. Not all of her affairs.

MR. McNAUGHT: But some of - whenever she would specifically ask him about -

MRS. REIS: Whatever puzzled her.

MR. McNAUGHT: - he as a lawyer and accountant could do it?

MRS. REIS: Yes. Whatever puzzled her, she'd always show it to Bernard, and Bernard would seem to solve it in no time. Well, now, I don't know what else to tell you about.

MR. McNAUGHT: When was the last time you saw her? Was it that time in Venice six years ago?

MRS. REIS: About. I think we were there about six years ago. I'm very bad on dates because I don't keep a diary, which is a great mistake. And yet I remember the incidents without ever remembering the precise dates.

MR. McNAUGHT: Exactly when. Well, we talked about Peggy, and I wondered if we should stay in Europe for a bit and talk about an artist I know who was another great friend of yours, Marc Chagall.

MRS. REIS: Well, with Marc Chagall, that was a delightful experience.

MR. McNAUGHT: When did you first meet him?

MRS. REIS: We met him when he came to America in 1942, I guess, when he was one of the rescued artists out of Paris.

MR. McNAUGHT: What a time for you. That's when you met so many of these people.

MRS. REIS: We met so many of these famous and delightful people.

MR. McNAUGHT: And how did - do you remember the circumstances of your meeting Chagall?

MRS. REIS: I think we knew his daughter first. And I remember well -

MR. McNAUGHT: This is the daughter - what was her name?

MRS. REIS: Ida. The French say Ida. It's I-d-a. And his wife Bella was still living. And he had an apartment, I remember, on Riverside Drive overlooking the river. And I know that we did so many things together. If there was one of those boat regattas on the Hudson, we would be there to watch it from his balcony. Well, it got to be a lovely, intimate relationship.

MR. McNAUGHT: I suppose you were very familiar with Chagall's work before he came here.

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes.

MR. McNAUGHT: Had you it collected anything by Chagall before his arrival?

MRS. REIS: Yes. We had several - we had a great many of his books, many of which he had almost forgotten he'd ever done. And when he would see them in the library, he was so enchanted that he would take - after coming to dinner here, he would take one home at a time and always make a lovely drawing on the frontispiece and dedicate it to us.

MR. McNAUGHT: How marvelous.

MRS. REIS: He did that any number of times because, as you know, artists somehow don't seem to keep their own books.

MR. McNAUGHT: They lose track [inaudible].

MRS. REIS: Yes. And when he saw them and he recalled the memory of when he did them and why he did them and so on, it just delighted him. So that's -

MR. McNAUGHT: Do you still have those books?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Well, now, our acquaintance here was extremely friendly and extremely intimate.

MR. McNAUGHT: How did it happen so quickly? Were you - you just hit it off, basically?

MRS. REIS: I believe we struck the same note somehow, and - he never spoke English.

MR. McNAUGHT: He never spoke English?

MRS. REIS: No.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you and Bernard both speak French?

MRS. REIS: I spoke French, and Bernard comes from two German parents and speaks German very well. So between Chagall's Yiddish and Bernard's German and my French and Chagall's French, we managed to talk very well.

MR. McNAUGHT: Fascinating.

MRS. REIS: The charming thing was that whenever he came to dinner, he would invariably - always, as a matter of fact - sit to my right. And it was I who not only served him but cut his meat for him. He loved that kind of motherly or womanly attention. It just charmed him.

MR. McNAUGHT: [Inaudible.]

MRS. REIS: Absolutely, in the whole company. And, well, we always had a very good time without any strain. They'd come often; we'd go often to them. And I can't tell you how often, but it was so often that there was a sort of interchange of households, if you know what I mean.

MR. McNAUGHT: You were very good friends, then?

MRS. REIS: Very good. And we liked each other very much.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did Bernard act as advisor to Chagall at all?

MRS. REIS: Oh, yes. Whenever Chagall had any financial matters, any sort of legal matter - which was not very severe, naturally - but whatever puzzled him, particularly about - I think about money matters and sometimes a matter of residence in this country, you know, these odd things that arise, Bernard always could solve everything, made it very simple for him. And he liked it very much indeed because, as you knew Chagall, you'd realize that worldly things bored him to death. They puzzled him. They bored him. He wanted somebody else in the world to take care of them. And all he wanted to do was to have the leisure to paint without any sort of disturbance, just to paint. He once told me that he enjoys having somebody, and in large measure while his wife and daughter - well, when his wife was alive and his daughter taking care of his worldly matters, more or less, he was at liberty - he was relieved of any disturbance at all. And he once told me that's all he wants in life, to have somebody else care for everything and just let him paint.

MR. McNAUGHT: Marvelous.

MRS. REIS: Now, after he returned to France, which was -

MR. McNAUGHT: After the war?

MRS. REIS: After the war - 1945 the war finished, and between 1945 and '46, a great number of these people, of the surrealists and the painters, returned to France. And we always would visit Chagall, somehow in our travels managed to spend ten days, two weeks, visiting at his home, with -

MR. McNAUGHT: Where was he living then?

MRS. REIS: It was in the town of - oh, it's a famous town.

MR. McNAUGHT: But was he in the South of France?

MRS. REIS: It was - yes. It was in the South of France. And it's - you really -

MR. McNAUGHT: I should know, too.

MRS. REIS: No, no. If I mention it, you'd know right away. And he lived a little outside of the town. And we would all assemble for breakfast. And coming down for breakfast, I remember so well there was a marvelous painting hanging which we saw full view as we came down the stairs. And it was a glorious large angel in flight. And I would say to Bernard secretly, "I wonder whether we would ever be able to succeed in buying that painting." And Bernard said, "I would doubt it." Well, Bernard was perfectly right because that painting still is in the possession of Chagall.

MR. McNAUGHT: Still in the same position?

MRS. REIS: No. He's moved from time to time. But he doesn't live at Vence. Vence was the town I'm talking about.

MR. McNAUGHT: It was Vence.

MRS. REIS: He doesn't live there any more. He now lives at Saint Paul de Vence, which is another town not far from the Maeght Gallery at Saint Paul, on a beautiful estate, I must say. He has a marvelous place. And a Russian architect did them a home on one level so that he could go from his breakfast table straightaway to his studio without even stepping out of doors. Well, we have visited him there, of course, many times also. But somehow, we managed to be there easily once a year.

MR. McNAUGHT: Once a year? As often as that?

MRS. REIS: Yes. And generally in the summer.

MR. McNAUGHT: Did you continue collecting his work?

MRS. REIS: Always. We always went on with him. Now, I've got to remember what I want to tell you. Yes. When Chagall - at a period when Chagall had a large show in Basel, a retrospective - well, quite a large show; not comply a retrospective, but a large show in Basel - we get a telegram from him saying, "Don't come to Vence. Change your tickets and come to Basel instead because they forced me to come for the opening. And if you come to Basel, then after the festivities there, we'll all motor back to Vence. And then you will spend the two weeks extra with us there." Well, we immediately changed tickets. It seemed not to be difficult in those days somehow. And we did arrive in Basel. The car was at the airport. It whisked us to the restaurant where they were having lunch in his honor, so that we didn't miss a thing and had a great time. And I remember that that evening, they gave him another party, and that was a dinner party in a restaurant. And there was a band playing, a drum and some other instruments. And after - when the dinner was just about over, everybody wanted Chagall to autograph the menu. And he did it with the greatest glee, but he hadn't a pencil. And I remember his daughter Ida handing him her lipstick, and he made a deduction to everybody on the menu with Ida's brilliant lipstick. Then all of a sudden comes over the drummer with his big drum, and he said he'd like to have an inscription as well. And you may not believe it, but Chagall made him a whole thing on the top of his big drum. Whether that man kept it or not, I don't know. But I think you could get a fortune for it today. [Laughing.]

MR. McNAUGHT: Absolutely. You knew his wife and daughter well. What was his wife's name?

MRS. REIS: Bella.

MR. McNAUGHT: Bella?

MRS. REIS: Bella.

MR. McNAUGHT: Bella.

MRS. REIS: She was - she is described vividly in a beautiful autobiography Chagall wrote in the year 1920. He wrote it in Russian, a very small book. It's one of the most exhilarating biographies I've ever read. I read it in French, and later it was translated - some years later translated into English right here interest his country by a press called the Orion Press. And then of course I read it in English as well. The reason why I say it was so exhilarating is because instead of giving you that dull, chronological style of saying, "I was born on the 18th of July at 8:00 in the morning," or something of that kind, and trace it historically, he doesn't do that at all. That little biography is like a painting because he remembers a flashing incident in his life and describes it, and then he introduces some background material about it. And it's as if he was speaking, not writing at all. It makes it a fascinating sort. He tells everything. But in that way, it's I think a modern living picture technique, quite unconsciously.

MR. McNAUGHT: Fascinating.

MRS. REIS: I love that little biography. It's one of my favorites of all books that I know. Now, I wonder where I was because there were many delightful incidents. I might tell you before forgetting that while he was still living in this country, he liked living in the country, so he took a house, a small house, up in a town called High Falls, New York. And we spent man