Jules Bache
Born(1861-11-09)November 9, 1861
New York City
DiedMarch 24, 1944(1944-03-24) (aged 82)
Palm Beach, Florida
NationalityAmerican
OccupationBanker
Spouse
Florence R. Scheftel
​
​
(m. 1892)​
ChildrenKathryn Bache Miller
FamilyGilbert Miller (son-in-law)
Signature

Jules Semon Bache (November 9, 1861 – March 24, 1944) was an American banker, art collector and philanthropist.

Early life

Jules Bache was born into a Jewish family[1][2] in New York City.[3] His father, Semon Bache [né Bach], emigrated to the United States from his native Nuremberg, Bavaria,[4] settling in New York City, where he started the glassmaking firm Semon Bache & Company.[5]

Career

In 1881, he started work as a cashier at Leopold Cahn & Co., a stockbrokerage firm founded by his uncle. In 1886, he was made a minority partner, and in 1892, he took full control of the business, renaming it J. S. Bache & Co. Jules Bache built the company into one of the top brokerage houses in the United States, outranked only by Merrill Lynch. In the process, he became an immensely wealthy individual, a patron of the arts, and a philanthropist.

During World War I, Jules Bache donated money to the American Field Service in France, and his wife was the honorary treasurer of the "War Babies' Cradle," a charity that provided aid for mothers and children in distress in war-torn Northern France and Belgium to provide them with food, clothing, heating fuel, and medical care.

In the 1920 presidential election, Bache was a presidential elector for Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.[6]

Jules Bache was a shareholder of a number of prominent corporations and sat on the boards of directors of many of them. Among his personal holdings, Bache had sizeable interests in Canadian mining companies. His equity in these companies was held by his Bahamas-based corporation, which allowed him to legally avoid some of the high personal U.S. surtaxes, a fact for which he would be publicly criticized as a result of the Federal investigations during the 1930s into the causes of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Bache, however, believed that high taxation was a hindrance to economic growth and published a booklet titled "Release business from the slavery of taxation." A major shareholder in Dome Mines Limited, Bache served as company president from 1919 until 1942 and was Chairman of the Board at the time of his passing. After the brokerage firm of Dillon, Read & Co. acquired the Dodge Brothers Automobile Company in 1923, Jules Bache acquired a substantial position in Chrysler Corporation.

A supporter of American theatre and Broadway, Jules Bache helped found the New York branch of the Escholier Club in 1941.

The mausoleum of Jules Bache

Personal life and death

Bache married Florence R. Scheftel on May 23, 1892, and they had two daughters.[7]

Jules Bache died in 1944 in Palm Beach, Florida, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. His tomb is a replica of Trajan's Kiosk at Philae. In 1927, his daughter, Kathryn Bache Miller, married the theatrical producer Gilbert Miller in Paris, France.[8][9] His granddaughter, Muriel Bache Richards, married Francis Warren Pershing, the son of General John J. Pershing.[10]

He told the Literary Digest his name was pronounced Baitch, "A rhyme with aitch." (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)

Art collection

In addition to his high profile in the business world, Jules Bache would also become well known for his art collecting, which received much press attention in 1929 when he purchased the portrait of "Giuliano de Medici," then attributed to Raphael. He would acquire numerous other important works, including those by or attributed to Rembrandt, Titian (including The Bache Madonna), Albrecht Dürer, Diego Velázquez, Gerard David, Giovanni Bellini, and Sandro Botticelli, amongst others. In 1937, he opened his magnificent art collection to the public, and in 1943, he donated some of his works to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Bache was a major donor to the Department of Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[11] At the time of his death in 1944, most of his picture collection, up until that time gifted to the Jules Bache Foundation, was given to the Museum; the remaining works of art from his estate at 814 Fifth Avenue were sold at auction.[12]

image title painter date accession number The Met url
Madonna and Child with Saints Giovanni Bellini 49.7.1 MET
Madonna and Child Workshop of Giovanni Bellini 1510 49.7.2 MET
Portrait of a Young Man Jacometto Veneziano 49.7.3 MET
The Coronation of the Virgin Follower of Botticelli 1500s 49.7.4 MET
Madonna Lenti Carlo Crivelli 1472 49.7.5 MET
Portrait of a Woman Master of the Nativity of Castello 1450s 49.7.6 MET
Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro Domenico Ghirlandaio 1488s 49.7.7 MET
Descent from the Cross Girolamo da Cremona 49.7.8 MET
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels Filippo Lippi 1440s 49.7.9 MET
Madonna and Child Filippino Lippi 1483s 49.7.10 MET
Rodolfo Gonzaga (1451–1495) Style of Andrea Mantegna 1500s 49.7.11 MET
Giuliano de' Medici (1479–1516), Duke of Nemours Copy after Raphael 1600s 49.7.12 MET
Madonna and Child Luca Signorelli 49.7.13 MET
Portrait of a Man Lambert Sustris 49.7.14 MET
Madonna and Child Titian 1510 49.7.15 MET
Venus and Adonis Titian 1560 49.7.16 MET
The Flight into Egypt Cosimo Tura 49.7.17 MET
Virgin and Child Workshop of Dieric Bouts 1475 49.7.18 MET
Portrait of a Carthusian Petrus Christus 1446 49.7.19 MET
The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard Gerard David 49.7.20a–c MET
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt Gerard David 1513s 49.7.21 MET
Virgin and Child Workshop of Hans Memling 1490 49.7.22 MET
Young Woman with a Pink Hans Memling 1485 49.7.23 MET
Portrait of a Man in a Turban Netherlandish Painter 1460s 49.7.24 MET
Anthony van Dyck self portrait (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Anthony van Dyck 1620 49.7.25 MET
Portrait of Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick Anthony van Dyck 1634 49.7.26 MET
Portrait of an Italian Woman German painter 1600s 49.7.27 MET
Portrait of a Man (Sir Ralph Sadler?) Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger 1535 49.7.28 MET
Derick Berck of Cologne Hans Holbein 1536 49.7.29 MET
Portrait of a Young Woman Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger 1540 49.7.30 MET
Edward VI (1537–1553), When Duke of Cornwall Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger 1545 49.7.31 MET
Portrait of a Young Woman an anonymous Netherlandish painter 1535 49.7.32 MET
Portrait of Claes Duyst van Voorhout Frans Hals 1638 49.7.33 MET
Portrait of a Bearded Man with a Ruff Frans Hals 1625 49.7.34 MET
Portrait of Floris Soop Rembrandt 1654 49.7.35 MET
Man in a Red Cloak Rembrandt 1650s 49.7.36 MET
Christ with a Staff Rembrandt 1661 49.7.37 MET
The Curious Gerard ter Borch 1660 49.7.38 MET
Portrait of a Young Boy Sébastien Bourdon 1700s 49.7.39 MET
A Young Woman Reading Han van Meegeren 1926s 49.7.40 MET
Don Manuel Osorio de Zúñiga Francisco de Goya 1787 49.7.41 MET
Portrait of a Man Diego Velázquez 1630s 49.7.42 MET
María Teresa (1638–1683), Infanta of Spain Diego Velázquez 1651 49.7.43 MET
Charles de Cossé (1506–1563), Comte de Brissac Corneille de Lyon 1600s 49.7.44 MET
Portrait of a Man with a Black-Plumed Hat Corneille de Lyon 1535 49.7.45 MET
The Interrupted Sleep François Boucher 1750 49.7.46 MET
Marie Rinteau, called Mademoiselle de Verrières François-Hubert Drouais 1761 49.7.47 MET
Boy with a Black Spaniel François-Hubert Drouais 49.7.48 MET
The Love Letter Jean-Honoré Fragonard 1770s 49.7.49 MET
The Cascade Jean-Honoré Fragonard 49.7.50 MET
A Shaded Avenue Jean-Honoré Fragonard 49.7.51 MET
The Fair at Bezons Jean-Baptiste Pater 49.7.52 MET
Alexandre Charles Emmanuel de Crussol-Florensac (1743–1815) Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun 1787 49.7.53 MET
The French Comedians Antoine Watteau 49.7.54 MET
Queen Charlotte Thomas Gainsborough 49.7.55 MET
Anne Elizabeth Cholmley (1769–1788), Later Lady Mulgrave Gainsborough Dupont 49.7.56 MET
Lady Elizabeth Hamilton (1753–1797), Countess of Derby George Romney 49.7.57 MET
Henri d'Albret (1503–55), King of Navarre enamels highlighted in The MET collection 1556 49.7.108 MET
Jules Semon Bache Jo Davidson 1936 49.7.120 MET

References

  1. ^ New York Social Diary: "Best Friends: Jewish Society in Old Palm Beach" 2008
  2. ^ The American Hebrew: "Jule S. Bache Operated On February 17, 1922
  3. ^ "Jules Bache". 20th Century American Leaders Database. Harvard University. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  4. ^ "semon BACHE b. 1826 nuremberg,bavaria d. 1891 new york". www.neilpiwovar.com. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved February 1, 2015.
  5. ^ Hall, Henry (1895). America's Successful Men of Affairs: The city of New York. New York Tribune. p. 52. bache.
  6. ^ Proceedings of the Electoral College of the State of New York, 1921. Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon Company. 1921. p. 6.
  7. ^ The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. XIV. James T. White & Company. 1910. pp. 263–264. Retrieved December 16, 2020 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ "Kathryn B. Miller, Philanthropist, 83". The New York Times. October 16, 1979.
  9. ^ "Miss Bache Weds Gilbert Miller". The New York Times. July 17, 1927.
  10. ^ "The General Attends a Wedding - His Son Marries Muriel Bache Richards". Time. May 2, 1938.
  11. ^ Finding aid for the Preston Remington records, 1925–1970, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
  12. ^ New York Herald Tribune, Sunday, April 1, 1945, p. 20 "Jules S. Bache Art Collection is Going on Sale: Works Not Donated to the Metropolitan Museum To Be Sold April 19, 20, 21." The auction was held at the Kende Galleries of Gimbel Brothers. The New York Times, Sunday, April 1, 1945 adds that 'oil paintings and terracotta statuary' were to be sold on April 25.
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