I, like everyone else, makes mistakes. I spent a summer in France painting and did not go to Giverny.Of course there are always missed opportunities, some are missed because you have a temporary brain malfunction and others happen just because.
When I was about 19, Olympia Harchuck who I worked for at Lord and Taylor in New York, introduced me to a gentlemen who along with his brother owned a woman’s dress manufacturing company on 7th Ave in New York (They and their parents also owned a small hotel in Murray Hill). I don’t remember the name of the company but think their last name was Cohen (Cohen along with Katz, were popular names in New York and the garment industry). Mr. Cohen loved art and had at least 3 of Monet’s Water Lilies hanging in his showroom along with other paintings. I was stunned, I had seen work like this in museums but never as a part of someones personal collection. I don’t think I knew what a collection was in the first place, other then the collection plate. Mr. Cohen talked with me for a while about my interest in being an artist and then asked if I would be interested in working at his company. At this point in my life, no one ever offered me a job-I was in unfamiliar territory (Give up a job that I liked for one I new nothing about). I told him the equivalent of “I need to think about it”, which may have been a mistake. Unfortunately, he passed away shortly after we met.
The Moral of the Story -Follow the Monet
This story, as I remember it, came rushing back to me on seeing that Steve A. Cohen (SAC Capital Partners) was lending his Monet to the Gaussian Gallery in New York for an exhibit “Claude Monet-Late Work“. My story became more intriguing when I learned that the current Mr. Cohen’s father was a garment manufacturer. Could it be?
If you know the family I am talking about, I would love to get my story straight.