March is Women’s History Month. Did you know that women are among the world’s great patrons of the artis? Not the “great” artists whose work fetched millions, but young artists who depended on the financial support of patrons to keep themselves afloat.

Take for example Gertrude Stein. Did you know that Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse may have been lost to history without the financial support of their major collector, Gertrude Stein? While living in Paris, Stein and her brother Leo began collecting art from then unknown artists including Picasso and Matisse.

A writer herself, Gertrude Stein loved art, but she could only afford to collect work by young artists whose prices were within her budget. In the first decade of the 20^th century, Picasso and Matisse met this criterium.

Stein collected art from both artists that matched her aesthetic preferences, Matisse for his use of bright colors and whimsical collages, Picasso for his painterly abstracts.

Without the financial support of Gertrude Stein, Picasso and Matisse would not have had the financial backing they needed to keep working, and the world would not have known these two great modernist artists.

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