The gallery was founded in the 1940s by my grandfather and at the time was one of the largest wholesale art galleries in the country – bringing in almost 600 paintings each month. The firm was reputed to have bought out entire estates and large parts of auctions. Their style of purchasing was so grand that they were written up in The Bournemouth Times, Westbourne, England in November of 1958 when they purchased 60 paintings from one sale.
In the early 1960s, my father, Joseph Rehs entered the business and continued with the then current mission of selling works on a strictly wholesale basis – supplying many of the art galleries throughout North America. By 1978 the gallery moved to a new location on the East Side of Manhattan and began to cater more to the design professional and private collector.
At a young age I would come into the gallery during the summer months to work in the packing room and help with incoming shipments. After high school I attended New York University and graduated in 1981 with a major in art history and a minor in psychology. My first year with the firm was spent living in London; during which time I both bought works for the gallery’s inventory and studied the 19th century European painting market. Upon my return to the United States a serious interest in French Academic, Realist and Barbizon art emerged and over the years more works by the masters from these schools entered the gallery’s inventory.
In 1991 Joseph Rehs (who retired in 2015) bought out the last of the Schillay family members and the gallery changed its name to Rehs Galleries, Inc. It was also at this point that the gallery began working on the catalogue raisonné projects for Julien Dupré and Daniel Ridgway Knight. In 1995 the gallery moved from its 63rd Street location to its current location at 5 East 57th Street (8th Floor). This same year the gallery was elected a member of the Fine Art Dealers Association and two years later, 1997, I was elected President; a position held until July of 2009. In 2003 the gallery began its Emile Munier online catalogue raisonné project and in 2007 the online project for Antoine Blanchard was launched; the latter is now been headed up by Amy Rehs (my wife) who stated working at the gallery on a part time basis a few years earlier. In 2008 I was appointed to the Internal Revenue Service’s Art Advisory Panel … a position I continue to hold.
