Jules Semon Bache was an American banker, art collector and philanthropist.
Background
Julius Bache was born to a Jewish family in New York City. His father, Semon Bache (1826-1891), emigrated to the United States from his native Nuremberg Bavaria, settling in New York City where he started the glassmaking firm Semon Bache & Company.
Education
Educated Charlier Institute (now Louisiana Salle School), New New York
Career
In the process, he became an immensely wealthy individual, a patron of the arts, and a philanthropist. Jules Bache was a shareholder of a number of prominent corporations and sat on the board of directors of many of them. Among his personal holdings, Bache had sizeable interests in Canadian mining companies.
His equity in these companies were held by his Bahamas based corporation that allowed him to legally avoid some of the high personal United States. surtaxes, a fact which he would be publicly criticized for as a result of the Federal investigations during the 1930s into the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
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 & Company acquired the Dodge Brothers Automobile Company in 1923, Jules Bache acquired a substantial position in Chrysler Corporation.
In addition to his high profile in the business world, Jules Bache would also become well known for his art collecting that 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, 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 gifted 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 Artist At the time of his death in 1944, most of his picture collection - up to that time gifted to the Jules Bache Foundation, was given to the Museum. The remaining works of art from his estate from his house at 814 Fifth Avenue were sold at auction.
Presumably his portrait by Austrian artist Wilhelm Viktor Krausz (1878-1959) was retained by one of Bache"s daughters.
A supporter of American theatre and Broadway, in 1941 Jules Bache helped found the New York branch of the Escholier Club. Jules Bache died in 1944 in Palm Beach, Florida and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New New York
His tomb is a replica of the Trajan"s Kiosk at Philae. 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).