At first glance, this picture might appear to be by Johannes Vermeer, the enigmatic seventeenth-century Dutch painter renowned for his delicate depictions of women bathed in soft light. Yet surprisingly, the artist here is Salvador Dalí—a pioneer of Surrealism—com missioned directly by the American collector Robert Lehman. The work is strikingly different from Dalí’s dreamlike imagery, raising questions: Why did Dalí paint it, and why did Lehman ask for it?

For the Lehman family, collecting the works of Old Mas ters was of paramount importance. Yet Vermeer was one artist they were unable to acquire. Dalí, who had grown up surrounded by reproductions of the paintings of Vermeer, was invited to fill this absence in the collec tion. Robert and his father, Philip, never ceased in their passion for collecting. The Robert Lehman Collection, shaped by the distinctive taste of a singular American collector, offers a vivid and varied view of the artistic innovations that unfolded in France from the mid-nine teenth through the early twentieth century.

Here, From Impressionism to Early Modernism, the story of those who collected light begins.