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Benjamin Sonnenberg, 1901-1978
A founder of modern public relations and advertising techniques, Benjamin Sonnenberg shaped advertising as a proactive process that created a market in advance of the availability of a product. One of his partners characterized him as "a conceptual thinker with an extraordinary ability to analyze what was happening in the world of public perception." Sonnenberg also cut a wide figure in New York City's social circles as a bon vivant and patron of the arts.
Sonnenberg's lavish lifestyle in his Gramercy Park mansion and ebullient personality have been successfully depicted here by René Bouché, who has included many of Sonnenberg's favorite items: brass objects from his vast collection, books, photographs, clocks, and, on a side table, two telephones. According to Geoffrey Hellman's 1950 New Yorker profile of the advertising executive, "the polishing of these [brass] items constitutes the principal occupation of the Sonnenberg houseman."
Rene Bouche, 1955 |