Wilhelm Uhde, bom in 1874 and dead in 1947 was a German art critic and collector.  He settled in France at the beginning of the century.  As soon as 1905, he was one of the first to buy Picasso, Braque and Douanier Rousseau.  His collection was sequestered by the French in 1914 and sold as " German property " in 1921. After the war, he started a new collection (" of naive works by Séraphine de Senlis, Bombois, Vivin ... ) which would almost be broken up by Nazi people during the Occupation.  In 1945, he discovered J.D. at the Salon des Surindépendants and he bought immediately some paintings.  When he died, two years later, he owned twenty-five paintings by J.D.

   The phrase " Uhde's time " was first used by Charles Estienne in an article written in 1950 (see Biblio.) to indicate the works painted from 1944 when he decided to achieve abstraction, until his discovery of Gordes in 1947, which modified the structure of his compositions as well as his palette to a great extent.  The paintings from that period often very dark, with effects of matter were all the more interesting because they were still influenced by figurative style against the painter's will, and also because they enabled to see J. D.'s progress from the time he chose to be an abstract painter (see Repro." Like water ").