 Pearlman had made his fortune through founding the Eastern Cold Storage Insulation Corporation in 1919 and knew little of Soutine or contemporary art at the time he started collecting.He would go on to amass more than fifty masterworks of late 19th- to mid-20th-century avant-garde European art, one of the most distinguished private collections of modern art in the United States.Among the most notable works are Paul Cézanne's "Mont Sainte-Victoire", Vincent van Gogh's "Tarascon Stagecoach", and Amedeo Modigliani's portrait of "Jean Cocteau".