Homage to Ambroise Vollard

This article was first published in my newsletter "Notes From My French Easel" – January 2008.


Ambroise Vollard is arguably one of the most influential French art dealers of the impressionist and post-impressionist period. His name is associated with Cézanne, Gauguin, Degas, Renoir, the Nabis (Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Vuillard), the Fauve artists (Vlaminck, Derain, Rouault). Many works hung in museums around the world today passed through his hands.

Ambroise Vollard is arguably one of the most influential French art dealers of the impressionist and post-impressionist period. His name is associated with Cézanne, Gauguin, Degas, Renoir, the Nabis (Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Vuillard), the Fauve artists (Vlaminck, Derain, Rouault). Many works hung in museums around the world today passed through his hands.

Ambroise Vollard by Auguste Renoir - Courtauld Institute Galleries (Source: Wikimedia)

He did not launch impressionism into the world. Durand-Ruel and Mary Cassatt were promoting Degas and Renoir well before Vollard came into the art market. However, Vollard organized the first major Cézanne exhibition. Vollard did not have much money at the time. He recalled, after visiting the painter and asking for works to show: “Not a long time after, I received approximately one hundred fifty diverse works by the artist. The canvasses were rolled together. My modest means at the time only allowed me to present them to the public stretched onto 2 pence [sous] a metre strips of wood.”
He also reached out to modern art, selling Matisse and Picasso. Pablo Picasso had his first Parisian exhibition in 1901 at Vollard’s gallery.

To me, the most fascinating aspect of Vollard’s career is how he influenced the creative side, how he gently drove artists in directions they would never had taken without him. Here are some examples of this:

• As he loved artists’ books, he became publisher and introduced major artists to engraving: Cézanne, Maurice Denis, Redon, Renoir, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuilllard produced engravings to illustrate books that Vollard published. He explained: “My idea was to ask engravings to artists who were not professional engravers.”

• He commissioned some vases, plates and dishes by asking artists (like Bonnard, Derain, Maillol, Matisse or Vlaminck) to collaborate with André Méthey, a master ceramist.


• Inspired by the works Monet painted in London, Vollard asked Vlaminck and Derain to go there and bring him some views of London.

Vollard was also an accomplished storyteller and his books (Recollection of an Art dealer or the biographies of Degas, Cézanne or Renoir) are full of precise accounts seasoned with a dash of humour. Don’t miss the opportunity to read these books.


Related articles and resources

• Cézanne slow art
• An important title

Books by Ambroise Vollard

• Recollections of a Picture Dealer
• Degas: An Intimate Portrait
• Renoir: An Intimate Portrait

Ambroise Vollard Impressionism Cézanne Gauguin Degas Renoir Nabis Bonnard Maurice Denis Vuillard Fauve artists Vlaminck Derain Rouault