Ambroise Vollard

Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) was a French art dealer who is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous then-unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. He was also an avid art collector and publisher, especially of print series by leading artists. Biography Born in Saint-Denis, Réunion, he was raised in the French Indian Ocean colony. After his matura (final exams) in La Réunion, he went to study jurisprudence in France from 1885, for a while in Montpellier, then at the École de droit in Paris, where he received his degree in 1888. During his studies, Vollard converted himself into an "amateur-merchant" by becoming a clerk for an art dealer, and in 1893 established his own art gallery, at Rue Laffitte, then the center of the Parisian market for contemporary art. There Vollard mounted his first major exhibitions, buying almost the entire output of Cézanne, some 150 canvases, to create his first exhibition in 1895. This was followed by exhibitions of Manet, Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh (4 – 30 June 1895); for Gabriel Mourey, French correspondent of The Studio in Paris, this was simply a matter of "Scylla and Charybdis". These were followed by a second Cézanne exhibition (1898), the first Picasso exhibition (1901) and a Matisse exhibition (1904).