Paul Durand-Ruel

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910

Paul Durand-Ruel (October 31, 1831, Paris – February 5, 1922) was a French art dealer who is associated with the Impressionists. He was one of the first modern art dealers who provided support to his painters with stipends and solo exhibitions.

Biography

Durand-Ruel's father was a picture dealer. In 1865 young Paul took over the family business, which represented artists such as Corot and the Barbizon school of French landscape painting. During the 1860s and early 1870s Paul Durand-Ruel was an important advocate and successful art dealer of the Barbizon School. However Durand-Ruel soon established a relationship with a group of painters who would become known as the Impressionists.

During the Franco-Prussian War, of 1870-1871, Paul Durand-Ruel left Paris and escaped to London, where he met up with a number of French artists including Charles-François Daubigny, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro.^[1] In December 1870 he opened the first of ten Annual Exhibitions of the Society of French Artists at his new London gallery at 168 New Bond Street, under the management of Charles Deschamps.^[1]

He recognized the artistic and fashionable potential of Impressionism as early as 1870, and his first major exhibition of their work took place at his London gallery in 1872. Eventually Durand-Ruel had exhibitions of Impressionism and other works (including the expatriate American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler who lived in London), at his Paris and London galleries. He also brought their work to New York, doing much to establish the popularity of Impressionist art in the United States.

During the final three decades of the 19th century Paul Durand-Ruel became the best known art dealer and most important commercial advocate of French Impressionism in the world. He succeeded in establishing the market for Impressionism in the United States as well as in Europe. Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, are among the important Impressionist artists that Durand-Ruel helped to establish. He represented many lesser known artists including Maxime Dethomas or Hugues Merle amongst others.

Regarding the Americans’ open-mindedness towards impressionism, Durand-Ruel once said, "The American public does not laugh. It buys!"^[2]

Durand-Ruel had an intense rivalry with Parisian art dealer Georges Petit (1856-1920).

References and sources

1. ^ ^{a b} Biography for: Paul Durand-Ruel
2. ^ Mendelsohn, Meredith and Meghan Dailey. “The Purveyor of Modern Life” Art+Auction, November 2009.

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Name	Durand-Ruel, Paul
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Date of birth	October 31, 1831
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Date of death	February 5, 1922
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