Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde

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In 1895, an ambitious young art dealer in Paris named Ambroise Vollard decided to make a market for a forgotten painter. He bought, or had consigned to him, 150 canvases from the artist—a recluse living far from Paris—and mounted an exhibit in his cramped gallery on the Rue Laffitte. The pictures were slapped into “two-sou wooden slats” because he lacked money for frames. Almost overnight, Cézanne took his place as a modern master. The next year, Vollard mounted a show of another almost forgotten artist. Van Gogh. Soon he became the key supporter of a marginal crank. Gauguin. Over time, Vollard (1866–1939) developed into a critical figure for, among others, Degas, Renoir, Picasso, Rouault, Bonnard, and Matisse.

No wonder historians are loath to call him just a dealer. Vollard was the human hub of the Parisian art world, a big, sleepy-eyed and beguilingly secretive man who not only bought and sold but managed, promoted, and commissioned. (We have Vollard to thank for many of the most beautiful illustrated books of the twentieth century.) The main attraction of the sumptuous “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” is naturally the work that passed through Vollard’s hands. Its three central rooms are filled, in turn, by Cézanne (24 paintings), Van Gogh (13), and Gauguin (24). Not bad. And there are brilliant moments galore: a wall of late Degas, a collection of artist books, a dazzling arrangement of Picasso prints, three early Derains. — Mark Stevens

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Mark Stevens's Full Review (9/25/06)