Ambroise Vollard: Sitting for Renoir

"Ambroise Vollard" by Renoir

"I have sat for my portrait a number of times. Renoir, in particular, did several portraits of me, one of them as a toreador. I had told him I was going to Spain. 'I have always wanted to paint a torero,' he said. 'One of my models is about your size, so do try and bring me back a torero's costume that fits you.'

But nowhere, either in Seville, Madrid or Toldeo, could I find a costume that fitted me. So I was obliged to have one made to measure. On my return to Paris, the Customs officer who was examining my luggage pounced at once on the swagger costume. 'Those are my working clothes,' I said. 'Ah! You are a toreador? All right! Put them on. We shall soon see!' I did as I was told. I felt magnificent in the gold-embroidered jacket and equally gorgeous breeches. But a crowd was collecting, and I escaped from their curiosity by jumping into a taxi and driving to Renoir's.

'Bravo!' cried the painter as soon as he set eyes on me. 'I shall make you sit for my picture!' I picked up a rose that was lying on the table. 'You shall be the toréro à la rose... No, the rose would get in the way of your hands. Throw it down. It will make a jolly note of colour on the carpet. I asked Renoir If I ought not to get shaved for the sake of local colour. 'You don't suppose you would be taken for a real torero, if you did?' he cried. 'All I ask of you is not to go to sleep while you are sitting.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Mary Cassatt

 

"Mother and Child" by Mary Cassatt

"Mary Cassatt! At the time of my first attempts when I used to ask myself anxiously what the morrow would be like, how often did she get me providentially out of a difficulty! It was with a sort of frenzy that generous Mary Cassatt laboured for the success of her comrades: Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Sisley and the rest. But what indifference where her own painting was concerned! What an aversion from pushing her work in public.

One day at an exhibition, they were fighting for and against the Impressionists. 'But,' said someone, speaking to Mary Cassatt without knowing who she was, 'you are forgetting a foreign painter that Degas ranks very high.' 'Who is that?' she asked in astonishment. 'Mary Cassatt.' Without false modesty, quite naturally, she exclaimed, 'Oh, nonsense!' 'She is jealous,' murmured the other, turning away.

Mary Cassatt owned a place at Mesnil-Baufrêne where she used to spend the summer. It was there that she died in 1926. The entire village followed the funeral procession. None but old Mathilde, her devoted maid, and a few intimates, knew the whole extent of her generosity, for Mary Cassatt accompanied her acts of beneficence by a dry, almost distant gesture, as though she felt shy of doing good.

In the cemetery, after the last prayers, the pastor according to Protestant custom, distributed to those present the roses and carnations strewn upon the coffin, that they might scatter them over the grave. Looking at this carpet of brilliant flowers, I fancied Mary Cassatt running to fetch a canvas and brushes."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Maximilien Luce

"Morning, Interior" by Maximilien Luce

"What a curious character as a painter was Maximilien Luce, and what a good fellow! Although he did nothing to push himself, and moreover professed the most violently anarchist theories, he had his customers. As a matter of fact, a purchaser who is frightened may sheer off for a time, but he will always come back if the painter interests him.

At the time when Luce was beginning to be sought after, I had in my window a picture of his representing a cathedral. A lady who was passing stopped to look at the painting, and asked me:

'How much?'

'Eight hundred fancs.'

'Eight hundred francs! That's not a great painter's price.'

And she went away, saying to the friend who was with her, loud enough for me to hear:

'All the same, I did like that picture very much. But one must be sensible. If one began buying pictures by second-rate painters . . . '

Some of Luce's comrades were complaining one day, in his presence, of the difficulty of 'arriving.' 'Hang it all!' cried Luce, 'one doesn't paint for the sake of 'arriving,' but for one's pleasure.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Pissarro

"The Artist's Garden at Eragny" by Camillie Pissarro

"The first thing that struck one in Pissarro was his air of kindness, of sensitiveness, and at the same time of serenity, a serenity born of work accomplished with joy. And yet what a life of vicissitude was his. He suffered poverty, the common lot of all the painters of that period when pictures were not selling. And he had a great many children. Mme Pissarro tilled the ground herself to feed her family. Then came the 'Année Terrible,' the Commune. The painter, after being turned out of his studio, came back to find it destroyed. His paintings, which represented a considerable amount of work, had disappeared! 

But in spite of so much wasted effort he would not yield to discouragement and went on producing painting after painting. Looking at those landscapes that exhaled the very scent of the fields, those quiet peasant women bending over their cabbages, those placid goosegirls, who would guess that most of those canvases were painted during the period of the artist's worst calamities?

On his way back from Durand-Ruel's, Pissarro would often stop at my place for a chat. With what openness of mind this old man, with his great white beard, judged his fellows, Cézanne, Renoir, Calude Monet! He was interested in all the experiments which at that time were exciting the artists. He was curious about every form of art. During one of the last visits he paid me, he spoke with rapture of a page of an old book. He was studying it from the standpoint of a typographer of the days when linotype did not exist.

His sons all became artists, as was only to be expected. One of them, Manzana Pissarro, became one of the masters of decorative art. The eldest, Lucien, fell under the spell of bioliophily. He turned printer, illustrator, publisher. The first work that came from his press, 'La Reine des Poissons,' disheartened me by its perfection; but in the end it helped to spur me on to attempt publishing myself."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Claude Monet

 "Madame Monet and Her Son" by Renoir

"The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil" by Manet

"On the first day of my Cézanne exhibition, a very stout man with a beard came into the shop. He looked a typical gentleman-farmer. Without haggling he purchased three of the most important paintings. I imagined I had to do with some provincial collector. It was Claude Monet. I saw him again more than once on his way through Paris. What was most striking in a painter of his celebrity, was his extreme simplicity, and the fervent admiration he expressed for his old comrade of the heroic days of Impressionism. 

I had the honour of being received by Monet at Giverny. I had been looking forward to all the paintings by himself that I should have the good fortune to see. But there were very few, and I expressed my astonishment at the fact. 'But you see, there is no room left,' said the Master. It was quite true. The house was large, but the walls of all the rooms were covered with paintings by Monet's friends. I told him one did not often see pictures of such rare quality in the hands of even the best known collectors. 'And yet I only take what I can get cheap,' he said. 'Most of the paintings on these walls had been lying about for a long while in shop windows. In a sense I bought them by way of protest against the indifference of the public.

I was looking at the picture, 'La Famille Monet,' by Renoir. 'Manet,' said Claude Monet, 'wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas too and began painting the same subject. By and by Manet drew me into a corner and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future. Do advise him to give up painting. You can see for yourself that it's not at all his job!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Ernest Meissonier

"Napolean's Retreat from Russia" by Ernest Meissonier

A customer had just asked if an unsigned painting he had recently purchased might be by the famous artist Meissonier. What better way to tell, than ask the painter himself? Vollard describes their trip to his studio:

"On arriving at Meissonier's, we were asked to wait. On an easel there was an almost finished painting; and underneath it hung a great magnifying glass as though inviting the visitor to examine the fineness of the work. My attention was soon attracted by the strange task which was being performed in a corner of the studio by one of the Master's pupils. Armed with a rake like a croupier's, he was engaged in leveling, on the floor, a layer of sparkling white powder that looked like boracic acid.

'I'm preparing,' he said, 'the field of battle that M. Meissonier is about to paint.' He opened a box and took out guns, little trees, ammunition wagons, soldiers and horses, that he ranged in battle formation in the frosted square. Taking a spray, he pressed the rubber bulb and projected a cloud of liquid gum over the whole of the little army, which he dusted afterwards with a powder of a duller white. 

Meissonier came in: 'Brrrr!' he said, casting a glance at the work of his assistant, 'what a fine winter landscape! It almost makes my fingers ache... Ah! The brutes!' Two big flies, fascinated by all this white, had settled on one of the cannons. From a little table Meissonier took a sort of revolver. He aimed at the insects and fired. A chemical odor diffused itself.

'When I painted my 'Retreat from Russia,' instead of boracic acid I used caster sugar. What an effect of snow I obtained! But it attracted the bees from a neighbouring hive. So I replaced the sugar with flour. And then the mice came and ravaged my battlefield, and I had to finish my picture from imagination!'

In response to whether or not the gentleman's painting was by him, he said: 'I congratulate you! You've got hold of a very good thing. It is actually one of the best imitations of a Meissonier that I have seen. Just a little something more, and I should be taken in myself!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollection of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Manet's Plan for a Painting

"The Port of Bordeaux" by Edouard Manet

"In Venice Edouard Manet thought of nothing but painting. There was that Sunday in September, for instance, when I accompanied him to Mestre, where regattas were being held in the lagoon. Each racing gondola, with its rowers clad in blue and white, seemed a fold of an immense serpent. Lying on the cushions of our boat, a rug over his knees, one hand dragging in the water, Manet, from under his wife's parasol, described to us the plan of a picture he would like to paint of this regatta. Manet, who was considered an extravagant innovator at the École des Beaux Arts, had thought out this composition according to such classical rules that the statement he made of it to us would, I fancy, have delighted Poussin.

I noted down with the greatest care the incomparable lesson that I had just heard:

1. With a scene like this, so disconcerting and so complicated I must first select the characteristic episode, delimit my picture by an imaginary frame. The most salient things here are the masts with their multi-coloured bunting, the green, white and red of the Italian flag, the dark, undulating line of the barges laden with spectators, and the arrow-like line of the black-and-white gondolas fading away into the distance, with, at the top of the picture, the line of the water, the goal set for the races and the ethereal islands.
   
   
2.  I shall first try to distinguish the different values as they build themselves up logically according to their several planes in the atmosphere.
   
   
3. The lagoon, mirror of the sky, is the parvis of the barges and their passengers, of the masts, pennants, etc. It has its own colour - tints borrowed from the sky, the clouds, the crowd and the other objects reflected in it. There can be no question of wire-drawn lines in a moving thing such as this, but only of values which, rightly observed, will constitute the real volume, the unquestionable design.
   
   
4. The gondolas, the various barges with their mainly sombre colouring, and their reflections, constitute the foundation I shall lay on my parvis of the water.
   
   
5. The figures, seated or gesticulating, dressed in dark of brilliant colours, their parasols, their kerchiefs, their hats, form the crenelations, of differing values, which will provide the necessary foil and give their true character to the planes and the gondolas which I shall see through them.
   
   
6. The crowd, the competitors, the flags, the masts, will be built up into a mosaic of bright colours. I must try to catch the instantaneousness of the gestures, the shiver of the flags, the rocking of the masts.
   
   
7. On the horizon, far up, the Islands. . . The sails in the furthest distance will be merely hinted at their delicate, accurate colouring.
   
   
8. Lastly, the sky, like an immense glittering canopy, will envelop the whole scene, playing its light over figures and objects.
   
   
9. The painting must be light and direct. No tricks, and you will pray the God of good and honest painters to come to your aid.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollection of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.) 

Ambroise Vollard: Manet in Venice

"Grand Canal, Venice" by Edouard Manet

"A few days later, M. Toché and I met again. 'You tell me you often had the chance of seeing Manet at work?' I said, eager to hear more. He replied, 'In Venice I used to go and join him almost every day. The lagoons, the palaces, the old houses, scaled and mellowed by time, offered him an inexhaustible variety of subjects. But his preference was for out-of-the-way corners. I asked him if I might follow him in my gondola. 'As much as you like,' he told me. 'When I am working, I pay no attention to anything but my subject. Now and then he would make a gesture of annoyance that set his boat rocking, and I would see his palette knife scraping away with ferocity. But all at once I would hear the refrain of a song, or a few notes whistled gaily. Then he would call out to me, 'I'm getting on, I'm getting on! When things are going well, I have to express my pleasure aloud.'

When he had been working hard, he would set out, by way of relaxation, to discover Venice. Madame Manet would accompany him. After dinner he would become talkative and did not scruple to tease Madame Manet in my presence. But a fisherman had only to start singing a barcarolle,* or a guitar to throb, and instantly Manet would fall silent, caught by the charm of nocturnal Venice. His wife, who was an excellent pianist, expressed the delight it would be to her to play Schubert, Chopin or Schumann in such surroundings. So with her consent I laid a little plot. 

One evening after dinner I invited her and her husband to come for a trip on the water. I had our boat rowed towards a canal beside the Bridge of Sighs. There a wide barge was moored, of the kind used for household removals. I had had a piano put aboard her, concealed by runs, and Mme Manet, as arranged, had been complaining of the rocking of our gondola, and I suggested we should get into this other boat, which was much steadier. 

We started off in the direction of San Giorgio Maggiore. Suddenly, under Mme Manet's fingers, a melody arose. I t was a romance of Schumann's. That moment, Manet told us later, left him with the most delicious impression of his whole stay in Venice."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard. Hear a beautiful barcarolle sung on a gondola! ) 

Ambroise Vollard: How Manet Painted

"The Grand Canal, Venice" by Edouard Manet

One day Ambroise Vollard was having a fascinating conversation with artist Charles Toché: 'How did Manet paint?' I said. I remembered Cézanne saying, 'Manet spatters his tones on to the canvas.'' 'That expresses it,' Toché replied. 'It was not at all a linear process, but with rapid individual touches he scattered shadows, lights, reflections over the canvas with astonishing sureness, and his layout was made.'

'I remember dining with him in a little restaurant opposite the Giudecca. The table was laid in an arbour covered with vines. A little opening in this arbour framed the lovely church of San Salvatore, whose pink tones contrasted with the glaucous green of the water and the black spindle-shapes of the gondolas. Manet observed and analysed the different colours taken on by each object as the light faded. He defined their values and told us how he would try to reproduce them, steeped in this ashy twilight greyness. Suddenly he got up, and taking his paintbox and a little canvas, he ran down to the quay. There, with a few strokes of the brush, he set up the distant church.'

'Any picture by Manet certainly suggests brushstrokes put down definitely, once for all,' I observed. 'Wait a bit!' said Toché, 'That was what I thought before I had seen him at work. Then I discovered how he laboured, on the contrary, to obtain what he wanted. The 'Pieux du Grand Canal' itself was begun I know not how many times. The gondola and gondolier held him up an incredible time. 'It's the devil,' he said, 'to suggest that a hat is stuck firmly on a head, or that a boat is built of planks cut and fitted according to geometrical laws!'' I could have listened all day to M. Tochè."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: The Steins

"Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses"
by Cézanne

"One morning, in the rue de Gramont, I was visited by a very distinguished-looking lady. 'I am the Marquise de S...,' she told me, 'I have come to ask you to do me a very great service. I have a great wish to see the Matisses and Picassos that belong to the Steins. I have been told you know them well.' 'You need no introduction, Madame,' I said, 'They are the most hospitable people in the world, the Steins - the two brothers and the sister, Miss Gertrude Stein. Their door is open to the public every Saturday from nine in the evening onwards.'

On the following Saturday, at her request, I accompanied the Marquise to the Steins. Outsiders might easily have imagined themselves in a public gallery. No one paid any attention to them. People came in and out, and Leo Stein never moved from his favourite position: half-reclining in an armchair, with his feet high up on a shelf of his bookcase. 'Excellent for the digestion,' he declared. People who came there out of snobbery soon felt a sort of discomfort at being allowed so much liberty in another man's house, and did not come again. Only those who really cared for painting continued to frequent this hospitable house.

When I recall those old times, I recall the marvellous portrait of 'Mme Cézanne in a Red Armchair.' This painting had once belonged to me, and I had lent it to a retrospective exhibition of the 'Master of Aix,' organized at the Salon d'Automne of 1905. Every time I went to the exhibition I saw the Steins, the two brothers and the sister, seated on a bench in front of the portrait. They contemplated it in silence till the day when, the Salon being closed, Mr. Leo Stein came to bring me the price of the painting. He was accompanied by Miss Stein. 'Now,' said she, 'the picture is ours!' They might have been ransoming someone they loved."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: The Havemeyers

"Les Glaçons (The Ice Floes)" by Monet

"Mary Cassatt once said to me: 'I've been talking to Mr. Havemeyer about you. So do put all your best things aside for him. You know who I mean by Havemeyer?' Did I know! Havemeyer, the sugar king! While selecting the pictures I thought worthy of being submitted to him, I kept saying to myself, 'If I had his power I would dazzle the world not by my magnificence, but by the simplicity of my life. I wouldn't have a yacht. I wouldn't have special trains made up for me. I wouldn't hire an entire palace. I wouldn't encumber myself with numerous staff...' 

I had got thus far in my meditations when a very shabby cab stopped at my door. A gentleman, very simply dressed, got out and entered the shop. I cursed the intruder. Suppose Mr. Havemeyer were to arrive suddenly, and I had to keep him waiting while I sold an engraving perhaps! As a matter of fact, it was some Cézannes that the stranger wanted to see. He chose two, and gave me his card. It was Mr. Havemeyer.

On another day I was showing him some pictures. 'How much is that Cézanne?' he asked all at once, looking at the 'Aqueduc aux pins parasols.' 'Fifteen thousand francs.' 'I'll have it,' he said. Then, as though to excuse his haste in buying it, asked his wife, 'Doesn't the background remind you of the fresco we admired so much at Pompeii?' He went on gazing at the Cézanne, murmuring: 'I wonder what there is in it that reminds one of so many things?'

Mr. Havemeyer was usually advised in his purchases by Mary Cassatt. She had persuaded him that he could make no better use of his money, since his pictures were to enrich the artistic heritage of the United States. I particularly remember two pictures by Goya that she made him buy when he was on a trip through Spain: a woman with a ring on her finger, and, best of all, 'The Balcony.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: The Power of a Title

"Still Life with Apples" by Paul Cézanne

"There is the 'amateur' who likes a picture because of its title, even if the title has nothing to do with the subject. We all know the illustrious sculptor - 'the greatest of modern times,' according to his admirers - who called a study of a foot 'Rêve enchanté' ['Enchanted Dream']. Rodin, apparently knew to what extent a title may enhance the appeal of a work of art.

While on the subject of titles, I might recount the extraordinary avatars undergone by a picture of Cézanne's. I was holding an exhibition of this painter's work, including a picture of a shepherd and some naked women in a landscape. By mistake, the picture happened to be in a frame from which I had forgotten to remove the label, and this read: 'Diana and Actaeon.' In the press one art critic praised the noble attitude of the goddess and the modest air of the virgins surrounding her. He particularly admired the gesture of the attendant nymph at the entrance to the glade, who with her uplifted arm bade the intruder begone.

Sometime later I sent the picture to an exhibition after removing the unfortunate label from the frame. But the title in the catalogue mistakenly read 'Temptation of St. Anthony.' This time the art critic discovered the bewitching yet perfidious smile of the daughter of Satan. The repelling gesture of her outstretched arm changed to a seductive invitation, and so on. On the last day of the exhibition a collector who had refused the picture when it was called 'Diana and Actaeon' came to see me. He had in his hand a copy of the review in which the glowing article had appeared. 'I've just bought that 'Temptation,' he said. 'Its realism is admirable!'

When I asked Cézanne what the subject of his picture really was, he said, 'It has no subject. I was merely trying to render certain movements.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Alfred Chauchard

"The Cowherd" by Constance Troyon

"An imposing figure among collectors was that of [Alfred] Chauchard, the owner of the 'Grands Magasins du Louvre,' 'L'Empereur de Blanc,' as his friends called him. I never, it is true, had occasion to approach him, but I knew him so well from the confidences of his habitual guests, that I cannot resist the temptation to let him figure in these recollections.

'Chauchard, you beat everything! God made the seasons, and it would need a miracle to change them; but you can displace them or unite them at will!' This was the sort of thing that greeted him in his dining room, where flowers and fruit brought from all the countries of the sun turned winter into summer.

This chorus of praise, however, could not always stir the host from his study. His thoughts perhaps were busy with the Louvre, that he was thinking of enriching with some fresh jewel: 'La Vache,' by Troyon, Théodore Rousseau's 'Chataigniers,' or Millet's 'Angélus.'

Or another problem might be haunting this noble man. Determined to leave his habitual guests an ineffaceable memory of himself, he had planned that at their last, supreme gathering around his bier, each of them should have the privilege of carrying one of his pictures at the head of the funeral cortège. To his legatee, the Minister Leygues, would fall as by right Millet's 'Angélus,' which, on account of the price he had paid for it - four millions of our francs of today - seemed to him incontestably the finest of his pictures. But his other friends too much each have a picture assigned to them, in strict accordance with rank, to carry on the day of the funeral.

Left to himself again, Chauchard, with photographs of his friends in his hand, would start reapportioning for the umpteenth time his Corots, Meissoniers, Duprés, Bastien-Lepages, Cabanels, Courbets, Detailles, without ever solving the riddle: Who was to carry the Corot? the Cabanel? At last one day, as he swore aloud in his perplexity, a parrot, flapping its wings on a perch, let fall in a nasal voice a phrase it had heard its master say many a time in a rage: 'Chauchard, you're a bloody fool!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: On Painters

"Self-Portrait"
by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

"When painters get together they are apt to talk painting. Conversations of this sort were frequent in the 'Cellar.' K.X. Roussel, for instance, would lead off with: 'Monet is a Greek.' (Myself) 'What do you mean by that? 'I'm speaking of the purity of his art. Monet looks at nature with the ingenuous eye of a contemporary of Praxiteles.'

'I love Renoir's landscapes,' Odilon Redon would put in. 'When Renoir paints trees, you know at once what sort of trees they are. In a tiny little painting they've got at Durand-Ruel's, there's a hedge of dog-roses:  one would love to sit beside it. The whole landscape seems familiar to one. Now, Monet's triumph is in laying one tone beside another. But if ever one of these days the colours in his pictures begin to alter...' Here Redon would stop short, as though embarrassed at having gone so far. For his modesty did not often allow him to pass judgment on a fellow artist.

Delacroix's name having come up in conversation: 'Did you know him, M. Redon?' I asked. 'Only by sight. I came across him now and then; once, I remember, at a ball at the Hotel de Ville.' 'How is it possible,' exclaimed someone, 'to like both Delacroix and Ingres? Delacroix so full of fire, and Ingres so cold!' 'Ingres cold?' retorted Besnard. 'Ingres is fire itself, controlled passion seeking to conceal itself.'

When Degas was dining with me one night in the 'Cellar,' I repeated this saying of Besnard's to him. 'Did you know Ingres, M. Degas?' 'I went to see him one evening with a letter of introduction. He received me very kindly. Suddenly he was taken with a fit of giddiness [vertigo], and flung out his arms as though seeking something to hang on to. I had just time to catch him in my arms.' 'I thought to myself: 'What a fine subject for a Prix de Rome painting! Ingres in the arms of Degas! The last representative of a dying epoch borne up by the herald of a new one!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: "Poppy Field"

"Poppy Field" by Vincent Van Gogh

"Battle of Huningen" by Detaille

"There was another visitor who came back every day towards evening. He would begin by casting a glance at the window, where Van Gogh's 'Poppy Field' was blazing, and then come into the shop and walk round. After a bit he would begin to talk. He was unwearied in his enthusiasm for the 'Poppy Field.' One day I missed him at his usual hour. He did not turn up again till several days later.

'I haven't been able to come all this time. My wife has just had a little girl. We are already thinking of her future, and we have decided, by way of dowry for her, to buy things that are bound to go up in value - pictures, for instance.' Instinctively, I glanced towards the 'Poppy Field.' My man followed the glance. 'If I had money to spare,' he said, 'that painting would have been in my house by now. But, you see, I have a child on my hands now. I must take life seriously. Fortunately, I have a cousin, a professor of drawing of the City of Paris, who will be able to advise us.'

It was some time before I saw my man again, and then one fine day he reappeared with a portfolio under his arm. 'It's done,' he announced. He tapped the portfolio, 'The little one's dowry is in here!' He took out a 'Fantasia' by Detaille. 'My cousin managed to get this for me for only fifteen thousand francs. In twenty years' time it will be worth at least a hundred thousand.'

About twenty-five years later, the man with the Detaille watercolour came into my shop in the rue de Martignac. 'Now,' he said sadly, 'the time has come to part with it. My daughter is getting married.' I asked him if he remembered my Van Gogh exhibition, and the poppy picture that he appeared to like so much. 'That's a long while ago,' he said. 'Fortunately I kept my head. What would a picture dealer give me nowadays for that?' 'Well, my friend, you'd get more than three hundred thousand francs.'

'What about my Detaille, then?' 'Your Detaille! The Musée du Luxembourg had what was considered his masterpiece - the 'Battle of Huningen' - taken up to the garret, and even the rats won't look at it.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Studio in the Morning/Afternoon

"Summer" by Renoir

"Fantin, Degas and Renoir were all alike in this really. With all of them it was always, studio in the morning, studio in the afternoon. I shall never forget the astonishment of a celebrated art critic, who had said to Degas: 'I'll come and see you at your studio.' 'Yes,' said Degas, 'but at the end of the day, when it's dark.'' Which shows how little Degas could bear to be interrupted in his work.

Now, Renoir did not mind visitors. Their presence did not prevent him from going on with his painting. Even at the end of a year's work, when Renoir took a holiday it was still a case of studio in the morning, studio in the afternoon, except that on fine days the studio was the open country.

As for Degas, during the rare holidays he allowed himself, he usually went to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme to his friends. He cared for the country only as a place to walk in. He was to be seen marching up and down the garden paths, his eyes protected by large dark spectacles, and taking the greatest care to avoid the flower beds. As is well known, he hated flowers on account of their perfume.

I surprised him one day when I had gone to see him in the midst of painting one of those landscapes that used to stagger Pissarro père. The painter was working with his back to the window. 'But, M. Degas,' I said, 'seeing the truth with which you represent nature, who would suppose that you do it by turning your back to her?' 'Oh, M. Vollard, when I'm in the train, you know, I do now and then put my nose out of the window.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: The Manet

The variant on Manet's "Execution of Maximilien"
referred to in the anecdote

"A famous picture of Manet's was one of the variants of the 'Execution de Maximilien.' Mme. Manet's brother considered this variant inferior because Maximilian, and the generals executed with him, did not appear to him as 'finished' as in the other painting. So the replica was taken off its stretcher, rolled up and put away in the lumber room under a cupboard.

One day it occurred to Mme. Manet's young brother that perhaps after all there was something to be done with this picture, considered unsaleable till then. The sergeant loading his rifle was cut out, framed and sold [to Degas]. What remained of the picture was rolled up again, and when I had asked Mme. Manet about any of his work that might be available, she showed it to me saying, 'What a pity Edouard took all that trouble with it. What a lot of nice things he could have painted in the time!' 

I concluded the bargain, but how was I to get the voluminous fragment to the repairer? I could not think of taking the omnibus with this sort of stovepipe in my arms. I sent for a cab. Seated inside it, with my Manet on my knees, I had to be perpetually on the lookout to preserve it from the dangers of the journey, holding it upright like a church taper when my cab threatened to get wedged between two other vehicles. In this way I got safely to Chapuis' workshop - the picture repairer who also worked for Degas.

When Chapuis had unrolled the picture, he said, 'But, M. Vollard, surely this is the picture the 'Sergeant' was taken from, that I restretched for M. Degas? He was told the rest of the picture had been destroyed by accident.' When Degas saw the repaired canvas in my shop, he recognized it at once as having belonged to the same canvas as his 'Sergeant.' There were no words found to express his indignation but, 'The Family again! Beware of the Family!' Then recovering himself, he took his stand between me and the picture, and with his hand on it by way of taking possession, he added, 'You're going to sell me that. And you'll go back to Mme. Manet and tell her I want the legs of the sergeant that are missing from my bit, as well as what's missing from yours. I'll give her something for it.'

Then by way of protest he had the 'Sergeant' and the fragment of the 'Execution de Maximilien' he had bought from me pasted onto a plain canvas, of the supposed size of the original picture, the blanks in the canvas representing the missing part. 'The Family! Beware of the Family!' he would repeat incessantly, whenever he brought his visitors to look at this restoration."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: At Dumas' Union Artistique

"A Walnut Tree in the Thomery Meadow" by Alfred Sisley

"M. Alphonse Dumas had opened a picture gallery, which he called the Union Artistique. It was not with a view to making money. He merely wanted to balance the expenses of his own painting by the profits to be made out of selling other people's work. But he was particularly anxious not to be taken for a dealer.  'You see,' he said, 'I come of a family of artists. It's not a shop I've opened, it's a salon. I am a gentleman serving as intermediary between the artist and the customer.' It was with him that I eventually obtained a 'paid job' as a picture dealer.

One day, M. Dumas brought a large portfolio to the Union Artistique. He opened the portfolio and took out Manet's gorgeous watercolor, 'Olympia,' then a roll containing the original drawings for 'Le Chat Noir et le Chat Blanc,' a state of the colored lithograph 'Polichinelle,' several admirable drawings in red chalk and a dozen sketches of cats. 'I think that's all,' he said. But on his shaking the portfolio there fell out a delightful study of a woman, painted on parchment. 'How my friends would have ragged me if they had seen that!. . . Now make it your business to get rid of the lot for me, at the best price you can.'

Good things must have some mysterious force of attraction in them. Although, following the instructions of my chief, I only showed the Manets with the greatest discretion, in a day or two they were all sold. Only one thing vexed Dumas. The customer who bought 'Le Chat Noir et le Chat Blanc had insisted on our relieving him of a Sisley.

'And I had sworn,' said Dumas to me, 'never to buy an Impressionist. We must hope you'll find an opportunity of passing this Sisley on to some chance customer. Anyway, do your best!' So one afternoon I resolved to pull off a bold stroke. I removed the Debat-Ponsan that was in the window and put the Sisley in its place. Five minutes later it was sold. This was not because the Impressionists were in favour (the year was 1892), but it just happened like that.

Dumas' first words when he came back were: 'Look here, Vollard, you'll have to go to the collector who foisted it on us and ask him to take his picture back at a low price.' 'But I've sold it,' I said, 'to a stranger. He talks of coming back some day to see if we've got anything else of the same kind.' 'Of course,' Dumas said, 'you told him the firm doesn't deal in that sort of stuff, and it was only by chance...' 

Life in these surroundings was beginning to be more than irksome.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Renoir and Degas

"Leçons de Danse" by Edgar Degas

Ambroise Vollard writes: "It has sometimes been said that Degas and Renoir, with their dissimilar natures, were not made to understand one another. As a matter of fact, although Degas disliked the fluffy texture of some of Renoir's paintings ('He paints with balls of wool'), he would exclaim at other times as he passed his hand amorously over one of his pictures, 'What a lovely texture!' 

On the other hand, there was no greater admirer of Degas than Renoir, although secretly he deplored Degas' desertion of the art of the pastellist, in which he was so entirely himself, for that of the painter in oils. Notwithstanding their esteem for one another as artists, Renoir and Degas did, however, manage to quarrel. It happened in this way. 

In the painter Caillebotte's will, Renoir was bequeathed any one of the pictures in his collection, at the artist's choice. He eventually decided upon one of the 'Leçons de Danse' by Degas. But Renoir soon tired of seeing the musician forever bending over his violin, while the dancer, one leg in the air, awaited the chord that should give the signal for her pirouette. One day, when Durand-Ruel said to him: 'I have a customer for a really finished Degas,' Renoir did not wait to be told twice, but taking down the picture, handed it to him on the spot.

When Degas heard of it he was beside himself with fury, and sent Renoir back a magnificent painting that the latter had once allowed him to carry off from his studio - a woman in a blue dress cut low in front, almost life-size. I was with Renoir when the painting was thus brutally returned to him. In his anger, seizing a palette knife, he began slashing at the canvas. Having reduced the dress to shreds, he was aiming the knife at the face: 

'But, Monsieur Renoir!' I cried. 'You were saying in this very room only the other day that a picture is like a child one has begotten. And now you are going to destroy that face!' His hand dropped, and he said suddenly, 'That head gave me such a lot of trouble to paint! Ma foi! I shall keep it.' He cut out the upper part of the picture. That fragment, I believe, is now in Russia.

Renoir threw the hacked strips furiously into the fire. Then taking a slip of paper, he wrote on it the single word 'Enfin!' put the paper in an envelope addressed to Degas, and gave the letter to his servant to post. Happening to meet Degas some time after, I had the whole story from him, and after a silence, 'What on earth can he have meant by that 'Enfin!'?' 'Probably that he had quarrelled with you.' 'Well, I never!' exclaimed Degas. Obviously he could not get over his astonishment."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

"At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance" by Toulouse-Lautrec

French art dealer, Ambroise Vollard writes: "Montmartre, the artistic quarter par excellence, attracted me and I decided to go and live there. This was about 1890. This was the Montmartre of the first Moulin Rouge, of which Bonnard painted a famous picture for me - and, of course, there were the magnificent posters that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec executed.

Given the least encouragement, Lautrec might even have developed into a great painter of frescoes, judging by the panel he executed for the booth of La Goulue, one of Montmartre's celebrities. After passing from hand to hand, it was cut in pieces by its latest purchaser, this practically-minded individual judging it to be more saleable in sections. These fragments reassembled as the result of protests by the artist's admirers, were bought for a respectable sum by the Administration of the Beaux-Arts, the same Beaux-Arts which, twenty years earlier, would have laughed Lautrec to scorn if he had begged for a wall to decorate for nothing.

The whimsicality that characterizes Lautrec's work showed in his behaviour as well. One evening I came home to find my maidservant rather worried. 'A funny little gentleman has been here,' she said, 'I told him M. Vollard was not at home, and when I asked him his name, instead of answering, he picked up a piece of charcoal that was lying about, drew a little bonhomme on the back of that canvas of M. Bonnard's, and went away.' Bonnard just then was at work on a decoration for my dining room, and on the back of one of his sketches Lautrec had left me a silhouette of himself by way of a visiting card."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Ambroise Vollard: Recollections of a Picture Dealer

"Two Ladies in a Café"
by Camillo Innocenti

Ambroise Vollard was a French art dealer, one of the most important in French contemporary art at the beginning of the 1900s. In his autobiography he engagingly recounts his own background and his interactions with the artists of that time, including Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. Born on the French island of Réunion, the youngest of ten siblings, he found the instinct to collect very strong, although at the age of four, it was only pretty stones and broken china. His schooling led to the study of law, and it was for this that he left home to continue his education in Paris, where we pick up the story of his life in his own words:

"Paris! The very magic of the name predisposed me to admire everything. But it was the little things - the shops with their goods displayed outside, the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter - that interested me enormously. Above all, I was fascinated by the quays and bridges of the Seine, where the second-hand booksellers had their boxes. There had been something of the collector about me from childhood, and hunting about in these boxes, I developed a passion for engravings and drawings. Those were the days when for three francs, or even two, you might pick up some such treasure as a fine, lively drawing by Guys.

One day, I fished out a little picture of peasants dancing in front of a fire, which I thought a marvel of chiaroscuro. I bought it for a small sum. It was signed Innocenti. This bargain procured me a great deal of respect among my compatriots and one of them, whose opinion carried weight declared it was as good as a Rembrandt. As a result of this purchase I became acquainted with the artist, who invited me to visit his studio at Neuilly, and it was through him that I came to know the future director of the Union Artistique, where, as will be seen, I was to make my first campaign as a picture dealer."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale: Last Days

"The Little Foot Page"
by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

"Though Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale remained creatively active well into her sixties, the sense of decline if not closure expressed in her complaint of 1927 that 'Pre-Raphaelitism is no longer wanted', is echoed in a large painting she embarked upon in 1929 in which she assembled colleagues, friends and relatives in the benign presence of Mary the mother of Jesus. In valedictory manner, they each embody a different century, from the first till the present) which is represented by the banner each holds up and made clear by their period costume. Letters to her brother Charles, who figured in the composition, show that it was a self-imposed task, for which the artist did not expect to find a buyer. Be that as it may, it found a home as an altarpiece for the Kensington church of St. George's, Campden Hill.

In 1938, Fortescue-Brickdale suffered a stroke that ended her painting career for the remaining seven years of her life. She died on March 10, 1945, and was buried at Brompton Cemetery, London. In the edition of The Times of March 14, 1945, the following obituary appeared [excerpted here]:

'A Versatile Artist. Miss Fortescue-Brickdale RWS, painter, modeller, and designer of stained glass, and black and white artist died on March 10th as briefly announced in our columns yesterday. She was the last survivor of the late Pre-Raphaelite painters, who though – or possibly because – they did not come into personal contact with the original Brotherhood, carried some of their principles to extremes. Her nearest affinity was with the late Byam Shaw, and she was at the height of her reputation about the same time as he.

It was the allegorical side of Pre-Raphaelitism that Miss Fortescue-Brickdale inherited, and her work was distinguished by brilliance of colour and great fidelity to detail... She deserves to be remembered for her consistent fidelity to the tradition."

(Excerpts from "A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale" by Pamela Gerrish Nunn and "The Times," March 14, 1945.) 

 

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale: Illness

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale illustration
for "Book of Old English Songs & Ballads"

"Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, now fifty years old, fell seriously ill in the early 1920s. In June 1923 a friend's diary records, 'Bricky is better but her hands are still bandaged', while in September another friend recorded, 'Isn't it dreadful about the bad time poor Eleanor has been having? She is so good and patient but she has masses of work to do and can't touch a pencil'. In December the commissioners of an altarpice heard from Charles Fortescue-Brickdale that 'his sister is slowly recovering from her long illness and hopes to resume work in January'. As it was she spent the last part of 1923 convalescing at Amelie les Bains, the Pyrenean spa town.

As a consequence of this illness, as yet unidentified, Fortescue-Brickdale's sight began to deteriorate, leading her to favour larger-scale work rather than the finely worked watercolors in which she had specialized. An altarpiece was commissioned for the Chapel of Remembrance in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, and was followed by another triptych, entitled 'Knightly Service,' for the Winchester College for boys in Hampshire. 

Her last solo 'coloured book' appeared in 1925 with twelve plates by the artist, whose choice of texts allowed her to shift her attention from the medieval, which had so occupied her over the years, to the Jacobean and Carolingian. This modest amount of pictorial content probably reflected her capacity to work on fine detail since her illness. 

Though the late 1920s brought a marked decrease in Fortescue-Brickdale's exhibition appearances, these years saw a number of her window designs realized in churches large and small around the country. These included the sad mission of commemorating the younger of her two brothers, John, who had died in 1921 and two other members of the congregation of his church."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale" by Pamela Gerrish Nunn.) 

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale: Artwork at the End of WWI

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale illumination for Queen Mary

"Dealing with the war experience took various forms, and Fortescue-Brickdale was commissioned to create a kind of testimonial on it when various women's organizations employed her to create an illuminated address to Queen Mary, with a symbolic painting of women war workers to mark the royal couple's silver wedding in mid-1918. 

The immediate post-war time was also busy for her. She had resumed some of her previous duties at the Byam Shaw school in the 1918-19 academic year, judging the drapery and antique drawing prizes and taking classes in Composition and Illustration. His unexpected death in 1919 must have added considerably to the strain of these responsibilities, which continued until the end of 1923, when Brickdale herself became severely hampered by illness. She also took over Shaw's production of monthly posters for the Maternity and Child Welfare Department's magazine, producing over a dozen black-and-white designs.

Memorials to individual victims of the war were also in great demand even before it was over, and Fortescue-Brickdale's readiness to design for stained glass led to commissions from the bereaved amongst her patrons, including her most effective sculptural work, a memorial to the war dead of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. The vocabulary of knights, angels and saints that she had deployed over the years seemed fitting to these clients for mourning and celebrating the rude loss of English servicemen which cast a shadow over Britain at that time. In the 'teams' of sacred figures she devised for her patrons - the three archangels Raphael, Michael and Gabriel who represent Hope, Comfort and Consolation; St. George, St. Nicholas and St. Joan of Arc: Chivalry, Fortitude and Faith - the heroic and the humble were combined to render the 'supreme sacrifice' more bearable."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale" by Pamela Gerrish Nunn.)