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.)