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Ambroise Vollard

Île de la Réunion, 1866–Versailles, 1939

As a “picture dealer” Ambroise Vollard was known for taking risks by championing the work of young, audacious artists. The evolution of Vollard’s Paris gallery—from his first efforts in 1890, selling modern art out of his seventh-floor apartment, to his legendary gallery at 6, rue Laffitte, where he was based from 1896 to 1924—ran parallel to the rapid shifts in both the reception of European modern painting and the art market, as it transitioned from a state-run Salon system to a network of independent dealers.

Born to a bourgeois family in French colonial Île de la Réunion, Vollard arrived in France in November 1885 to study law, and within five years had abandoned his studies (and with them, his parents’ financial support) to become an art dealer. He was a voracious collector, and his strategy as a dealer focused on building a large stock of works by diverse artists, as opposed to securing exclusive contracts with a select few. While he was a canny businessman, Vollard’s approach was also unconventional: he was notoriously reluctant to allow prospective buyers to peruse his gallery’s inventory, unceremoniously stacked works of art or hung them without frames, and published lavish and innovative livres d’artistes that rarely turned a profit.

For many years, Vollard’s gallery was the only place in Paris to see works by Paul Cézanne, with whom Vollard enjoyed a close relationship. While regularly showing the trinity of post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh), Vollard remained on the lookout for the next generation of avant-garde artists. He collected the noirs of Odilon Redon and supported the Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard. Notably, in June 1901 he gave Pablo Picasso his first exhibition in Paris, which included sixty-four paintings by the then unknown nineteen-year-old Spanish artist.

Perhaps the least-known facet of Vollard’s career was his sustained work as an author. He wrote and published one of the first monographic texts on Cézanne in 1914; composed new stories about Père Ubu, the most notorious of the writer Alfred Jarry’s characters; and spent the last two decades of his life preparing his memoirs.

The Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection includes seven Cubist works that Vollard purchased from Picasso. They complement the three paintings by Picasso that were owned by Vollard already in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent holdings. Vollard’s relationship with Picasso ebbed and flowed. Vollard judged the 1901 exhibition unsuccessful, and he did not make another purchase from Picasso until 1906, when he bought twenty-seven works from the artist for 2,000 French francs. Vollard continued to make regular purchases from Picasso throughout the artist’s Cubist years (although he never collected works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, or Fernand Léger) and in December 1910, he staged a retrospective of Picasso paintings.

For more information, see:

Rabinow, Rebecca, ed. Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.

Vollard, Ambroise. Recollections of a Picture Dealer, translated by Violet M. MacDonald. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002.

For Vollard’s correspondence, stock books, and papers related to both the business and personal matters, see: Ambroise Vollard Archives [Fonds Vollard, MS 421], Bibliothèque and Archives of the Musées Nationaux, Paris, France, and the Ambroise Vollard Records, c. 1842 – 1952; [j7kcj1jq], The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc., New York. For the photographs owned by Vollard, see: “Fonds Vollard,” Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

How to cite this entry:
Stark, Trevor, "Ambroise Vollard," The Modern Art Index Project (January 2015), Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://doi.org/10.57011/BPKT2007

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Three Nudes, Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Gouache, ink, watercolor, and charcoal on white laid paper
Pablo Picasso
Gósol, summer 1906
The Chocolate Pot, Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Watercolor and gouache with traces of charcoal on white laid paper
Pablo Picasso
Paris, early 1909
Woman with a Book, Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Oil on canvas
Pablo Picasso
Paris, spring 1909
Nude in an Armchair, Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Oil on canvas
Pablo Picasso
Horta de Ebro (present-day Horta de Sant Joan), summer 1909
Carafe and Candlestick, Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Oil on canvas
Pablo Picasso
Paris, autumn 1909
Head of a Woman (Fernande), Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Bronze
Pablo Picasso
Clay original: Paris, autumn 1909; Plaster model: Paris, late 1910; Bronze cast: Foundry Désiré or Florentin Godard, Paris, made to order for Ambroise Vollard between July 27, 1926, and March 11, 1927
Still Life with Fan: "L'Indépendant", Pablo Picasso  Spanish, Oil on canvas
Pablo Picasso
Céret, summer 1911