The operation will be a revelation for fans

It is called Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) and the history, the great, museums and specialists, waited much longer before him to justice. Between 2006 and 2007 a major exhibition was shown in New York, Chicago and Paris at the musée d'Orsay, "masterpieces - of the Vollard Gallery".

Read his "memories of a merchant of table" (2), it is clear that the man liked to make money and sell works. If posterity does not reached it as quickly as that of a Berggruen, perhaps because Vollard was not so much the desire to comply with the rules of the institutions. There was even a certain nonchalance in his attitude. He loved to tell stories about those who would make modern art rather than to highlight the details on the genius of his eye to track down the most relevant leading. Above all, before dying in 1939 in a car accident, he has not provided specific fate for bloated all amassed over the years.

A chineur more than a gallery

Can it be said that it is a collector or should be confined to the merchant At his death, his collection contained several thousands of works and many of them had never been shown. Vollard was a true lover of art and the strength of his personal interest which enabled such relevance in its choice. He succeeded in having the courage to take positions against the current. In many cases, it is a chineur more than a gallery owner and later arrives in the career of talent that it defends. The poet Charles Baudelaire wrote: "the public is in engineering a clock which delays."

As surprising as it may seem today, this was so for Paul Cézanne. It was only twelve years before the death of AIX, in 1894, that Vollard purchased by auction the first work of Cézanne. It will be the contractor of its late promotion. A year later, the merchant, who was twenty-nine years, organizes an exhibition which is entirely devoted in his gallery of the rue Laffitte. The operation will be a revelation for fans. In all, 680 canvases of Cézanne will pass into the hands of the dealer, two- thirds of his work.

Fine tactician

Vollard never met Van Gogh - died in 1890 - but he chose as main artist for the inaugural exhibition in its gallery in 1895. A year earlier, in the little shop of his debut, he has exhibited Manet drawings that he has recovered from the widow of the artist, then in need. Vollard is a fine tactician. He managed to enter in relation with the Impressionist circle and its sympathetic artists, who have already licensed merchants, selling works of other masters. This is the case of Degas, Pissarro and Renoir Vollard will become even the man of confidence. Ambroise Vollard will also expose a "new" in the name of Pablo Picasso for the first time in 1901. The artist was twenty years old and he came to Paris only the previous year. Vollard would possess a large mass of the blue period Picasso works but more will follow the artist after his first Cubist works.

The small merchant considerably progressed to the point that his gallery became the indispensable address of modern art lovers French but also German, Russian, American or Scandinavian. Anne Roquebert Orsay Museum explains (3): "shortly before the first world war, already, Vollard is almost more to sell, the prices achieved by Cézanne, Renoir or Degas from stock enable him to live without concern (...)" Vollard managed to be what he dreamed of being: "A bridge between artist and public." Driven by an astonishing sensitivity, its enlightened investment appear today surprisingly prescient.

A bloated collection

But the man who saw far felt perhaps immortal and when he died suddenly at the age of seventy-three, the testament that he left was drafted twenty-eight years earlier. Meanwhile his stock of paintings has increased considerably and the value of the works also. It is not aware the accurate inventory. That what is left of it today Paris, Petit Palais has been leaving his portrait by Cézanne and Renoir directly by the deceased, the portrait of Mrs. de Bonnières by Renoir and a Cézanne "to choose except the largest".The merchant had six brothers and sisters but he also thought to a niece, a cousin to his home and friends, the Galea. In 1947, his brother Lucien, former colonial magistrate, will donate to the Museum Léon Dierx in Saint-Denis de La Réunion, whose family is originally from 157 paintings, drawings, ceramics and prints. The same Lucien has already exported 702 works in 1939 to the United States. The list is impressive: 469 78 Cézanne, Renoir and Degas, Gauguin, Picasso... In 1949, the Galea still have 2.559 works collection Vollard, Valtat Cézanne.

Ambroise Vollard hiding not publicly that he had the greatest contempt for museums, but at a time when modern art was rejected by the institutions. The painter curd does not refused in 1894 his wishes in other words the gift that he wished to make 70 Impressionist paintings Today, a large part of the tables of the Vollard collection is in the largest museums of the world, but him and his works, there is only a few fleeting memories. And a room full of Cézanne that bears his name to the Petit Palais.