Paul Durand-Ruel - Life

Art dealer and patron, born in Paris, France. He inherited his father's Paris gallery in 1865, initially specializing in the Barbizon School and their contemporaries. After meeting Monet and Pissarro in London during the Franco-Prussian War, he bought many Impressionist paintings and championed their cause, promoting their work in France and abroad. He published publicity magazines such as Revue Internationale de l'Art et de la Curiosité.

Paul Durand-Ruel (1831 – 1922) was a French art dealer who is associated with the Impressionists.

Durand-Ruel's father was a picture dealer. His first major exhibition of their work took place at his London gallery in 1872.

Life

Paul Durand-Ruel, who became a member of the family firm when illness forced him to leave the army, found himself particularly drawn to the work of Eugène Delacroix and the French school of the 1830s, that is, Thomas Couture, Henri Regnault, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel, Ernest Hébert and later Emile Lévy. It was the works of these men, as well as of landscape painters such as Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet and Narcisse Diaz, that he began to buy, frequently reserving pictures before the Salon.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Durand-Ruel escaped to London, where he met up with a number of French artists including Charles-François Daubigny, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro.

In the winter of 1871 James McNeill Whistler began exhibiting his work at Durand-Ruel's New Bond Street gallery, taking a great interest in the framing and presentation of his work. Durand-Ruel also held a couple of exhibitions of Whistler's work in his Paris gallery, showing Variations in Flesh Colour and Green: The Balcony, Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter and (Views of the Thames) in 1873 Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Bognor, Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge, Nocturne en bleu et argent, Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket, A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend and Dessin in 1888. A number of other of Whistler's paintings passed through Durand-Ruel's hands including Sketch for La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine , Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville, Study for the Head of Miss Cicely H.