DURAND-RUEL, Paul
1831-1922

A major art dealer with interests in fashionable academic painters as well as the Romantic and Realist schools, Durand-Ruel met Pissarro and Monet in London during the Franco-Prussian War. In January 1872, he made a major purchase from Manet's studio but, in spite of active promotion and exhibitions in London, most of this stock remained unsold until years later. He was, of course not unmotivated by self-interest, and in being one of the first art dealers to exploit the system of providing regular income in return for a lien on e=what his artists produced, he did himself no disservice. Nor must it be thought that his relationship with the Impressionists was always a happy one. They were continually complaining, selling works on the sly to other dealers and in the case of Monet and Degas, were often downright hostile.