Have you ever stood in front of a Monet painting and thought Very nice, but if only I knew a bit more about the career of the man who first bought it from Monet. No? Nor me. However the National Gallery’s new exhibition focuses on this very fellow, Mr Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922), art-dealer to the Impressionists. Rather than any real desire to bring the life of Durand-Ruel to attention Inventing Impressionism feels like an excuse to have a big show of Impressionist art, without calling it a big show of Impressionist art. Still everyone likes a big show of Impressionist art, so the NG has a hit on its hands.
The exhibition will be a big success. Seven rooms in the basement of the Sainsbury Wing are full of paintings by the sort of names that guarantee high ticket sales and queues out towards Nelson’s Column. If you’re not looking at a Renoir, it’s a Monet, or a Sisley, Morisot or Manet. Throw in Degas, Cezanne and several other big-ticket artists and you have a very well-stocked exhibition that will delight visitors. Highlights include five of Monet’s Poplar series, reunited and hung together, showing the very different hues and colours of differing times of day and atmospheric conditions. All three of Renoir’s famous dances – Dance in the Country, dance in the City and Dance at Bourgival are also on display.
The show starts with a mini-Renoir exhibition. Room one is filled with works by Pierre-Auguste of Durand-Ruel and his children. These show a bourgeois gentleman, his sons and his Look-at-me-daddy-I’m-going-to-be-a-ballerina daughter. Most interestingly though the room has a mock-up of a door from Durand-Ruel’s Parisian apartment which demonstrates his decorative attitude to these future auction-busting paintings. Inset into the panels of the door are six Monet paintings. Today – as you would expect – you can’t touch them, but back then his kids could have pushed them to open the door. A wily marketer, Durand-Ruel opened his home to the public on the days when the official Parisian galleries were closed. With his ornate Louis Louis decor he quietly demonstrated to potential collectors that this new style of work could fit in their houses.
A brief section in room two shows the kind of work that Durand-Ruel dealt in before coming across the Impressionists. Paintings by Delacroix and Corbet characterise this period, and he never stopped selling this work. But he soon wanted his name to be associated with the Impressionists and knew the importance of control and marketing. Desperate for control he spotted an art movement he could invest in from the start, buying all the work of the unsuccessful artists. As an example – after he had discovered Manet he went to his studio and bought his whole stock of 23 paintings for Fr35,000.
Created in association with the Musée d’Orsay and the Philadelphia Museum of Art this is a show packed with historical interest. In this London incarnation focus is placed on the fact that it was in London that Durand-Ruel met Monet. They were both sheltering here from the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. The implication isn’t quite that without London there would have been no Impressionism, but it’s an undertone. When the show reaches Philadelphia the emphasis will no doubt change to the importance of American collectors to Durand-Ruel’s survival. Americans don’t criticise, they buy, he once said admiringly.
Curator Christopher Riopelle has described Durand-Ruel’s art dealing on behalf of the Impressionists as heroic activity. It could also be seen as the behaviour of a tyrannical monopolist trying to corner the market. Much of his large collection came from buying up works at auction to maintain control of the market and stop price falls. Monet did say that ‘Without him we wouldn’t have survived’, but for the Impressionist show in his gallery Durand-Ruel charged the artists rent. The story appears more complicated than mere altruistic backing, but he could have had a successful career by merely continuing to sell works by the Barbizon artists. He clearly liked a risk and all those who love the Impressionists should be glad he took a risk on Monet and his contemporaries.
National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
Until 31 May
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