Georges Petit

Georges Petit (11 March 1856 – 12 May 1920) was a French art dealer, a key figure in the Paris art world and an important promoter and cultivator of Impressionist artists.

Petit was the son of François Petit, who founded the firm of art dealers at 7, rue Saint-Georges (Paris) in 1846. Within just a few years, the Galerie François Petit was among the most powerful firms in the French art market.

According to Robert Jensen in his book Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, the auction house assumed, "multiple roles that ran the gamut from certifying the authenticity of the object, to guiding it through the hazards of the marketplace, to establishing its provenance and enlisting critics and historians to situate the artist's importance."

Georges Petit inherited the firm, as well as a château and 3 million francs in 1877. He constructed a town house on the rue de Sèze. His annual expenses amounted to some 400,000 francs. That's what he spent to support his wife, children, mistress... and shooting expenses.

Jensen quotes Émile Zola as saying that the younger Petit was "more ambitious than his father… competitive to the point of wanting to ruin his rivals". Jensen continues, "[Petit] would wait… for the Americans to arrive in Paris every May. And what he bought for 10,000 francs, he sold for 40,000."

Petit began buying Impressionist works as early as 1878, when he served as an expert in the sales of works from the collections of Jean Victor Louis Faure and bankrupt former Claude Monet patron, Ernest Hoschedé. Petit was just 22 years old at this time — and it was only a year after he inherited the business — so his involvement with the Impressionists began with the commencement of his career. However, according to a biography at the National Gallery of Art (USA), this was at the end of the Impressionists' "lean years," and their works had already begun to find a market.

Petit had an intense rivalry with art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922). Durand-Ruel took over his business from his father in 1865. The Petit and Durand-Ruel galleries had been the top two firms in Paris dating back to the 1850s. Paul Durand-Ruel was 25 years older than Petit and had become an advocate of the Impressionists as early as 1870.

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