Paul Durand-Ruel

Paul Durand-Ruel (31 October 1831, Paris – 5 February 1922, Paris) was a French art dealer who is associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. He was one of the first modern art dealers who provided support to his painters with stipends and solo exhibitions.

Born Paul-Marie-Joseph Durand-Ruel in Paris, his father was a picture dealer. In 1865 young Paul took over the family business, which represented artists such as Corot and the Barbizon school of French landscape painting. In 1867 he moved his gallery from 1 rue de la Paix, Paris, to 16 rue Laffitte, with a branch at 111 rue Le Peletier. During the 1860s and early 1870s Durand-Ruel was an important advocate and successful art dealer of the Barbizon School. However Durand-Ruel soon established a relationship with a group of painters who would become known as the Impressionists.

During the Franco-Prussian War, of 1870–71, Durand-Ruel left Paris and escaped to London, where he met up with a number of French artists including Charles-François Daubigny, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. In December 1870 he opened the first of ten Annual Exhibitions of the Society of French Artists at his new London gallery at 168 New Bond Street, under the management of Charles Deschamps.

He recognized the artistic and fashionable potential of Impressionism as early as 1870, and his first major exhibition of their work took place at his London gallery in 1872. Eventually Durand-Ruel had exhibitions of Impressionism and other works (including the expatriate American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler who lived in London), at his Paris and London galleries. He also brought their work to New York, where his three sons, Joseph, Charles, and George, ran the gallery on a daily basis, in the early days alternating established New York artists with French impressionists, and doing much to establish the popularity of Impressionist art in the United States.

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