Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1908, Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 ½ in. (81.6 x 65.2 cm), Courtauld Gallery Collection
Ambroise Vollard was one of the most important art dealers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and a huge advocate for printmaking. A shrewd businessman and risk-taker, Vollard championed artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.
In this 1908 portrayal of Vollard, Renoir depicted the dealer in an idealized manner, as a connoisseur, examining a statuette of a kneeling female nude. The painting, now part of the Courtauld Gallery Collection, serves as a mutual celebration of the dealer and the artist’s talents. Chiaroscuro and modeling lend solidity to certain forms, especially the dealer’s face and hands, while bright touches of color and looser brushwork throughout other parts of the picture animate the surface, adding a gentle, radiant effect.
Renoir wasn’t the only artist to portray the dealer; Vollard was notably represented by the likes of Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, George Rouault, and Pablo Picasso, to name a few. As Picasso once stated, a bit exaggeratedly, “The most beautiful woman who ever lived never had her portrait painted, drawn, or engraved oftener than Vollard…”Of course, being Picasso, the Spanish artist ended his pronouncement by declaring, “But my (1910) Cubist portrait of him is the best one of all.”