All language subtitles for Exhibition.on.Screen.The.Impressionists.2015

"Without Durand-Ruel we would have died of starvation,

"all of us impressionists.

"We owe him everything.

"He was stubborn, relentless.

"He risked bankruptcy 20 times in order to support us.

"The critics dragged us through the mud but it was even worse for him.

"'These people are crazy

"'but the most insane of all is a dealer who buys their work.'

"Claude Monet."

I don't think you can understand modern art

without having a sense

of how important the growth of the dealer,

the growth of the importance of the dealer was,

and that importance was first established in the context of impressionist painting.

There was no-one else to sell the impressionists' work for them,

except themselves,

and they tried to do that by having an independent exhibition.

When that didn't go very well

they mounted their own auction in 1875.

That was a dismal failure

and was roundly heckled and booed

by the prospective bidders in the saleroom.

So what they needed was someone else to sell the pictures for them,

and, miraculously, along came the right man at the right time

who was Paul Durand-Ruel.

"It was the triumph of modern art over academic art.

"They permanently opened my eyes

"and reinforced the idea that I might, perhaps,

"in my own humble way,

"be of some service to true artists

"by helping to make them better understood and appreciated.

"I confess I always enjoyed the struggle,

"despite the sorrows and torment it caused me.

"The easy trade of buying whatever is fashionable

"and immediately reselling it at a profit,

"always following the current trend,

"is a business similar to selling clothing.

"I could never become interested in that.

"I wanted to become a missionary or a soldier.

"I found myself on a different field of battle than the one I'd imagined.

"The weapons were less deadly

"but the battles were every bit as relentless, harsh, and exciting."

This is a portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel in 1865.

He was 34 years old.

He was a very traditional man in his private life.

He was a devout Catholic. He went to mass every day.

And he was a royalist

which was not very common then.

He was very strong in his opinions.

It seems strange.

His taste in painting was revolutionary.

He married Eva Lafon.

They were very happy together but not for a very long time

because she died, aged 29, in 1871

after having five children.

Paul Durand-Ruel's parents were Jean Durand

who was the main employee of a paper shop

who married Marie Ruel who owned the paper shop.

They put their names together to mean Durand-Ruel for the shop

and they decided to extend the materials sold to artists' materials

and the artists were actually very happy

to be able to exchange their pictures against materials.

So little by little artists came back

and a few collectors came back to buy pictures but also to rent them.

At the time it was much more lucrative to rent pictures for a month

in order for families, bourgeois families, to copy them

and to return them after to the dealer.

Or sometimes aristocratic families rented the pictures for an evening

in order to impress their guests without taking the risk of buying them.

We can see some potential buyers

who were from the aristocracy or from the high bourgeoisie

in France as well as in Europe.

It's true that when Jean Durand-Ruel starts

the art-picture business does not really exist.

What exists are official Salons

which are Salons where artists can exhibit their works of art

but they have to be accepted by a jury

chosen by the art institute.

So if they are not accepted by the official Salon

they have nowhere to present their works of art.

So galleries are going to become a very crucial and key point for them

to have a chance to sell their pictures.

Here it is very interesting

how Jean Durand presents the pictures

all against each other from floor to ceiling

quite like how they were exhibited in official Salons.

So this book dates back to 1845.

It was "Galérie Durand-Ruel".

Jean Durand wanted to create a book

of most of the pictures that had passed through his gallery.

The Luxembourg Museum used to be Paris's museum of contemporary art.

It included French and international artists when the government started buying paintings.

Then the Luxembourg collection went to the new Orsay building

and this museum closed.

But it is now open again

as a place for artworks

in temporary exhibitions.

It is very moving to see the paintings arriving

and to see the art in a new context.

They are completely transformed when we hang them next to one another.

It is always very moving

and it requires adaptation, imagination and reactive skills on our part.

We planned it all on paper

but now everything has changed with the real paintings before us.

Real artworks tell us a lot of things that they can't on paper.

So it's a very exciting moment

because we see the results we've been dreaming of.

We went to see these paintings. We negotiated for them.

We had to convince people to make loans

but we're happy to see it's met our expectations.

We also expect surprises, to shuffle the cards a bit,

hanging the paintings a little differently to what we had planned.

What drives us in our decision-making

are aesthetic reasons such as colour, craft and feel.

We're trying to suggest a meaning, a story

to create an atmosphere

similar to the Durand-Ruel gallery at the times of his exhibitions

and, besides that, to enjoy the visual pleasure,

to have a harmony rather than a rupture between paintings.

But what struck me concerning Durand-Ruel,

what is so impressive when you read the archives,

is his determination.

It is something that we knew

but when you study the daily activity of the gallery

it's amazing how he just never stops, never loses hope, never loses faith.

He is genuinely extraordinarily determined.

"We were right on the path of all the rich customers and foreigners.

"We sensed that, in order to meet the tastes and expectations of many buyers,

"we also had to acquire other works,

"perhaps less elevated but more accessible to most of our visitors.

"I therefore began an entire series of visits to artists

"whose work I noticed was popular at the Salons

"and started making purchases

"that would subsequently become quite substantial.

"I also travelled to Lyon, Bordeaux, Belgium,

"Holland, England, Berlin and Hamburg.

"Unfortunately, our retail trade was too time-consuming.

"All our time was taken up with customers who wanted drawing or painting supplies

"or sought to rent a painting or drawing

"

"buying and selling paintings."

I think that the fact that art was in shops,

like a hat or some kind of nice little box

that you can offer as a gift,

meant it was easier to come in and buy a still life, a landscape.

It was a fairly modest size

so it could fit in any Parisian flat.

So I think that paintings became something

that you could have in your house and enjoy every day.

In the world of people looking at pictures at the time

even the most ordinary public would go to the Salon

and would be enthralled by meticulous painting,

huge historical battles

and deeply moving religious pictures.

But a portion of this public was also able

to be interested in more intimate art.

It was a much smaller world.

People interested to buy

were much less numerous than they are today.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts made its selections

much like the Royal Academy still makes its selections now.

A few members are asked to sit on a jury

and they sit there, probably wined and dined quite well,

growing ever more loquacious as the day passes on

and a parade of canvasses are filed past them,

each of which must be assessed in a matter of a few seconds.

They wave their canes. They flap their hats.

They squabble with each other over what should be allowed in.

It's fairly random.

They probably recognise friends and think,

"We had better put old Squiffy in," or whatever it is.

I think it was a fairly random thing.

I mean, the whole Salon event was quite a bear-garden.

The conventional majority were still buying history paintings.

They were buying scenes of an uplifting nature

drawn from antiquity.

They wanted to elevate themselves

through what was called "high art".

There was a certain amount of genre painting

of charming scenes of more day-to-day life

but very much overlaid with a sort of saccharin charm.

And then there was the beginning

of a new attitude to depicting nature realistically

and that was the Barbizon school of landscape painting.

The Barbizon school was a group of painters in the middle of the 19th century

who made a point of going out into nature

and paintingen plein air, in the open air,

getting down what they saw directly in front of them.

They weren't yet impressionists

because the way they painted, the Barbizon school,

was still using local colour,

painting what they knew about trees,

rather than the literal, visual experience of looking at a tree,

which is what the impressionists brought in.

"The artists of the school of 1830 continued to interest a few connoisseurs

"and a group of modest collectors

"who often bought, mainly for speculation.

"But they were still unknown or despised by the general public.

"Whatever is sanctioned by fashion

"always sells more easily than works by truly great artists,

"which the public understands all the less if they are highly personal and original."

Paul Durand-Ruel didn't want to become an art dealer.

He had hoped to follow a military career.

He'd even been accepted at the Saint-Cyr Military School.

Then his father asked him for help at his gallery.

His father was feeling ill and weak.

Paul Durand-Ruel reluctantly started a new career.

Then in 1855 at the International Exhibition

he saw a room of paintings devoted to Delacroix

and he loved them at first sight.

He thought to himself that he could be useful supporting such painters

and helping them gain public acceptance.

He was 24 at the time.

We are seeing some sort of medieval event, a trial,

someone being persecuted or prosecuted,

dragged across the floor of a great cavernous, Gothic chamber.

It's full of mystery. It's full of darkness.

It's full of ominous shadows

and there in the centre is someone clearly under duress.

I suspect that two things might have drawn the young Durand-Ruel to it.

One would have been the drama of the situation that is being depicted

and the second thing is the enormous freedom and brevity

with which Delacroix paints it.

It is a kind of bravura performance

with the paintbrush pulling these forms out of the gloom

with a kind of absolute mastery of his technique.

It's often been pointed out that the Salon of 1859

was seen in France as very problematical,

as being extremely boring,

and a realisation was setting in

that something was wrong with French painting.

It was stagnant in some way.

Something had to give.

And really, from that moment on, you see the arrival,

not that it hadn't been there before, but coming to the foreground

an appreciation among the avant-garde for more technical dexterity,

for more adventurous compositions, for more adventurous colour.

And I think the origins of impressionism in the next few years

somehow are tied in with this notion of a crisis in French painting

at the end of the '50s.

I think the impressionists were radical and revolutionary

in the way that they painted.

I think that yes, they would have been very pleased

if their art had been acceptable to the Salon

because that was the accepted way of getting recognition.

That was the accepted way of finding buyers for your pictures.

And, of course, the problem for the impressionists early on

was that there was almost no one with any money

who was committed to them enough

to buy their work regularly.

New ways of getting to the buying public had to be found by the impressionists.

I think that you have to look at the major impressionist artists

and look at what they have in common.

So you have Manet, who is regarded as the father.

Renoir, to a certain extent,

Monet,

Pissarro

and Sisley.

And then you have this incredibly important but slightly different figure also involved

which is Degas.

I think you can bunch the landscape painters pretty much together.

They had the same feeling

about painting directly in front of the image, painting with immediacy,

painting the reflection of light rather than the object itself.

That was common to the landscape painters.

Manet was a slightly older generation

who certainly led these followers into impressionism

but was arguably never entirely impressionist himself.

And you've got Degas who wasn't strictly an impressionist

in the sense of only ever painting the reflection of light off objects

but he was an impressionist

in that he was constantly looking for new angles on things.

The great technological innovation,

which absolutely lies behind impressionism and how it was,

was the invention of synthetic colour.

Before, artists sat in their studio.

They were grinding stones and mixing pigments and egg yolk

and everything was coming into this extraordinarily physical process

of making your materials.

Suddenly paint came in tubes

which meant that you had these vivid synthetic colours

and you could paint outside.

It's no accident people didn't doplein-airpainting before.

How could you take all your pigments out? Suddenly paint was in a tube.

They could stick it all in their knapsacks and off they could go.

I think there's absolutely no doubt that Durand-Ruel played a major role

in breaking the monopoly of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

The French Academy was an ancient institution going for many hundreds of years.

It had a stranglehold on French culture.

It was there to control, to preserve and to propagate it.

They wanted mythological scenes.

They wanted biblical scenes. They wanted narratives and dramas.

And they wanted it to be austere and classical with subdued colour.

They wanted a polished surface and a high finish.

And they certainly were not up for the impressionists,

this extraordinary, garish, vivid, sketch-like quality.

It must have jarred their eyes and sent their senses juddering and reeling.

So they hated it.

"The Salon of 1866 decided to accept only two works per artist.

"

"'The Fife Player'

"and 'The Tragic Actor Rouvière in his role as Hamlet'.

"But the jury rejected them.

"Renoir, like Manet, was rejected.

"Monet was luckier than Manet and had both his paintings accepted.

"Manet showed nothing in the Salon of 1867.

"Everything he had submitted had been mercilessly rejected.

"In order to show all the work he had produced up till then

"he decided to imitate Courbet by exhibiting some 50 works

"in a gallery built at his own expense next to the Alma Bridge.

"A few artists and several art lovers came to study them with interest

"but the press, the cartoonists, and the entire public

"hounded their maker."

Conventional art lovers were horrified by the impressionists

and I think it takes a jump of imagination

to see quite what a dramatic change the impressionists represented.

I think it was the first time

that new art which was so striking

had ever been presented to the picture-loving public.

We are used to it in the present day.

We have had several generations of avant-garde art

that has produced new ways of painting, new ways of creating art,

and to that extent we are no longer shocked by the newness of it.

But I think contemporarily in Paris

people had no experience of the new like this.

It was genuinely the first movement of new modern art

and people were very shocked.

What happened in 1870 was important for the impressionists.

It was because of the Franco-Prussian war

that many Frenchmen took refuge in London from Paris.

Durand-Ruel was one of them.

He dealt in pictures in London for a time, when he was in exile.

So too was Monet and so too was Pissarro.

They both came to London

and that was where Durand-Ruel met up with Monet.

"I swiftly packed up all of my paintings, beginning with the most valuable,

"in order to ship them to England.

"I managed to ship everything to London before the rail line was cut.

"I rented a fairly spacious gallery at 168, New Bond Street,

"which, by an unfortunate coincidence, was called the German Gallery.

"Since I was not well enough known in England

"to draw crowds to the exhibitions I was planning to organise

"I thought I had better place them under the aegis of an imaginary committee

"composed of Corot, Millet, Jules Dupré, Diaz, Daubigny, and Courbet.

"My own name appeared only at the end as director of the exhibition.

"Naturally, I was unable to consult all these artists,

"but I was absolutely certain they would approve my action."

It is a great irony that Durand-Ruel discovered impressionism in London.

But the real importance of the Franco-Prussian war

is that Monet and Pissarro discovered Turner.

They'd seen Constable. He was actually fêted in France.

Constable was neglected in England

while in France he won a gold medal in the Salon.

He was loved and people had cited him and been excited by him.

But then suddenly they discovered Turner as well

and there is a strong argument that Turner is really the father of impressionism.

He looked at the weather. That is so important to impressionism.

atmospheres, mists, suns,

the vaporous weather that they love.

Here was a man who managed to capture it in bright brush strokes,

to capture a sense of aura, of immediacy,

of freshness, of atmosphere.

It was incredibly exciting to them to discover that.

"It was in my London Gallery early in 1871

"that I met Monet who introduced me, in turn, to Pissarro.

"He had just painted several highly interesting pictures.

"Monet's paintings cost me 300 francs,

"Pissarro's 200 francs.

"Those are the prices I continued to pay them for years.

"No one else would have been so generous

"since they were forced to let them go at 100 francs,

"then at 50 francs or even less,

"when I was no longer able to continue buying.

"Shortly afterward I began to slip paintings by these two artists into my exhibitions

"and managed, with difficulty, to sell a few of them."

"Durand-Ruel came to see me

"and has taken a great part of my pictures and watercolours

"and has proposed to buy every work of art that I will create.

"It brings peace of mind for some time

"and the means to create important works.

"Camille Pissarro."

This painting by Pissarro is very important.

It's really a turning point.

It's the first painting that Durand-Ruel bought from the artist

when he encountered him and his work in London.

It's a very beautiful landscape made in London

painted in the outdoors not far from where Pissarro was living

and we see in this painting

how Pissarro's experimentations

were a few years ahead of the birth of impressionism.

This painting shows too that Pissarro was very aware of Corot's painting.

It is very important because it demonstrates Durand-Ruel's interest in the impressionists.

The relationships between Durand-Ruel and the impressionists

were very different depending on the personalities of the individual artists.

His relationship with Pissarro started at the beginning of the 1870s in London

but there were tensions between the two men.

Durand-Ruel supported Pissarro.

He loved his painting very much

but sometimes had reservations and criticisms about his painting

and didn't understand Pissarro in all his artistic directions.

There is another way in which the Franco-Prussian war is important

in the development of impressionism

and that is that the defeat of the French

created a certain mood in Paris.

When everyone went back after the war, the whole landscape had changed.

Confidence had gone.

There was no longer an emperor.

Politically everything was unstable.

And it was in that environment

that the revolutionary impressionists, in terms of their art,

were able to express themselves and gradually take off.

They were an expression of a certain amount of chaos

that existed in Paris after the Franco-Prussian war.

So you have got the chaos of the Franco-Prussian war

actually being something quite sympathetic for a totally new art movement.

What we know about Paul Durand-Ruel is

he came from a rather elevated sector of French bourgeois society.

He was very Catholic. He was very royalist.

He was very family-oriented

and so the death of his wife soon after returning to Paris,

leaving him with these five children to raise,

was a defining experience for him

and it must have been complicated

on one hand to take up the new art, to promote it,

and at the same time to attempt to provide a stable environment

to a group of motherless children.

So he was negotiating some complicated things in his life

as he was taking on these art-world tasks.

This triptych or, rather, these three paintings hung in a single frame

were painted by Sisley, Pissarro and Monet at the beginning of the 1870s

just at the moment when they were developing the new language of impressionism.

These paintings are important for our exhibition

because they were bought by Durand-Ruel at the start of his relationship with the impressionists.

Returning to France after his stay in London he bought these paintings in 1872 and 1873

just at the moment when they left the painters' studios.

With Durand-Ruel two aspects are linked.

If he was a great art dealer, if he revolutionised his profession,

if he invented this job of the modern art dealer,

it's because he managed to combine

commercial flair and financial risk

with very profound aesthetic convictions.

We can't deny the love Durand-Ruel had for these paintings.

He was really committed to the impressionists.

When he hung his private collection at home

it was composed mainly of impressionist paintings.

He loved living with these paintings.

One of Durand-Ruel's great commercial strategies

was to buy a large group of paintings,

basically buying paintings en bloc from artists.

When he first is introduced to the impressionists in the early 1870s

in January of 1871 he meets Monet and Pissarro in London.

The following year when they all are back in Paris

he buys 36 works from Pissarro,

29 from Sisley, 29 from Monet.

And those large purchases obviously did a tremendous amount

to support the artists and keep them going.

One of the challenges for Durand-Ruel is that the artists grew

to count on that large group of purchases every six months, every year,

and he didn't always have the financial wherewithal to do that.

When Durand-Ruel believes in an artist

he never hesitates to buy whatever is proposed to him by the artists.

And he does not hesitate to buy huge amounts of pictures.

For example, when he first purchased Manet

he buys 23 pictures directly from the artist.

Here, in the stock book,

the stock number on the left,

the artist's name - Manet,

the title of the pictures.

Here you have "La Femme au perroquet", Woman with a Parrot.

You have The Fifer, "Le Fifre".

"Le Combat naval de l'Alabama et du Kearsarge".

And he buys them from Manet

in January 1872

for a price which goes, for money at the time,

from between 1000 French francs,

sometimes 3000

or 1500.

3000 for the Christ,

3000 for the "Combat naval de l'Alabama".

And on the right are the possible sales he makes

and you see that he has not succeeded in selling them at that time.

You also have the purchases he makes to other artists.

Millet, Corot, Millet.

And so this is a whole series of drawings because when he is interested by an artist

he is interested not only by the pictures but also by the drawings.

Here you have an interesting page

because you have Degas, "Courses au Bois de Boulogne".

You have Renoir, "Vue du Pont des Arts",

that is the very first picture purchased by Durand-Ruel from Renoir.

You have Millet, Monet.

Four Monets here.

Then you have Corot, five Corots.

Another Degas. Another Corot, Corot, Corot.

Jongkind.

And three Sisleys,

that are also probably three of the first he bought from the artist

in March 1872.

And if a picture was crossed out

and you had information on the right page, it meant it was sold.

The meeting with Manet is fascinating.

Durand-Ruel goes to the studio of a Belgian artist, Alfred Stevens,

and discovers two pictures by Manet.

He immediately buys both pictures, one of them being the 'Port de Boulogne'.

He doesn't hesitate to go and knock on Manet's studio door a few days later

to buy all the pictures proposed by the artist to Durand-Ruel.

For Manet it's just a gift that somebody is finally buying his pictures.

Moreover, Durand-Ruel asks the artist

whether he has other pictures elsewhere

and he allows the artist a few days or one week

in order for the artist to bring back to his studio

all the pictures he's lent or left at other friends' houses

and buys another set of, I think, 16 pictures.

He proposed to the artist,

"Allow me to buy them all. Tell me your price."

"

"23 paintings for 35,000 francs,

"agreeing to the prices he asked.

"Without pausing to think about the potential consequences

"of my imprudent behaviour

"I increasingly indulged in purchases disproportionate to my means.

"I had nearly 50 paintings by Manet on my hands

"after these various purchases.

"I never dreamed of the incredible trouble

"their appearance in my gallery would create for my business.

"These works by a great artist, so admired today,

"were not only misunderstood

"but they appalled most of my clients,

"far more than paintings by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, and Degas,

"at which people simply smiled at first

"since they had not yet sparked the passionate debate

"that they would later generate.

"In our allegedly enlightened century

"the greater, more original and personal an artist is,

"the less well known he is."

What is so interesting about impressionism

is that once it was out there

it did attract a new sort of picture buyer

who was not so much obviously drawn from the conventional bourgeoisie

but was a profile that had the need for something new,

something extra, something different.

And if you look at the people who were buying impressionism earlier,

and there weren't many of them,

they were generally people with a slightly quirky take on life.

There were a couple of doctors, for instance,

who were homeopathic doctors,

which was unusual at the time.

There was an actor.

There was a customs official, very lowly paid

but with an intense pleasure in the newness of impressionism.

These were all guys who were not in the mainstream of normal collecting

but who felt very strongly about how much they liked this new art

and in a sense they created a prototype, a template,

for future collectors

in succeeding generations of really avant-garde art.

Durand-Ruel started in 1873

to do a whole series of engravings

of the pictures that were in the Durand-Ruel stock

in order to try and find potential buyers.

So the potential buyers would subscribe to these reviews and receive them.

So they would buy the firstlivraison.

They would receive the firstlivraisonmonthly

and then the second and then the third one.

So they would receive them as you would receive a newspaper.

And, for example, here you have a Barye,

"Cerf sur pieds".

You have a Bonvin,

so very classic because it's an interior of a convent.

David, "La Mort de Marat".

And you would have a Monet.

"Moulins en Hollande".

"The year 1873 began with great promise.

"My firm had grown considerably

"and was becoming well known more or less everywhere.

"Thanks to my exhibitions and stir created by my many purchases

"I met with approval in the art world

"and I was considered highly credit-worthy,

"which unfortunately prompted me to increase my overdraft far too dangerously.

"I had begun publication of a catalogue

"and I thought I would introduce a few etchings

"after works by Manet, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley.

"I never intended to shock anyone.

"Even dealers who might possibly have acknowledged certain qualities

"criticised me for overstepping my role.

"Everyone agreed that I had gone mad.

"Attacked and reviled by upholders,

"by the most established art critics, by the entire press,

"and by most of my colleagues,

"these new artists became a laughing stock.

"The gallery was visited by countless busy-bodies, keen to criticise.

"They would say to me,

"'How can you now praise paintings that lack any hint of quality?'

"It is easy to imagine the damage done to business

"by this change in attitude toward me,

"because the convictions of most buyers of pictures and artworks

"are notoriously weak.

"It triggered a terrible struggle that lasted over 20 years.

"So at auctions I bid the prices up,

"because I was determined not to let prices slide

"too far below the true value of things.

"But this obliged me to make costly purchases

"that endlessly swelled my already considerable stock.

"Violent altercations, followed by blows of the cane,

"broke out in the saleroom.

"The pictures were booed as they were presented

"and people had fun turning them upside down

"as they were passed from hand to hand,

"the better to laugh all the louder.

"Circumstances forced me to stop

"buying from and helping out my new friends almost completely.

"So to reach the public directly,

"Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley,

"Pissarro, Mademoiselle Morisot, Guillaumin, Rouart, Lepic and a few others

"decided to form an officially incorporated company,

"the Society of Independent Artists.

"They held a show of works in large premises belonging to Nadar, the famous photographer,

"at 35 Boulevard des Capucines.

"The pictures I bought included 'Impression, Sunrise',

"also listed in the catalogue as 'Impression'.

"The press seized upon this title

"and applied it to the entire group of exhibitors

"as a further form of mockery.

"The label 'Impressionists' has stuck to them.

"It seems inconceivable

"that a show with works of such high quality, none of which merited disdain,

"aroused such attacks and laughter

"from the thousands of exhibition-goers who crowded into the rooms,

"drawn by ludicrous articles in the popular press.

"Although most of these visitors, even the people who went to the Salons,

"had eyes in their heads,

"they were unable to see and judge.

"Public opinion against these dangerous innovators

"was whipped up so intensely

"that visitors arrived with the firm intention of laughing

"and did not even bother to look.

"For example, people today are amazed at the anger and controversy

"provoked by the Bridge at Argenteuil series by Monet,

"every one of which now fetches a high price.

"Despite the lack of success

"of their first exhibition in Nadar's premises in 1874,

"they decided to test public opinion once again,

"in the hope of encountering less hostility.

"Their second group show took place in my gallery

"which I made available at no cost.

"The nickname 'Impressionist' had become commonplace,

"and exhibition-goers, critics, and journalists used it as an expressive term,

"mostly as a mark of contempt.

"The press became increasingly hostile,

"as can be seen in the following excerpt from an article by Albert Wolff in Le Figaro.

"'There has just been opened at Durand-Ruel's an exhibition of what is said to be painting.

"'The innocent passer-by enters,

"'attracted by the banners adorning the front,

"'and a cruel spectacle meets his terrified gaze.

"'Five or six lunatics, of whom one is a woman,

"'have chosen to exhibit their works.

"'There are people who burst into laughter in front of these objects.

"'Personally, I am saddened by them.

"'These so-called artists style themselves intransigents, impressionists.

"'They take up paintbrushes and canvases

"'in the same way that inmates of a madhouse pick up the stones on the road

"'and believe they have found diamonds.'"

So the second Impressionist exhibition takes place in 1876 in Paris

in the Durand-Ruel galleries.

Paul has been asked by the artists and also wishes to exhibit them

and exhibits a group of impressionist pictures

such as these three pictures,

the Sisley, Berthe Morisot, and the Monet.

And these pictures are completely shocking for the public of the time

who do not understand why they are not well finished

in conventional colours.

They especially do not understand the picture by Berthe Morisot

because you see small brush strokes.

You don't see in detail the eyes and hair of the women

but you understand the full action because of Berthe Morisot's genius.

When you look at this picture you don't think it's finished

but she's able to give you all the atmosphere of the ladies hanging their laundry.

It's very interesting because it gives you an idea of the atmosphere of the action

and it's precisely what interests the impressionist artists.

Durand-Ruel exhibits them and believes in their works of art.

He will meet Berthe Morisot thanks to Manet.

Berthe Morisot will later on marry Manet's brother

and will not need money so much

but will be happy to sell her pictures to Durand-Ruel.

1876 is a key moment because we have Albert Wolff,

the eminent Parisian art critic

who everyone read in the Figaro,

laying into the impressionists again,

calling them madmen,

calling them all sorts of things,

but he's doing this in the context of an exhibition

now being held actually in a dealer's gallery,

in Durand-Ruel's gallery for the first time.

So Durand-Ruel has very definitely tacked his colours to the impressionist mast

and it is with the impressionists that he is now identified.

"Manet had shown two paintings at the Salon of 1874.

"One being a large work depicting a woman seated with her little girl

"near the iron fence of the railway with its smoke and steam.

"I paid 5000 francs for it in 1881.

"I kept it for 20 years without being able to find a buyer.

"It is one of the most refined, luminous and remarkable works by Manet,

"visibly influenced by Monet in his exploration of light.

"It is of incalculable value.

"The large banks, alarmed by the rumours about me,

"withdrew their support.

"I borrowed at steep interest rates to rescue an artist from poverty,

"to prevent him from starving to death

"or seeing his studio and furniture sold by the bailiffs.

"This was the case with Degas, Monet and Sisley, among others.

"I was unfortunately obliged

"to let some of these paintings go below their cost price,

"but I had to sell at any event in order to raise funds.

"This torture lasted for over ten years.

"That is no way to get rich,

"but it perhaps offers the satisfaction of having fulfilled a duty

"along with fond memories of having rescued from dire straits

"the men who went on to become the pride of French art."

"I hardly need tell you that I am expecting you,

"like the Messiah,

"to pay the damned quarterly rent.

"I have two pastels ready for instant collection.

"Edgar Degas."

"Do not resent me for allowing myself to become discouraged.

"I am always afraid of annoying you

"and, worse, as I have already mentioned,

"that my requests for money are a burden to you.

"I certainly have confidence in you and I am aware of your devotion to our cause.

"I have never doubted it, I assure you.

"Claude Monet."

Durand-Ruel is probably not the first dealer

to organise a single-artist or a monographic exhibition

but Durand-Ruel is the first to really take the format of a single-artist exhibition

and to build on that and to use it systematically.

In 1883, at a time of great financial stresses in France,

he decided to hold five monographic exhibitions.

It was a collaboration between dealer and artist

so he would ask the artist to help pick works

that would be seen in the exhibitions.

Durand-Ruel saw this as a chance

to really help the artist to build their critical reputations.

Initially Monet was a little disappointed in his show.

He felt he didn't get quite enough press.

He didn't sell as many works as he would have liked.

But, looking back on it, he realised it began to distinguish him as an individual.

I think prior to that the impressionists had been seen as a collective.

This was where their individual personalities started to take centre stage.

For Durand-Ruel it was an opportunity

to show off his pretty significant stock holdings.

He was creating the first stable of modern contemporary artists

and this had not happened before.

Putting on shows devoted exclusively to one artist,

he was focusing interest on that artist

and, if you like - I think it's been rather well put -

he was marketing temperaments.

And for the first time this is what dealers started to do,

marketing the temperament of artists.

"In the course of a long talk

"

"payment had to be delayed.

"He told me that he had made up his mind to keep us going,

"that he would devote himself to this end, that he was certain to succeed,

"that I should not be discouraged, etc, etc.

"In short, he said everything one would expect him to say,

"which might prove that he is not going to give up the game.

"Camille Pissarro."

"Too late did I realise that exhibitions are good for artists,

"whose reputations they establish,

"but not good for sales.

"Too many things are viewed at once.

"People hesitate, consult, listen to the advice of exhibition-goers,

"then postpone a purchase till later.

"Furthermore, in the large rooms everything appeared small.

"Hence the prices set seemed higher than they would have

"if the pictures had been exhibited in smaller premises.

"Many a time I noticed this effect myself when buying.

"What I thought was inexpensive in the seller's place

"seemed costly once hung in my galleries.

"In addition, in our trade it is rarity much more than merit

"that prompts art lovers to assign value to the least item,

"especially if it is shrouded in mystery.

"When the greatest masterpieces are exhibited in quantity,

"there is a good chance they will not sell.

"Visitors are content to admire

"and will go elsewhere to buy items that are much less good

"at much greater cost because they are better displayed."

France went into a serious economic decline at that point.

Fewer and fewer people were buying pictures.

Indeed, some of those who had bought the impressionists early on

felt obliged to put them back on the market

which meant that they actually fetched less

because the market was being flooded.

So this was the moment of Durand-Ruel's inspiration

when he looked round and thought, "How are we going to deal with this?"

and he came up with the idea of America.

The first time he brings impressionist paintings to America is actually in 1883

to Boston to what was essentially a trade show

commemorating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

And he brings 80 pictures at that point, of which only 20% are the impressionists.

So the rest of them are much more conventional artists,

artists whose work he had been selling to Americans for a number of years,

so he knew his American market

and was bringing over works by John Lewis Brown,

artists who aren't particularly well known to us today,

and into that he inserted three Monets,

six Pissarros, two Manets and three Renoirs.

And, interestingly, the Boston press and other American press commented

that it was actually the works of the modern French school,

the impressionists,

that were some of the most interesting ones in that exhibition.

"A fortunate coincidence in 1885 put me in touch

"with the American Art Association in New York.

"That firm had obtained a privilege normally reserved for museums,

"mainly the duty-free importation of pictures and objects of art.

"We agreed that I would immediately ship to New York

"300 of the finest paintings I owned by the new school.

"All shipping, insurance and advertising costs would be met by them.

"I accepted these terms eagerly."

I think when Durand-Ruel arrives in America

he is absolutely the right man in the right place

bringing with him impressionist paintings.

There was a very real sense in which Americans took to impressionist painting

as the new art for a new country.

They almost prided themselves on being more open to this new art

than tired old Europe was.

On top of that they were making a lot of money.

In the last 25 years of the 19th century

huge fortunes were made

on the back of the greatest stability post-civil war,

on the back of huge new industrial developments.

There were an awful lot of rich people there wanting to buy art

but excited by the idea of a new art

in a way that perhaps Europeans weren't yet.

"Dear Paul,

"there could be no better response than yours,

"informing the public of the silent war long waged against you because of us.

"Everyone will agree with you.

"It's not a question of business.

"It's a question of art that you have been defending for so long.

"I myself am very grateful to you.

"Alfred Sisley."

"Do what the public, press, dealers may,

"

"your love of the art and defence of living artists.

"In the future this will be your claim to fame

"because you were the only one.

"Pierre-Auguste Renoir."

"I arrived in New York with a remarkable collection,

"almost entirely compounded of works

"by Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro.

"There were 360 of them.

"

"'Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris',

"with no mention of my name.

"It was a bold move and people told me that failure was all the more certain

"in that all these great artists were particularly unknown in America.

"I was surprised when I encountered a welcoming audience.

"People were at first startled by the new things I was exhibiting

"but they studied them with interest and a desire to learn.

"The show drew crowds of the curious

"and, unlike what happened in Paris,

"it triggered no fuss or stupid comments and sparked no protest.

"Press coverage was unanimously favourable

"and many articles of praise appeared in all the papers in New York

"and all the large cities in the United States.

"Art lovers and the general public came not to laugh

"but to find out about the notorious paintings

"that had created such a stir in Paris."

Durand-Ruel went to most of the great American cities

but I don't think he went to the west coast.

He went to Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, Washington

and other important towns.

It is certain that Durand-Ruel could not have made all his contacts

if he couldn't have travelled in a comfortable and fast way.

Crossing the Atlantic now took only a week

and the American railways had developed enormously.

This permitted him to visit all the big cities

to find collectors and show them his paintings.

Many Americans didn't lay their eyes on an impressionist painting until 1886.

They've heard a tremendous amount.

There's a great sense of curiosity, of finding what these things really look like.

And there still are people in America,

critics, who like to say these paintings were all painted in a lunatic asylum

and they like to bandy about some of the very same criticisms

that the French press had.

Durand-Ruel said American collectors are more open-minded than many of the French.

I think we're looking at a young country with America

with huge amounts of wealth being made and generated

and we are looking at the people making this wealth

wanting to make a statement about themselves culturally,

wanting to establish themselves culturally.

There were a number of really inspired collectors in America

who put together quite exceptional collections.

The openness of Americans to impressionism is by now legendary.

I think that Mary Cassatt played an important role

because every rich, insecure American who came to Paris for many years,

wanting to buy art,

would go and see Miss Cassatt

and invariably she would send them on to her friend Paul Durand-Ruel.

"He will show you good pictures to buy."

And she spoke with great authority

because she came from one of the grandest American families,

certainly one of the grandest in Philadelphia.

Her family ran the biggest corporation in the world at that point,

the Pennsylvania Railroad,

and so when she spoke you had to listen.

Mary Cassatt, who lived in Paris

and, because she came from a good American family,

was the introducer of quite a lot of American collectors of impressionism,

slightly came to rue the power of Durand-Ruel

in that she sometimes found cheaper impressionist pictures in other places

but found that her American clients wanted

not to buy it slightly cheaper elsewhere

but to buy it slightly more expensive at Durand-Ruel

because Durand-Ruel gave an extra cachet to the impressionist painting.

I think Durand-Ruel found the Americans very refreshing.

"less ignorant, less closed-minded then our French collectors."

It is an extraordinary fact

that the first impressionist paintings to enter a major museum

were in the United States in the Metropolitan Museum in 1889.

There were no paintings from the impressionists yet

in public collections in Europe,

so that's a measure of how quickly the Americans latched on to impressionism

and understood it.

"My success on the other side of the Atlantic had a significant repercussion in France.

"The same people who had either not dared to buy a Manet, Renoir or Monet

"or would pay only a few hundred francs for them

"now resolved to pay as much as the Americans.

"So, little by little, prices increased.

"So did the number of collectors."

"There is only one person to whom I owe something

"and that's Durand-Ruel who was looked upon as mad

"and, on our account, almost seized by the bailiffs.

"Claude Monet."

Every institution organises their own galleries

and the actual presentation is unique to that institution.

In the case of the Durand-Ruel exhibition

we've really worked out the themes and the moments we're concentrating on

as a group.

The galleries as a whole may look...

You'll have the same groups of paintings in Paris as in London and Philadelphia.

The spaces will be different

and we may not necessarily hang the Degas next to the Monet

in the same fashion that Paris does.

We might actually insert a Pissarro in them.

So when it comes down to the hanging, that is actually extremely personal.

One of the challenges or the great fun of the Durand-Ruel exhibition

is that certain paintings might go in a couple of different categories.

So we've got the discovery of impressionism.

In this particular order are largely Durand-Ruel's first purchases.

So this board is reflecting loans that have been promised to the museum.

We've been working for about two years now

on seeking loans from various institutions.

We've had great success and some disappointments

with things that aren't in a condition to travel or they're promised to another exhibition.

But we certainly start out with what we call a working check-list.

When we set about doing the exhibition, and this is very much a project

that Philadelphia has done with our colleagues in Paris and London,

we also set out to establish a very clear narrative about Durand-Ruel

and to pick some key episodes in the history of the galleries.

It took a while to figure out which moments

we felt would reveal the most telling information about Durand-Ruel.

I'm wanting to concentrate the pictures that have to do with the 1886 exhibition.

So, obviously, pull out Boston's great trophy.

The Morisot.

I was going to say the Cassatt. - Yeah, let's try that.

It's nice to break up the Cassatts as well.

I believe Paul Durand-Ruel's name is in each of the three titles

but each venue will focus on slightly different parts of his story

so Paris will focus more on the Paris story, the beginning.

London is going to focus very much on Grafton,

Durand-Ruel's exhibition of 1905.

And, of course, we are focussing on the American stories.

We are calling it "Discovering the Impressionists".

From my perspective that is a very accurate title.

As we've worked with pictures that are well known,

well established impressionist works,

we have discovered an extraordinary amount about them,

about their provenance, about their exhibition histories.

An exhibition like this allows juxtapositions of certain paintings.

The Monet Poplars, of which we will have six reunited in Philadelphia,

also make a statement.

Bringing them all together really helps you to understand

what Monet was trying to achieve.

You might see one of these works in London and one in Philadelphia

and think they are same, but when you see them side by side

you realise that the artist was doing very different things with each canvas.

Now we are seeing the last book from Paul Durand-Ruel's life.

It goes all the way up to 1921. Paul Durand-Ruel died in 1922.

So from 1891 onwards

Durand-Ruel never changed the stock numbers

and this stock book goes all the way to number 11902.

That's the last stock number in May 1921.

That's why we can say that more than 11,000 pictures

went through the Durand-Ruel gallery during Paul Durand-Ruel's lifetime.

"The number of admirers of the new school has continued to grow from year to year,

"not only in France, but in all the foreign countries, mainly Germany.

"The movement will only continue to grow

"despite the prediction of those still blinded by routine

"or the fear of seeing their own interests compromised.

"At last I can rest,

"leaving to others younger than myself the task of seeing

"who among today's new artists are endowed with interesting vision.

"They will not be found on the benches of the École des Beaux-Arts

"or in academic circles.

"They will be found among artists who seek inspiration only within themselves

"by contemplating the ever-renewed wonders of nature

"and by closely studying masterful works

"by the greatest masters of every era."

Durand-Ruel certainly was one of the first

to be this medium between the public and the artist.

He was not the first, because there were several dealers before,

but he was probably one of the most sympathetic

because he was truly interested in the art.

I think the real impact of Paul Durand-Ruel

was less on the history of art,

which the artists might have done for themselves,

than on the history of the art market.

He established the art market of the 20th century.

The idea of finding an outsider, believing in an outsider, backing an outsider,

that was absolutely crucial throughout the 20th century.

This man was important because he took a very calculated risk.

He knew what he was doing as an art dealer

but now he put his expertise into selling an entirely new kind of art.

It could have gone very wrong.

For a while it did go very wrong and he was very close to bankruptcy.

But he prevailed. He brought his skill to bear.

And over a period of some 40 years

he took a marginal art

and made it the absolute centre

of what we still think is modern art.