When authors like Théodore Duret, Julius Meier-Graefe or John Rewald told the story of Impressionism, they brought their readers closer not only to the painters but also to their patrons: protagonists like Paul-Marie Joseph Durand-Ruel.

Since then, the name of this gallerist has evoked associations with a veritable saga of the modern art market, since early on he relied on artists whose works many had nothing but scorn and derision for: “These people are crazy, but even crazier is the art dealer who buys pictures from them “, Claude Monet quoted in 1924 as recalling reactions from the emergence of Impressionism.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Paul Durand-Ruel, born in 1831, was interested in landscapes and still lifes of the Barbizon School and Realism.

Without giving up his passion for it, he bought and exhibited works from Manet and younger painters such as Monet and Renoir.

It was an outrageous risk: the purchases were made when it was not foreseeable whether the investments would ever yield a profit.

In fact, the gallery owner hardly found any buyers for them for a long time.

It seems even "crazier" that he dared to enter markets abroad and became a kind of global player avant la lettre from Paris or when traveling to the Netherlands, for example.

His tactic only caught on in the 1990s, when interest in Impressionist art took off and eventually boomed.

In addition to the parent company in Paris with entrances on Rue Laffitte and Rue Le Peletier, Durand-Ruel continued to operate the branches in London and Brussels, which had been created during the Franco-Prussian War and in 1887 a branch in New York founded.

In doing so, he significantly expanded his clientele and was ahead of some of his competitors.

The fact that American museums have long been so richly stocked with Impressionist paintings also has to do with Durand-Ruel and his local customers - collectors.

Attention was also drawn to his goods in Berlin, long before Durand-Ruel sold the Nationalgalerie in 1896 Manet's "In the Winter Garden" and in 1897 Cézanne's "Mill on the Couleuvre near Pontoise", namely around 1870, when he started the "Picture Salon" of Rudolph Lepke cooperated. When the Fritz Gurlitt Gallery held the first exhibition of Impressionist art on German soil in 1883 with the support of Carl and Felicie Bernstein and Charles Ephrussi, Durand-Ruel was the lender. Works that could be sold went back unsold, but when a few years later collectors and museum directors such as Emil Heilbut, Max Liebermann, Max Linde, Hugo von Tschudi and Alfred Lichtwark or the art dealers Ernst Arnold (Dresden), Keller & Reiner and Paul Cassirer (Berlin) stirred, they knew immediately who to turn to.

From the last decade of the 19th century at the latest, Durand-Ruel's gallery on the Rue Laffitte was the destination of many visitors to Paris interested in modernism.

Some have also had the pleasure of seeing his private collection.

At a time when Impressionism was not yet recognized, the gallery owner's apartment on the Rue de Rome was considered "France's most wonderful museum of contemporary painting", as Georges Lecomte put it in 1892.

In fact, there was no place at that time where the works that have now become classics could be seen permanently.

That changed in 1897 with the opening of the halls in the Musée du Luxembourg, in which paintings from the Gustave Caillebotte collection were presented from then on, which later ended up in the Jeu de Paume of the Tuileries and then in the Musée d'Orsay.

But even after the turn of the century, no one refused to take a look at Durand-Ruel's private collection.

In 1903 Franz Marc came to visit;

1907 August Macke to let it be known: "For me it was a revelation."

Paul Durand-Ruel died on February 5, 1922, and was buried in Montmartre Cemetery.

The parent company, which was continued by his descendants, was located on Avenue de Friedland until it was closed in 1974.

Since then, the family has viewed correspondence and inventories from the gallery archive and used them for exhibitions.

The activities of Paul Durand-Ruel in Paris, London and Philadelphia (2014/15) as well as Yerres (2021) were recognized.