Paul Durand-Ruel

Paul Durand-Ruel, a man of strong convictions, became an art dealer against his will. He spent his entire life supporting and promoting the painters he loved, despite incomprehension from the public and violent opposition from the official art milieus. Through his efforts, he earned recognition for the Barbizon painters, then the Impressionists, narrowly avoiding financial ruin several times. "Without Durand," Claude Monet later said, "we would have starved, all of the Impressionists. We owe him everything. He was stubborn, tenacious, he faced bankruptcy twenty times to support us. Critics dragged us through the mud; but for him it was worse! They wrote: 'These people are mad, but there is someone even crazier than they are, it's the dealer who buys their works.'" The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Paul Durand-Ruel, le pari de l'impressionnisme presented at the Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, October 2014 to February 2015, then at the National Gallery in London (Inventing Impressionism) and the Philadelphia Museum of Arts (Discovering Impressionists).