Ambroise Vollard

French art dealer, art collector and publisher, regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous then-unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne, Aristide Maillol, Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.

In 1893 Vollard established his own art gallery, at Rue Laffitte, then the centre of the Parisian market for contemporary art. There he mounted his first major exhibitions, buying almost the entire output of Cézanne, some 150 canvases to create his first exhibition in 1895. This was followed by exhibitions of Manet, Gauguin and Van Gogh (4–30 June 1895). These were followed by a second Cézanne exhibition (1898), the first Picasso exhibition (June 1901) and Matisse (1904).

His clients included Albert C. Barnes, Henry Osborne Havemeyer, Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo Stein.

Having put on the first Picasso exhibition, in 1930 Vollard commissioned Picasso to produce a suite of 100 etchings which became known as the Vollard Suite. Vollard would later write biographies of Cézanne (1914), Degas, and Renoir.

In 1936 in the USA he published his autobiography, Recollections of a Picture Dealer, published in France as Souvenirs d'un marchand de tableaux (Paris, Albin Michel, 1937).

With war approaching, Vollard set out on 21 July 1939 from his cottage in Le Tremblay-sur-Mauldre to travel to his mansion on the Rue Martignac, where he had stored 10,000 artworks. His chauffeur-driven Talbot skidded and then somersaulted twice. Having fractured his cervical vertebrae, there he lay with his chauffeur until found dead, aged 73, the following morning.