Ernest Gambart

He established fair and mutually beneficial agreements with most of the best known British and European artists of the mid-Victorian period, including Edwin Landseer, John Everett Millais, Rosa Bonheur, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, William Holman Hunt, John Linnell, J. M. W. Turner, David Roberts, Frederick Goodall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and William Powell Frith.

For example, in 1855, he brought Rosa Bonheur to England with her monumental piece, The Horse Fair, which he purchased[1] and which she showed to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in a private audience.

[3] His attention to quality paid off both in the arrangements he maintained with leading artists (his career lasted 25 years) and also in sales.

By now established with an address in London's Pall Mall, his first exhibition was the bronzes of Pierre-Jules Mène, sculptor of animals.

Later moving to King Street, St. James, Gambart would alternate British artists with those of Continental European ones.

Prior to his galleries, most fine art was sold by the artist directly to the buyer, who was often a patron.

His friendship with artists and buyers, including pen-maker and well-known patron Joseph Gillott, as well as with critics, would become a model for how modern art business would be run.

Gambart and his wife moved to Nice where they had a marble palace, known as "Les Palmiers", built to his specifications.