Georges Petit

According to Robert Jensen in his book Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, the auction house assumed, "multiple roles that ran the gamut from certifying the authenticity of the object, to guiding it through the hazards of the marketplace, to establishing its provenance and enlisting critics and historians to situate the artist's importance.

The gallery which Petit opened at 12, Rue Godot de Mauroy [fr] in 1881 was a popular alternative exhibition space to the official Salon.

John Singer Sargent sent his portrait of Vernon Lee to the inaugural event, a work which received decidedly mixed reviews.

"[9][10] These events attracted the likes of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Alfred Sisley and James McNeill Whistler.

[12] The biography posted by the National Gallery of Art notes that, "Petit also dealt in Salon painters and handled the works of many successful and fashionable artists of the period, rivaling another Parisian dealer, Boussod & Valadon [successors to Goupil & Cie].

Michael C. FitzGerald, writing in his book The Making of Modernism, says that, "by the 1890s [Petit had] wrested many of the Impressionists from their first dealer, Durand-Ruel, and presented such important exhibitions as Monet's Morning on the Seine[14] and Norman coast series.

According to Émile Zola, who knew the Parisian art world inside and out, Petit was the 'apotheosis' of dealers when the Impressionist market soared and competition among marchands... became intense.

The biographer at the Whistler Centre writes that Petit's Société internationale de Peinture was run on similar principles to the Grosvenor Gallery.

Other artists such as Paul Baudry, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jozef Israëls, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John Everett Millais, Ludwig Knaus and Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel were also involved.

[1] According to the Whistler Centre, beginning in 1881, "the gallery was associated with print publishing and specialised in monochrome, very high quality reproductive engravings of paintings by contemporary artists such as Félix Bracquemond and Marcellin Desboutin".

[20] Vollard played an important role in the careers of Paul Cézanne, Maillol, Picasso, Rouault, Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.