Art: The Bell Ringer

No one rang the school bells for School-of-Paris art more loudly or persistently than crusty Art Dealer Ambroise Vollard. From 1893 on, his jumbled little gallery on the Rue Laffitte stocked and sold all the important moderns of his day.

Vollard's eye for the times was as sharp as his eye for art. Understanding the increasing importance of art reproductions, he published prints by his favorite artists in a steady stream of books and portfolios. Last week Washington's National Gallery was celebrating his taste and foresight with a show of fine Vollard prints ranging from Renoir through Cézanne to Rouault and Picasso.

Several of the exhibits were portraits of shrewd Patron Vollard himself, who was a willing model for his many artist friends. Hearing that Renoir had always wanted to paint a bullfighter, Vollard had a gold-embroidered toreador suit made to his own measure, turned up at Renoir's studio in costume. He even offered to shave off his beard, but Renoir said that would be unnecessary: "You don't suppose you would be taken for a real torero, if you did? All I ask of you is not to go to sleep while you are sitting."

Cezanne, who took his own measures to insure that his models stayed awake, posed Vollard on a stool precariously balanced on a rickety platform. Even so, the hulking dealer fell asleep and crashed to the floor. Cezanne was furious: "You wretch! You have upset the pose! You should sit like an apple. Who ever saw an apple fidgeting?" After the first 100 sittings, Cezanne cooled off sufficiently to announce: "I haven't done so badly with the front of your shirt."

Vollard did not do badly, either. When he died in 1939, at the age of 72, he had not only helped promote his friends to awesome heights; he had also amassed a tidy fortune for himself and one of the world's best collections of impressionist and post-impressionist art.