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You might not recognize the name of Marcellin Desboutin, but you would know him if you saw him in the street. His is the bearded, dishevelled face staring despairingly out at you from a table in the artists' caf� La Nouvelle Ath�nes in the painting   L'Absinthe (Dans un Caf�) by Edgar Degas. The women sitting next to him is the actress Ellen Andr�; like the rest of the Impressionists, Degas preferred to use members of his immediate social circle rather than paid models. Once you have committed Desboutin's face to memory, you will chance upon it again and again in works by Degas and other artists, including Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Falgui�re; often he is smoking a pipe. His tramp-like appearance made him the ideal sitter if you wanted to paint a down-and-out old drunk. Marcellin Desboutin, Desboutin dit � la bavette (aslo known as Desboutin tenant sa pipe de la main gauche, or as L'auteur fumant, � mi-corps) Drypoint, 1897 Ref: Cl�ment Janin 67 Actually, Marcellin Gilb

After my last post about Auguste Lauzet, I thought I might stick with the Impressionist theme, and discuss a truly neglected artist, Jean-Fran�ois Raffa�lli. He's someone who seems to have fallen through the cracks of art history, so much so that though his paintings and prints turn up, all his sculptures seem to have vanished into thin air. I imagine someone will come across them in a junk shop at some point, and have a eureka moment. The interesting thing about Raffa�lli is that when he exhibited with the Impressionists, he wasn't one; after he'd been cast out by them, he became one. This is especially true of his etchings and drypoints, in which he exhibits an exquisite Impressionist sensibility. La gare du Champ-de-Mars, near the bottom of this post, is just about the perfect Impressionist print. Photograph by Manuel of Jean-Fran�ois Raffaelli in his studio,  a drypoint needle in his hand, and a copperplate before him. Wearing a bowler hat. Jean-Fran�ois Raffa�lli was o

The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was born in Paris in 1831. In 1865 he took over his father�s picture-dealing business, which specialised in the work of the plein-air Barbizon School. Paul Durand-Ruel continued to support the Barbizon artists, but from the early 1870s, sensing a change in the air, he also cultivated a younger set of painters, influenced by Barbizon but going way beyond it in the freedom of their brushstrokes, the Impressionists. Durand-Ruel represented Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and Guillaumin among others, dominating the art market from his galleries in Paris, London, and New York. He established a new pattern of the gallerist as patron, the maker and breaker of careers, and manipulator of the market. The 1892 book L�Art impressioniste d�apr�s la collection priv�e de M. Durand-Ruel is a record of the Impressionist works that Durand-Ruel kept for himself. The whole book can be read online here  . It was written by Georges Lecomte, and the p