The story
Ambroise Vollard, the Paris dealer who gave Cézanne and Picasso their first solo shows, was born in Saint-Denis on Réunion in 1866. His home town's museum carries his mark. In 1912 he gave it a couple of paintings, and in 1947, after his death, his brother Lucien donated 157 works from his collection, chosen with the help of the museum's founders.
Those founders were two Creole writers and childhood friends, Georges Athénas and Aimé Merlo, who wrote together as Marius-Ary Leblond. They opened the museum in November 1912 in the former bishops' residence, a house built around 1843, and named it after Léon Dierx, a poet and occasional painter born on the island. The 19th-century front survives, with a 1960s wing behind it.
Thanks to the Vollard gift, an island in the Indian Ocean holds French modern art, with names from Gauguin and Cézanne to Rouault and Émile Bernard. The collection includes Bernard's portrait of Vollard himself, a garden entrance at Petit Gennevilliers by Gustave Caillebotte, and Young Girl on the Couch by Berthe Morisot.
