page_title: Georges Petit
section_title: Rivalries and rise to prominence
hierarchical_section_title: Georges Petit / Rivalries and rise to prominence
caption_attribution_description: English: Old Beggar, 1916, by Louis Dewis, painted just outside his clothing store in Bordeaux
context_page_description: Georges Petit was a French art dealer, a key figure in the Paris art world and an important promoter and cultivator of Impressionist artists.
context_section_description: Petit had an intense rivalry with art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922). Durand-Ruel took over his business from his father in 1865. The Petit and Durand-Ruel galleries had been the top two firms in Paris dating back to the 1850s. Paul Durand-Ruel was 25 years older than Petit and had become an advocate of the Impressionists as early as 1870.
  The gallery which Petit opened at 12, Rue Godot de Mauroy in 1881 was a popular alternative exhibition space to the official  Salon. Petit's gallery later relocated to 8, rue de Sèze in the heart of Paris.
  Petit made his private views into grand social occasions. He devised the series of Expositions internationales de Peinture, the first of which was held in 1882. John Singer Sargent sent his portrait of Vernon Lee to the inaugural event, a work which received decidedly mixed reviews.  Sargent wrote, "it has been exhibited … and has consternated many people."
  These events attracted the likes of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Alfred Sisley and James McNeill Whistler.
  Sisley held large retrospective exhibitions at the Galerie Georges Petit in the 1880s and 1890s.  This was something of a coup for Petit, as Sisley had been previously associated with Durand-Ruel.  In 1897, Petit exhibited 146 Sisley paintings and 5 of his pastels, covering the whole of his career.  Two years later, just months after Sisley's death, the paintings remaining in Sisley's atelier were sold at auction by the Galerie Georges Petit to the benefit of his children.
caption: The Old Beggar (1916) by Louis Dewis, seen by Petit in 1917 at Le Salon franco-belge at the Bordeaux Public Garden, after which Petit offered Dewis his patronage.[6]
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