Georges & Fifi

Paris is well aware of two quick-tempered old gentlemen who fight like cats at every opportunity yet lunch together nearly every day. For the first time last week New York had a chance to appreciate fully what great gifts these cantankerous friends have brought the world of art. In the Knoedler Gallery the first selection from the fabulous collection of Ambroise Vollard ever to leave France went on exhibition. Farther down the street Artist Henri Matisse's art-dealing son Pierre proudly showed 20 sombre impressive canvases by Georges Rouault, the largest single showing of his oil paint ings ever held. Hulking, testy Ambroise Vollard was born in the Isle de la Reunion southeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, went to Paris over half a century ago to study law. He was an indifferent lawyer, but his eye for art was alert; he recognized the ability and the future value of the French Impressionists -- Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir -- at a time when only one other man in France, the late Art Dealer George Durand-Ruel, was willing to take a chance on them. Ambroise Vollard bought his first pic ture, a Degas racing scene, for a few francs. Soon he made friends with the artist, became intimate with the entire Impressionist circle. Next step was to give up his practice and open in the Rue Laffitte a tiny art shop that has become a legendary shrine for art students. Dealer Vollard could not compete in the open market with Dealer Durand-Ruel, but in those days "Fifi'' Vollard, as the Impressionists called him, was more fun. He never tried to tell them what to paint or how to paint, gratefully accepted any canvas they would let him have. A great deal of his stock he got for nothing, and when bills were due and customers non existent, Mary Cassatt, an artist not only equal in ability with the best of the Impressionists but with a comforting supply of good U. S. dollars (derived by her Philadelphia family from the Pennsylvania Railroad), would drop around and buy a picture.

Fifi Vollard would not then, as he does not now, raise a finger to attract a customer or sell a canvas but occasionally he moved quickly. As soon as Cezanne died Fifi hopped a train for Aix, bought the entire contents of Cezanne's studio, loaded it on a handcart and pushed off for the station. The last canvas came hustling through an open window from the hands of the bereaved family just in time for him to make his train. The War closed the doors of the Rue Laffitte shop. The Impressionists grew old and died. Fifi Vollard remains the last survivor of their circle, proud of the fact that he discovered and pushed a whole new circle of artists (now middleaged) to take their place: Picasso -- he bought his first "Blue Period" Picasso in 1901 -- Derain, Bonnard, Vlaminck, Rouault. Of the lot it was Georges Rouault who became Fifi Vollard's closest friend. Artist Rouault was born in a Paris cel lar during the insurrection of the Com mune of 1871. As far as anyone knows, his first and only job was that of appren tice in a stained glass factory where for four or five years he earned 50 centimes (then about 9-c-) a week. He studied under the romantic-classical Gerome, William Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau, grew to be known as one of the wildest of modernists. Georges Rouault is not an easy artist for the uninitiate who are either baffled or enraged by his splashes of paint, the occasionally grotesque appearance of his great clown's heads, his brick-colored nudes. But no knowing art student could enter the Rouault exhibition in Manhattan last week without recognizing with what extraordinary skill this same splashing of paint recreates the luminous greens, reds and blues of the stained glass with which Rouault first worked, without feeling the Byzantine richness of the work.

Fifi Vollard lives today with his cat (see cut) in a huge house on the RuedeMartig-nac whose first floor shutters are never opened. Artist Rouault has a locked studio on the top floor from which Fifi for all his blustering is rigorously excluded. They lunch and quarrel together nearly every day, but not even Fifi Vollard knows where Georges Rouault lives. He receives all his mail and makes all his appointments at No. 14 Rue de La Rochefoucauld which is the Gustave-Moreau Museum of which he is curator. Neither his stately wife, Marthe Le Sidaner who paints very conservative portraits, nor his four children will reveal the family address.

Not even Georges Rouault knows the 'name of Fifi Vollard's cat, a testy 12-year-old alley torn whose great ambition is to get into the room where the Cezannes are kept. Frustrated in this he generally dashes for the dining room and claws angry gashes in the leather seats of the ponderous Empire furniture. Fifi Vollard does not mind for he has two dining rooms, one to exhibit his furniture and another smaller closet off the kitchen where he is apt to retire and munch raw peaches while would-be purchasers are left alone in a silent house full of pictures.

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