Ambroise

Ambroise, sometimes Ambroise of Normandy, (flourished c. 1190) was a Norman poet and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called L'Estoire de la guerre sainte, which describes in rhyming Old French verse the adventures of Richard Coeur de Lion as a crusader. The poem is known to us only through one Vatican manuscript, and long escaped the notice of historians.

The credit for detecting its value belongs to Gaston Paris, although his edition (1897) was partially anticipated by the editors of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, who published some selections in the twenty-seventh volume of their Scriptores (1885). Ambroise followed Richard I as a noncombatant, and not improbably as a court-minstrel. He speaks as an eye-witness of the king's doings at Messina, in Cyprus, at the siege of Acre, and in the abortive campaign which followed the capture of that city.

Ambroise is surprisingly accurate in his chronology; though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naïve vivacity which compels attention. He is by no means an impartial source: he is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master, including the Polein party which supported Conrad of Montferrat against Guy of Lusignan. He is rather to be treated as a biographer than as a historian of the Crusade in its broader aspects. Nonetheless he is an interesting primary source for the events of the years 1190–1192 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Ambroise Vollard

Ambroise Vollard (3 July 1866 – 21 July 1939) is regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous notable and unknown artists, including Paul Cézanne,Aristide Maillol, Renoir, Louis Valtat, Pablo Picasso,André Derain, Georges Rouault, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. He is also well known as an avid art collector and publisher.

Biography

Born in Saint-Denis, Réunion, he was raised in the French Indian Ocean colony. After his matura (final exams) in La Réunion, he went to study jurisprudence in France from 1895, for a while in Montpellier, then at the École de droit in Paris, where he received his degree in 1888.

During his studies, Vollard converted himself into an "amateur-merchant" by becoming a clerk for an art dealer, and in 1893 established his own art gallery, at Rue Laffitte, then the center of the Parisian market for contemporary art. There Vollard mounted his first major exhibitions, buying almost the entire output of Cézanne, some 150 canvases to create his first exhibition in 1895. This was followed by exhibitions of Manet, Gauguin and Van Gogh (4 – 30 June 1895); for Gabriel Mourey, French correspondent of The Studio in Paris, this was simply a matter of "Scylla and Charybdis". These were then was followed by a second Cézanne exhibition (1898), the first Picasso exhibition (1901) and Matisse (1904).