Vollard's account of his life as an art dealer of Impressionists was challenging at first, but once I stopped waiting for a traditional memoir, I enjoyed his piling on of anecdotes about the dawn of the movement. It's never quite clear that M. Vollard was an art lover, per se; what motivates him is the development of connoisseurship, his own and that of others. His description of one customer is an example: "He felt bound to exhibit a taste for art... [He:] realised that the connoisseur who would not appear out of date, owed it to himself to take notice of the Impressionists. At the same time, if M. de Camondo was to consent to 'go in for' the art of the vanguard, it must be done without breaking with tradition." (103) Vollard writes fondly of such intimates as Degas, Cezanne, Manet, and many others now less well-known, and their work habits and peccadeilloes. (Henri Rousseau is always known as "Douanier Rousseau.") My favorite story was the one about the traditionalist who rejoiced on the eve of World War I that "This means that Cubism is done for!" (289) Of course it wasn't, but how delightful to have that historical insight into the nexus between art and life!