n 1920 the prestigious French Légion d’honneur was awarded to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, whose clever business tactics had launched the careers of the impressionists a few decades earlier. The reason for this official mark of honour was not so much Durand-Ruel’s role in the flowering of French art as such, as it was his contribution to foreign trade.1 This motivation was probably not a surprise for the dealer. Commercial success abroad had been essential in the impressionists’ rise to fame: as Durand-Ruel himself observed in his mem-oirs, it was only after he had been able to secure a firm footing for impression-ist art abroad—especially in the United States—that it became a subject of appreciation in France.2 Such a dynamic of foreign success as a catalyst (or even a precondition) for success in the home-market is by no means unique to impressionist art, or even to art in general. However, the need for and the beneficial effects of such a detour are striking for a type of painting that was quick to be considered as quintessentially French and also marketed as a very “national” kind of art