Anne Distel (born Anne Dayez on 19 February 1947) is a French honorary general curator of heritage at the Musée d'Orsay and specialist in Impressionist paintings.[1] She curated notable exhibitions such as Large monographie Renoir, Cézanne et Un ami Van Gogh: Le Docteur Gachet, 'and 'Paul Signac (1863-1935) or The Mystery et l'éclat.
Anne Distel is professor of art historyatParis-Sorbonne University. She is the author of numerous books on nineteenth-century paintings. She is particularly interested in Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and was the curator of the monographic exhibition of Renoir which was presented at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1985. She organised a lecture, "Renoir and the Woman of Paris", at The Frick Collection art museum in 2012.[2]
She authored Renoir : « Il faut embellir » (1993), a lavishly illustrated pocket book for the collection "Découvertes Gallimard", which has been translated into six languages, including English; and Renoir, a 400-page book packaged in a box set, published in English in 2010.[3]
During an interview with Éditions Gallimard, Distel observed that collectors—for example, Albert C. Barnes—played a very important role in Renoir's life, and were the cause of evolution of his style. Barnes built a foundation to house his eclectic private collection in 1922. The foundation had a goal of education consistent with Barnes' very democratic ideas about the spread of culture.[4]
