Anne Distel


Anne Distel is a French honorary general curator of heritage at the Musée d'Orsay and specialist in Impressionist paintings.

Career

Anne Distel is professor of art history at Paris-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.
She authored Renoir : « Il faut embellir », 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.
During an interview with Éditions Gallimard, Distel pointed out 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.
Distel was nominated Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2008.

Selected publications

; In collaboration