Sennelier, artists’ colourman on the Quai Voltaire since 1887

Sennelier, the artists’ colourman on the Quai Voltaire, opened in 1887 at number 3, facing the Louvre and a few steps from the École des Beaux-Arts. Gustave Sennelier, a chemist by training, set up as a supplier of fine artists’ colours and turned one of the rooms into a workshop.

Through his study of pigments he developed his own oil colours and ways of controlling their opacity and transparency, and in 1912 he published a short book on their composition. Cézanne bought his paints here, and Degas, Picasso, Dalí, Chagall, Sonia Delaunay and Balthus were among its clients. After the war, at Picasso’s request, the house developed an oil pastel.

The family has handed the house down the generations: Dominique, Gustave’s grandson, ran it with Armelle, a graduate of the Beaux-Arts, and their daughter Sophie later joined them. The workshops make oil paints, watercolours, pastels, canvases and papers, under the Max Sauer company.

On the Quai Voltaire, in the 7th arrondissement, the shop has barely changed since 1887: original furniture, shelves of pigments, displays of brushes. Beaux-Arts students still come for inks, sketchbooks and colours.