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Shop · Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin (7th) · 7e arrondissement

Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire

The buildingStill standing
Getting inWalk straight in
What's there nowStill the same

Still trading on the quai, and still recognisably a nineteenth-century colour shop inside — wooden drawers, pigment jars, and very little room to move.

The artists' colourman opened by Gustave Sennelier on the quai Voltaire in 1887, opposite the Louvre — still trading, still grinding pigment, and still looking very much as it did.

Address
3 quai Voltaire, 75007 Paris
Years
Founded 1887; still in business
IllustrationBright color view of Sennelier's deep-green and gold storefront beside the Seine

The deep-green artists' color shop at number 3, opposite the Louvre across the Seine.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

Gustave Sennelier opened his colour shop on the quai Voltaire in 1887, directly across the Seine from the Louvre, which is not a coincidence: the shop was positioned for painters going to and from the museum to copy.

It has been supplying them ever since. The house made its name grinding pigments to order and mixing bespoke colours for individual painters. It is one of the few Paris businesses where the trade, the family, the premises and the purpose have all stayed the same for well over a century.

Wassily Kandinsky used it during the Occupation, when materials were genuinely scarce and painters were extending what they had by whatever means they could. The shop's role in those years was less about luxury than about whether work could continue at all.

It is small, crowded and open. Walking in is the ordinary way to see it.

Key facts

Founded
1887, by Gustave Sennelier
Where
3 quai Voltaire, facing the Louvre across the river
What it does
Artists' colours, pigments and materials — still ground and mixed on the premises
Kandinsky
Bought materials here during the wartime shortages
Access
Open — walk in

In images

Sennelier's historic shopfront on the quai Voltaire, still serving artists at its original address.Editorial illustration
The deep-green artists' color shop at number 3, opposite the Louvre across the Seine.Editorial illustration
Historically informed editorial reconstruction of the newly founded color shop around 1890.Artistic reconstruction
Artists and a delivery cart outside the young business; precise people, objects and color are interpretive, and no famous artist is depicted.Artistic reconstruction
The narrow working shop, with its oak drawers, pigment jars, ladder and counter.Editorial illustration
Pigments, pastels and brushes at the counter where artists still compare materials in person.Editorial illustration
Fine papers, flat files, brushes and color stock fill the upper workroom.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1887

    Gustave Sennelier opens the shop on the quai Voltaire.

  2. 1940s

    Kandinsky buys scarce materials here during the Occupation.

On the map

Questions before you go

Can you visit Sennelier?

Yes — it is a working shop at 3 quai Voltaire and you can walk in. It is small and usually busy.

How old is the shop?

It was founded in 1887 and has traded on the same quay ever since, opposite the Louvre.

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Russian-born; French from 1939 · Russian painter, celebrated as a pioneer of abstract art, who gave up a Moscow law career at thirty to study painting in Munich, co-founded the Blue Rider group in 1911, taught for eleven years at the Bauhaus, the German design school — and spent his last eleven years in a flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine that the French artist Marcel Duchamp had pointed him towards, painting soft cell-like forms nothing like the hard geometry Germany knew him for.

Frequented by

Kandinsky bought materials at Sennelier on the quai Voltaire during the wartime shortages, when pigment and canvas were scarce.

— Inside Kandinsky's Studio in Neuilly

People who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

French · Painter

Chagall bought pigments and materials at Sennelier on the quai Voltaire, the colour merchant supplying Paris painters since 1887.

Within walking distance

The Hôtel Verneuil today, white façade with a green front door, planted window boxes, and lanterns along the rue de Verneuil

Hotel · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Hôtel Verneuil

The Left Bank hotel where James Baldwin settled after arriving in Paris in November 1948, and where his first published essays were written.

Visit the place
Present-day color view of the pale-stone Hôtel du Quai Voltaire beneath a bright blue sky

Hotel · Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin (7th)

Hôtel du Quai Voltaire

The hotel facing the Louvre across the Seine where Camille Pissarro took a third-floor room in the spring of 1903 and painted the Pont Royal, the Pavillon de Flore and the river — the last series he made in Paris.

Visit the place
The same view in colour, pale stone arches over green water under a blue sky

Bridge · Louvre

Pont du Carrousel

The crossing from the Louvre to the rue des Saints-Pères: an 1834 iron bridge replaced by a stone one in 1939, with distinctive telescoping streetlamps designed to rise after dark.

Visit the place
The same entrance at 19 rue de Lille in colour, pale green doors between honey-coloured stone piers with carved urns above

Press · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Black Sun Press (19 Rue de Lille)

The Paris town house of Harry and Caresse Crosby, and the address of the Black Sun Press, which published D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Hemingway and Hart Crane in editions made to be beautiful rather than to sell.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1Inside Kandinsky's Studio in Neuilly

    Website
    Centre Pompidou, via Google Arts & Culture
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire page.

    View source

  2. 2Kandinsky — dossier pédagogique (exhibition education dossier)

    Website
    Centre Pompidou, service éducatif, 2009
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire page.

    View source

  1. 3Vasily Kandinsky — artist biography

    Website
    Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire page.

    View source

  2. 4Where Did Kandinsky Live?

    Website
    Centre Pompidou, via Google Arts & Culture
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Sennelier, 3 quai Voltaire page.

    View source
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Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

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