diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index df7e44c10..c63a9518f 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -77,8 +77,9 @@ install:
         brew update && brew install cppcheck;
     fi
   - pip install -r requirements.txt
+  - pip install -r requirements-doc.txt
   - pip install setuptools setuptools-scm scikit-build
-  - pip install bandit pytest pytest-runner sphinx sphinx-gallery
+  - pip install bandit pytest pytest-runner
 
 before_script:
   - enabled="-DBUILD_PYTHON=OFF -DBUILD_MEX=OFF"
diff --git a/requirements-doc.txt b/requirements-doc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..003b5d3de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/requirements-doc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+sphinx
+sphinx-gallery
+# manually grab pillow, since sphinx-gallery does not want
+# to specify their dependencies
+# https://github.com/sphinx-gallery/sphinx-gallery/issues/192
+pillow
+matplotlib
diff --git a/requirements-readthedocs.txt b/requirements-readthedocs.txt
index dc0878fa3..fdddcbdc6 100644
--- a/requirements-readthedocs.txt
+++ b/requirements-readthedocs.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 segyio
 sphinx-gallery
+matplotlib