Lot Essay
"This magical scene sums up a whole chapter, both aesthetic and personal, in Vuillard's ardent youth", writes Stuart Preston. "This interior, of subdued splendor, represents the salon of Misia Natanson in the rue St. Florentin. It is a room of charming proportions where the lamps, shedding a dim but genial light, play on the vaguely established figures, the bursts of greenery, the rectangles of soft color, and the rich tapestry. The whole scene is gentle, melancholy, and sweet, full of revelations and of dignified intervals." (Vuillard, London, 1985, p. 82).
This picture is the climax of the 'intimiste' pictures Vuillard painted during the 1890s and for which he is justly celebrated. Along with Bonnard, Roussel, Denis and Vallotton, Vuillard was a founder member of the Nabis group of artists. The Nabis group was championed by, and became closely associated with, La Revue Blanche, a literary and artistic magazine that flourished during the 1890s and became a magnet for the most talented artists and authors of the day. It was founded by the brothers Thadée, Alfred and Alexandre Natanson in 1889 and published in Paris between 1891 and 1903. John Russell has called it "The best periodical of its kind that has ever been published." The list of contributors, writers, musicians and artists is astounding: André Gide, Debussy, Tristan Bernard, Mallarmé, Jarry, Apollinaire, Romain Coolus, Verlaine, Proust, Maeterlinck, Gorki, Toulouse-Lautrec, Munch, Bonnard, Vuillard and the Nabis circle. Through the Natansons, Vuillard became closely associated with these authors and artists and their thinking; "the aesthetic of La Revue Blanche pervades his pictures, none more so than Intérieur aux trois Lampes".
Vuillard's relationship with Thadée and his wife Misia Natanson was the most important influence on his art during the 1890s. As well as providing contact with the foremost literary and artistic men of the day, it brought him into a worldly social milieu which was to provide the subject matter of many of his pictures. Much has been written and speculated about Vuillard's relationship with the flamboyant Misia Natanson. The daughter of a Polish sculptor, Cyprien Godebski, she married Thadée Natanson in 1893. She had tremendous vivacity and charm, as well as being a remarkably gifted pianist. She was the free spirit around whom the circle of La Revue Blanche danced. After 1895, when he painted a series of decorative panels for Thadée and Misia, Vuillard virtually lived chez the Natansons, at one time dining daily at their rue St. Florentin house. It was to Misia that Vuillard was devoted and these feelings were reciprocated: "Among all the men she knew, Vuillard had a special place in her affections. 'Our understanding was an unspoken one', he wrote to her many years later, 'but none the less precious for that'. According to her account, Vuillard was the loyal friend who kept her company in Vienna when her marriage to Thadée was being broken up by a demoniacal millionaire [Joseph Edwards] and, again according to her account, it was Vuillard who, without a word spoken or a gesture made, offered her in a beetroot field by the Yonne, 'The most beautiful declaration of love ever made to me'" (J. Russell, Edouard Vuillard 1868-1940, London, 1971, p. 55).
It is the Symbolist ethic which motivated the contributors and artists of La Revue Blanche as they congregated in the salon of Misia Natanson, that is portrayed in the present picture. The association between music and painting was at the heart of the Symbolist belief in synaesthesia. It was believed that one form of art could evoke the spirit of another. In his Journal for 1894 Vuillard wrote; "There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colours, of lights, of shadows etc. It is this that one calls the music of painting." Elizabeth Wynne Easton remarks, "Vuillard's works, especially his paintings of Misia, illustrate the correspondence between such design elements as the arabesque and the principle of what he called 'musicality' - an 'intrinsic beauty' independent of 'definite emotion'. In Vuillard's images of Misia in her salon, music is not physically depicted but psychologically evoked in the Symbolist manner, and all parts of the canvas work together to create a sense of harmony" (The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, London, 1989, p. 105).
Le Salon aux trois Lampes has this mysterious spirit of musicality in its delicate harmonies of colour, texture, design and composition. The very imprecision that Vuillard has employed in rendering such a diverse and richly charged scene illustrates exactly Mallarmé's thesis, "To suggest there is the dream. It is the perfect use of this mystery which constitutes the symbol; to evoke an image little by little in order to show a state of soul." Vuillard was the spectator who partook but never intruded, preferring to capture the mood from a distance." The interior was for Vuillard a personal metaphor for himself - an inner space, self-controlled and cut off from the world, but rife with possibilities. In Vuillard's claustrophobic interiors of the 1890s, objects as well as gestures seem endowed with an inner life, and we feel the relentless psychological scrutiny of the painter...But it was family life, confined within these ever-present walls, that aroused Vuillard's most powerful emotions. His interiors function as theaters within which the family enacted the consuming drama of everyday experience." (Easton, op. cit., p. 4).
The three figures in Le Salon aux Trois Lampes are Misia and Thadée Natanson and their dinner guest, the playwright and frequent contributor to La Revue Blanche, Romain Coolus. Coolus reclines pensively in the bentwood Thonet rocking chair at the centre of the composition. Misia sits at the left, her head bent forward over a piece of embroidery, while Thadée lounges at the right evidently reading, perhaps some Revue Blanche page proofs! The three lamps, placed at intervals around the room, glow in their coloured shades and fitfully illuminate the three figures and the splendour of the room which formed the stage for many of Vuillard's pictures of the period. Most immediately remarkable are the rich colours and patterns of the decor. The distinctive wallpaper, with its serpentine pattern of green leaves and golden flowers, is probably a French adaption of a William Morris design. On the wall at the right is a contrasting texture provided by the medieval hanging tapestry, similar to the ones in the Musée Cluny that Vuillard loved to study. The large green fronds of the plant add to this luxuriant tone. Further contrasts are provided by the ornaments on the tables, the shawl on the piano and the mirror, the oriental carpets and the jug and tablecloth glimpsed on the hall table outside the door. Above all, it is the domain of Misia Natanson whose vitality and decorative variations had entranced Vuillard. Misia's niece, Annette Vaillant was later to recall; "Misia, wicked princess but refined, who decorated the walls of her houses in Villeneuve, in Valvins and even in Paris with floral printed chintz, and set a style to be followed. Against the background of these naive tapestries, she stands, like a siren, a muse, the Queen of the Nabis. The rocking chair, which ended in our hall, forgotten relic of the divorce, later rocked many of our children's dreams. Vuillard painted my uncle sitting on it, reading his newspaper, sketched it with Romain Coolus on it, in the middle of the 'Thadée's' drawing room in the rue Saint Florentin, the drawing room with the oil lamps and their yellow shades, the bright phoenix, the grand piano, the rustic potteries placed on the mantlepiece by Misia ("Some Memories of Vuillard", in Vuillard et son Kodak, Lefevre Gallery, London, n.d., p. 20).
To be included in the forthcoming Vuillard catalogue raisonné being prepared by Antoine Salomon and Annette Leduc Beaulieu from the records and under the responsibility of Antoine Salomon.
We are grateful to Antoine Salomon for information concerning the extensive literature and exhibition history of this picture.
This picture is the climax of the 'intimiste' pictures Vuillard painted during the 1890s and for which he is justly celebrated. Along with Bonnard, Roussel, Denis and Vallotton, Vuillard was a founder member of the Nabis group of artists. The Nabis group was championed by, and became closely associated with, La Revue Blanche, a literary and artistic magazine that flourished during the 1890s and became a magnet for the most talented artists and authors of the day. It was founded by the brothers Thadée, Alfred and Alexandre Natanson in 1889 and published in Paris between 1891 and 1903. John Russell has called it "The best periodical of its kind that has ever been published." The list of contributors, writers, musicians and artists is astounding: André Gide, Debussy, Tristan Bernard, Mallarmé, Jarry, Apollinaire, Romain Coolus, Verlaine, Proust, Maeterlinck, Gorki, Toulouse-Lautrec, Munch, Bonnard, Vuillard and the Nabis circle. Through the Natansons, Vuillard became closely associated with these authors and artists and their thinking; "the aesthetic of La Revue Blanche pervades his pictures, none more so than Intérieur aux trois Lampes".
Vuillard's relationship with Thadée and his wife Misia Natanson was the most important influence on his art during the 1890s. As well as providing contact with the foremost literary and artistic men of the day, it brought him into a worldly social milieu which was to provide the subject matter of many of his pictures. Much has been written and speculated about Vuillard's relationship with the flamboyant Misia Natanson. The daughter of a Polish sculptor, Cyprien Godebski, she married Thadée Natanson in 1893. She had tremendous vivacity and charm, as well as being a remarkably gifted pianist. She was the free spirit around whom the circle of La Revue Blanche danced. After 1895, when he painted a series of decorative panels for Thadée and Misia, Vuillard virtually lived chez the Natansons, at one time dining daily at their rue St. Florentin house. It was to Misia that Vuillard was devoted and these feelings were reciprocated: "Among all the men she knew, Vuillard had a special place in her affections. 'Our understanding was an unspoken one', he wrote to her many years later, 'but none the less precious for that'. According to her account, Vuillard was the loyal friend who kept her company in Vienna when her marriage to Thadée was being broken up by a demoniacal millionaire [Joseph Edwards] and, again according to her account, it was Vuillard who, without a word spoken or a gesture made, offered her in a beetroot field by the Yonne, 'The most beautiful declaration of love ever made to me'" (J. Russell, Edouard Vuillard 1868-1940, London, 1971, p. 55).
It is the Symbolist ethic which motivated the contributors and artists of La Revue Blanche as they congregated in the salon of Misia Natanson, that is portrayed in the present picture. The association between music and painting was at the heart of the Symbolist belief in synaesthesia. It was believed that one form of art could evoke the spirit of another. In his Journal for 1894 Vuillard wrote; "There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colours, of lights, of shadows etc. It is this that one calls the music of painting." Elizabeth Wynne Easton remarks, "Vuillard's works, especially his paintings of Misia, illustrate the correspondence between such design elements as the arabesque and the principle of what he called 'musicality' - an 'intrinsic beauty' independent of 'definite emotion'. In Vuillard's images of Misia in her salon, music is not physically depicted but psychologically evoked in the Symbolist manner, and all parts of the canvas work together to create a sense of harmony" (The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, London, 1989, p. 105).
Le Salon aux trois Lampes has this mysterious spirit of musicality in its delicate harmonies of colour, texture, design and composition. The very imprecision that Vuillard has employed in rendering such a diverse and richly charged scene illustrates exactly Mallarmé's thesis, "To suggest there is the dream. It is the perfect use of this mystery which constitutes the symbol; to evoke an image little by little in order to show a state of soul." Vuillard was the spectator who partook but never intruded, preferring to capture the mood from a distance." The interior was for Vuillard a personal metaphor for himself - an inner space, self-controlled and cut off from the world, but rife with possibilities. In Vuillard's claustrophobic interiors of the 1890s, objects as well as gestures seem endowed with an inner life, and we feel the relentless psychological scrutiny of the painter...But it was family life, confined within these ever-present walls, that aroused Vuillard's most powerful emotions. His interiors function as theaters within which the family enacted the consuming drama of everyday experience." (Easton, op. cit., p. 4).
The three figures in Le Salon aux Trois Lampes are Misia and Thadée Natanson and their dinner guest, the playwright and frequent contributor to La Revue Blanche, Romain Coolus. Coolus reclines pensively in the bentwood Thonet rocking chair at the centre of the composition. Misia sits at the left, her head bent forward over a piece of embroidery, while Thadée lounges at the right evidently reading, perhaps some Revue Blanche page proofs! The three lamps, placed at intervals around the room, glow in their coloured shades and fitfully illuminate the three figures and the splendour of the room which formed the stage for many of Vuillard's pictures of the period. Most immediately remarkable are the rich colours and patterns of the decor. The distinctive wallpaper, with its serpentine pattern of green leaves and golden flowers, is probably a French adaption of a William Morris design. On the wall at the right is a contrasting texture provided by the medieval hanging tapestry, similar to the ones in the Musée Cluny that Vuillard loved to study. The large green fronds of the plant add to this luxuriant tone. Further contrasts are provided by the ornaments on the tables, the shawl on the piano and the mirror, the oriental carpets and the jug and tablecloth glimpsed on the hall table outside the door. Above all, it is the domain of Misia Natanson whose vitality and decorative variations had entranced Vuillard. Misia's niece, Annette Vaillant was later to recall; "Misia, wicked princess but refined, who decorated the walls of her houses in Villeneuve, in Valvins and even in Paris with floral printed chintz, and set a style to be followed. Against the background of these naive tapestries, she stands, like a siren, a muse, the Queen of the Nabis. The rocking chair, which ended in our hall, forgotten relic of the divorce, later rocked many of our children's dreams. Vuillard painted my uncle sitting on it, reading his newspaper, sketched it with Romain Coolus on it, in the middle of the 'Thadée's' drawing room in the rue Saint Florentin, the drawing room with the oil lamps and their yellow shades, the bright phoenix, the grand piano, the rustic potteries placed on the mantlepiece by Misia ("Some Memories of Vuillard", in Vuillard et son Kodak, Lefevre Gallery, London, n.d., p. 20).
To be included in the forthcoming Vuillard catalogue raisonné being prepared by Antoine Salomon and Annette Leduc Beaulieu from the records and under the responsibility of Antoine Salomon.
We are grateful to Antoine Salomon for information concerning the extensive literature and exhibition history of this picture.