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Lot Essay
In 1925, Jos Hessel, Vuillard's dealer and close friend, purchased Château des Clayes, a 14th century manor house not far from the Palace of Versailles. Vuillard was a regular guest of Hessel and his wife Lucy and would spend the warmer months of the year at the château, with his own room that faced the garden. Jacques Salomon, a friend of the group who often visited the château, recounted "one would often catch sight of Vuillard in a chair on one of the pathways, his box of pastels and his little square of cardboard on his knee..." (J. Salomon, Auprès de Vuillard, Paris, 1953, p. 88).
Kimberly Jones praises the works created by Vuillard at Château des Clayes: "although they may appear unfinished to the casual observer, they are perfect expressions of their time and place, harkening back to the fluid and boldly experimental works he had produced during his stays in Brittany some two decades earlier...The 'illustion of being at home' that was essential to Vuillard's creative process and that he had sought most of his life to attain had ceased to be illusory: it had become reality." (in Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2003, p. 454)
Kimberly Jones praises the works created by Vuillard at Château des Clayes: "although they may appear unfinished to the casual observer, they are perfect expressions of their time and place, harkening back to the fluid and boldly experimental works he had produced during his stays in Brittany some two decades earlier...The 'illustion of being at home' that was essential to Vuillard's creative process and that he had sought most of his life to attain had ceased to be illusory: it had become reality." (in Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2003, p. 454)