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Lot Essay
The nude proved to be a much rarer subject for Vuillard than it was for his contemporaries, and his canvases devoted to women in various states of undress are much fewer in number than Pierre Bonnard's or Edgar Degas' bathtub scenes. It is indeed this rarity, then, that renders Vuillard's nudes especially interesting and particularly complex in their interpretations of the feminine form, and their resulting treatment of female identity.
While other Impressionists relied on their wives or model-mistresses for inspiration and regular access to the female form, Vuillard's seamstress mother is well-known to have been the dominant woman in his life. Indeed, he was "a dedicated bachelor attached above all to his mother, his 'muse' as he called her, with whom he lived until her death in 1928 when he was sixty years old" (S. Preston, Vuillard, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1985, p. 7). Thus the relative dearth of nudes in Vuillard's oeuvre can be attributed to causes both practical--he would have felt uncomfortable bringing models into the home he shared with his mother--and, to some extent, psychological, for he clearly felt tied to the conception of the female as a desexualized maternal caregiver. Andrew Carnduff Ritchie further illuminates Vuillard's dual position toward the possibility of a more sexualized attitude: "Devoutly religious in his youth, he retained throughout his life something of the Jansenist Catholic's respect for the homely Christian virtues of simplicity, sobriety and honesty. Yet he was not a puritan. He enjoyed good living and, while he remained a bachelor all his life, it is rumored that he had several love affairs. But, as became his upbringing, he seems never to have allowed passion of any kind to get out of hand" (in Vuillard, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1954, p. 7.)
Thus, it is wholly appropriate that the subject of the present work is half-clothed, at once exposing her back alluringly and remaining demurely covered from the waist-down. It is additionally meaningful that while she is turned modestly with her back to the viewer, her head tilts encouragingly to profile, seducing the onlooker ever-so-slightly to take in her face as well as what can be seen of her body. The stark frontality of the painting in the canvas's upper right quadrant contrasts with the model's more subtle demi pose, and the intensity of the red form below calls out while she whispers. In presenting here, as Ritchie has observed, "the quiet, ordinary relationships of the animate and the inanimate, the fusion of person and thing until both become one," Vuillard almost reduces his model to decoration, to the same status of objecthood attained by the room's furnishings (ibid., p. 22). Ultimately, however, a hint of urgency slips through in her gesture and forward-turned cheekbone. Just as Vuillard was at once religious yet not a puritan, a bachelor but never out of hand, the present work is both an interior and a nude, simultaneously chaste and suggestive.
While other Impressionists relied on their wives or model-mistresses for inspiration and regular access to the female form, Vuillard's seamstress mother is well-known to have been the dominant woman in his life. Indeed, he was "a dedicated bachelor attached above all to his mother, his 'muse' as he called her, with whom he lived until her death in 1928 when he was sixty years old" (S. Preston, Vuillard, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1985, p. 7). Thus the relative dearth of nudes in Vuillard's oeuvre can be attributed to causes both practical--he would have felt uncomfortable bringing models into the home he shared with his mother--and, to some extent, psychological, for he clearly felt tied to the conception of the female as a desexualized maternal caregiver. Andrew Carnduff Ritchie further illuminates Vuillard's dual position toward the possibility of a more sexualized attitude: "Devoutly religious in his youth, he retained throughout his life something of the Jansenist Catholic's respect for the homely Christian virtues of simplicity, sobriety and honesty. Yet he was not a puritan. He enjoyed good living and, while he remained a bachelor all his life, it is rumored that he had several love affairs. But, as became his upbringing, he seems never to have allowed passion of any kind to get out of hand" (in Vuillard, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1954, p. 7.)
Thus, it is wholly appropriate that the subject of the present work is half-clothed, at once exposing her back alluringly and remaining demurely covered from the waist-down. It is additionally meaningful that while she is turned modestly with her back to the viewer, her head tilts encouragingly to profile, seducing the onlooker ever-so-slightly to take in her face as well as what can be seen of her body. The stark frontality of the painting in the canvas's upper right quadrant contrasts with the model's more subtle demi pose, and the intensity of the red form below calls out while she whispers. In presenting here, as Ritchie has observed, "the quiet, ordinary relationships of the animate and the inanimate, the fusion of person and thing until both become one," Vuillard almost reduces his model to decoration, to the same status of objecthood attained by the room's furnishings (ibid., p. 22). Ultimately, however, a hint of urgency slips through in her gesture and forward-turned cheekbone. Just as Vuillard was at once religious yet not a puritan, a bachelor but never out of hand, the present work is both an interior and a nude, simultaneously chaste and suggestive.