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Lot Essay
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Vuillard catalogue raisonné being prepared by Antoine Salomon and being published by the Wildenstein Institute.
The start of the twentieth century marked a turning point in Vuillard's life and art. With the death of Mallarmé and the disbandment of the Nabi group, the dark, occluded interiors of the 1890s gave way to pictures which are brighter in palette and lighter in tone. The spatial ambiguities and sense of confinement which characterized the Nabi works were replaced by a greater openness and a heightened attention to the details of material objects. At the same time, the Bernheim brothers officially became Vuillard's dealers, and the artist began to encounter more fashionable patrons and more opulent homes.
From the poetic tensions that so mark the Mallarméan years, 1893 to about 1900, he moves into a more relaxed, ostensibly less melancholy mood. His pictures reflect his new connections with the fashionable world as opposed to the old life of café discussion, literary inspiration and the close, germinal atmosphere of his own private existence at home... The reduced tension is often charming. His looser brushwork and more obvious color arrangements often result in a delightful, even gay, picture which is far removed from the...brooding harmonies of many of the earlier, small panels" (A.C. Ritchie, Edouard Vuillard, New York, 1954, p. 24).
At about this time, Signac noted the transformation in Vuillard's handling of color:
[Vuillard's] deftly noted interiors have great charm. He has a marvelous understanding of the timbre of things. They're the work of a fine painter... The contrast of tone, the skillfully achieved chiaroscuro-- these balance a scheme of color which...is always unusual and delicate" (quoted in J. Rewald, "Diaries of Paul Signac," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1952).
The present picture is a fine example of the interiors and still-lifes which formed the mainstay of Vuillard's artistic output during these years. Casually arranged on a wooden table or sideboard are a small vase of flowers and a stack of books. The background is comprised of an ornately patterned wallpaper, featuring pale pink blossoms and blue leaves on a taupe ground flecked with gold. The juxtaposition of the flowers in the vase with those in the wallpaper acts as a commentary upon the nature of image-making. The bouquet in the vase has begun to wilt, a few dried leaves scattering across the tabletop, while the flowers in the background remain impossibly in permanent bloom; the non-naturalistic blue of the foliage in the wallpaper similarly points to the artifice inherent in representation. At the same time, the pink flower at the far left of the canvas seems to edge out of the wallpaper and into the space of the still-life, its petals brushing against the book in the foreground, as if to suggest the permeability of the boundary between art and life. The object atop the pile of books, possibly a fragment from a plaster cast, may also refer to the practice of art-making. The angle of the tabletop lends a subtle dynamism to the picture's composition, leading the viewer's eye into the image; the bright, varied palette and painterly impasto heighten the image's appeal.
The start of the twentieth century marked a turning point in Vuillard's life and art. With the death of Mallarmé and the disbandment of the Nabi group, the dark, occluded interiors of the 1890s gave way to pictures which are brighter in palette and lighter in tone. The spatial ambiguities and sense of confinement which characterized the Nabi works were replaced by a greater openness and a heightened attention to the details of material objects. At the same time, the Bernheim brothers officially became Vuillard's dealers, and the artist began to encounter more fashionable patrons and more opulent homes.
From the poetic tensions that so mark the Mallarméan years, 1893 to about 1900, he moves into a more relaxed, ostensibly less melancholy mood. His pictures reflect his new connections with the fashionable world as opposed to the old life of café discussion, literary inspiration and the close, germinal atmosphere of his own private existence at home... The reduced tension is often charming. His looser brushwork and more obvious color arrangements often result in a delightful, even gay, picture which is far removed from the...brooding harmonies of many of the earlier, small panels" (A.C. Ritchie, Edouard Vuillard, New York, 1954, p. 24).
At about this time, Signac noted the transformation in Vuillard's handling of color:
[Vuillard's] deftly noted interiors have great charm. He has a marvelous understanding of the timbre of things. They're the work of a fine painter... The contrast of tone, the skillfully achieved chiaroscuro-- these balance a scheme of color which...is always unusual and delicate" (quoted in J. Rewald, "Diaries of Paul Signac," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1952).
The present picture is a fine example of the interiors and still-lifes which formed the mainstay of Vuillard's artistic output during these years. Casually arranged on a wooden table or sideboard are a small vase of flowers and a stack of books. The background is comprised of an ornately patterned wallpaper, featuring pale pink blossoms and blue leaves on a taupe ground flecked with gold. The juxtaposition of the flowers in the vase with those in the wallpaper acts as a commentary upon the nature of image-making. The bouquet in the vase has begun to wilt, a few dried leaves scattering across the tabletop, while the flowers in the background remain impossibly in permanent bloom; the non-naturalistic blue of the foliage in the wallpaper similarly points to the artifice inherent in representation. At the same time, the pink flower at the far left of the canvas seems to edge out of the wallpaper and into the space of the still-life, its petals brushing against the book in the foreground, as if to suggest the permeability of the boundary between art and life. The object atop the pile of books, possibly a fragment from a plaster cast, may also refer to the practice of art-making. The angle of the tabletop lends a subtle dynamism to the picture's composition, leading the viewer's eye into the image; the bright, varied palette and painterly impasto heighten the image's appeal.