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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.
Edouard Vuillard is recognized for his signature paintings of intimate interiors. Whether specific portraits or more genre-like scenes, the artist's domestic environments are populated by those he knew. Both his mother and sister, as well as many of his patrons, appear in his work as early as the 1890s, demonstrating the important role that Vuillard's family and friends played in his life and his art. The present painting continues the subject matter of Vuillard's Nabi paintings, but the pictorial space is no longer as forcefully flattened or as highly patterned, with more muted colors characteristic of his paintings from the first decades of the twentieth century. This scene of tender exchange seems to be one between a mother and her daughters, but it includes members of two different families who were significant for Vuillard, both as friends and as patrons. The woman on the bed is Lucy Hessel, and the two girls are Annette and Denise Natanson, daughters of Alfred Natanson, the youngest of the Natanson brothers.
During the 1890s, at the height of his Nabi period, Vuillard received many of his commissions from the Natanson family. Thadee Natanson, owner of La Revue Blanche and Vuillard's best friend and supporter, and his wife Misia were the artist's primary patrons, engaging him for multiple decorative cycles in their homes around Paris. During this period, Misia was one of Vuillard's favored subjects, but after the couple divorced, she played a less prominent role. After 1900, as Belinda Thompson argues, "Her position as favourite model, muse and soulmate was taken up by another strong female figure, Lucy Hessel, wife of the picture dealer Jos Hessel . . ." (B. Thompson, Vuillard, New York, 1988 p. 69). Jos Hessel worked with his uncle and cousins, co-owners of the prominent Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, by which Vuillard was represented. After 1905, when Vuillard painted his first portrait of Lucy Hessel (Private collection, Saint-Louis, Missouri), she and her husband became powerful figures in his life. Vuillard visited them regularly at their apartment on the rue de Rivoli, a treasure trove of modern art that he documented in many of his paintings, and he enjoyed summers with them in Brittany and Normandy. The present painting was probably executed during or just after the summer of 1909, which Vuillard spent at Saint-Jacut in Normandy. As Annette Natanson Vaillant recalls, "Vuillard passed the time painting in one room while her father and Tristan Bernard were collaborating on their play Le Costaude des Epinettes in another" (ibid., p. 97).
Vuillard and Lucy Hessel developed an intimate friendship that lasted more than forty years. She became his social companion and harshest critic, and she was at the artist's bedside when he died in 1940 at the age of 71. An enigmatic note in one of Vuillards journals, probably written by his biographer Claude Roger-Marx, is a testament to the inspirational quality of their relationship: "As for Lucie, guiding light that she is--domination--bewitchment . . . and totally dazzled by her" (quoted in G. Groom, Edouard Vuillard, Painter-Decorator: Poetics and Projects 1892-1912, New Haven and London, 1993, p. 148).
Lucy Hessel appears in numerous paintings, including important
works like the decorative cycle for Prince Emmanuel Bibesco which was
based on snapshots taken during summers in Normandy between 1905 and 1907.
As in the present work, Lucy Hessel and Denise Natanson are depicted together in The Veranda at Loctudy in Brittany, a panel originally installed at the Bernheim-Jeune's Normandy villa at Bois-Lurette (The Josefowitz Collection) and in Sunny Morning, a painting showing the pair in the garden at Les Pavillons, Villerville 1910 (fig. 1). As Thompson has recognized, "In Vuillard's portraits and group portraits, especially those painted from 1909-10 onwards, his attention to details of dress and setting reveals as much about the way his sitters lived as his attention to physiognomy reveals about their character. Just as the dramatis personae in A la Recherche du temps perdu appear and reappear, evolving over a protracted time-span, so in Vuillard's painting the same models are featured again and again: children grow up, marry and leave home, Lucy Hessel's hair turns grey, memories are evoked as one era succeeds another" (B. Thompson, op. cit., p. 110).
(fig.1) Edouard Vuillard, Sunny Morning, 1910, Private collection.
Edouard Vuillard is recognized for his signature paintings of intimate interiors. Whether specific portraits or more genre-like scenes, the artist's domestic environments are populated by those he knew. Both his mother and sister, as well as many of his patrons, appear in his work as early as the 1890s, demonstrating the important role that Vuillard's family and friends played in his life and his art. The present painting continues the subject matter of Vuillard's Nabi paintings, but the pictorial space is no longer as forcefully flattened or as highly patterned, with more muted colors characteristic of his paintings from the first decades of the twentieth century. This scene of tender exchange seems to be one between a mother and her daughters, but it includes members of two different families who were significant for Vuillard, both as friends and as patrons. The woman on the bed is Lucy Hessel, and the two girls are Annette and Denise Natanson, daughters of Alfred Natanson, the youngest of the Natanson brothers.
During the 1890s, at the height of his Nabi period, Vuillard received many of his commissions from the Natanson family. Thadee Natanson, owner of La Revue Blanche and Vuillard's best friend and supporter, and his wife Misia were the artist's primary patrons, engaging him for multiple decorative cycles in their homes around Paris. During this period, Misia was one of Vuillard's favored subjects, but after the couple divorced, she played a less prominent role. After 1900, as Belinda Thompson argues, "Her position as favourite model, muse and soulmate was taken up by another strong female figure, Lucy Hessel, wife of the picture dealer Jos Hessel . . ." (B. Thompson, Vuillard, New York, 1988 p. 69). Jos Hessel worked with his uncle and cousins, co-owners of the prominent Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, by which Vuillard was represented. After 1905, when Vuillard painted his first portrait of Lucy Hessel (Private collection, Saint-Louis, Missouri), she and her husband became powerful figures in his life. Vuillard visited them regularly at their apartment on the rue de Rivoli, a treasure trove of modern art that he documented in many of his paintings, and he enjoyed summers with them in Brittany and Normandy. The present painting was probably executed during or just after the summer of 1909, which Vuillard spent at Saint-Jacut in Normandy. As Annette Natanson Vaillant recalls, "Vuillard passed the time painting in one room while her father and Tristan Bernard were collaborating on their play Le Costaude des Epinettes in another" (ibid., p. 97).
Vuillard and Lucy Hessel developed an intimate friendship that lasted more than forty years. She became his social companion and harshest critic, and she was at the artist's bedside when he died in 1940 at the age of 71. An enigmatic note in one of Vuillards journals, probably written by his biographer Claude Roger-Marx, is a testament to the inspirational quality of their relationship: "As for Lucie, guiding light that she is--domination--bewitchment . . . and totally dazzled by her" (quoted in G. Groom, Edouard Vuillard, Painter-Decorator: Poetics and Projects 1892-1912, New Haven and London, 1993, p. 148).
Lucy Hessel appears in numerous paintings, including important
works like the decorative cycle for Prince Emmanuel Bibesco which was
based on snapshots taken during summers in Normandy between 1905 and 1907.
As in the present work, Lucy Hessel and Denise Natanson are depicted together in The Veranda at Loctudy in Brittany, a panel originally installed at the Bernheim-Jeune's Normandy villa at Bois-Lurette (The Josefowitz Collection) and in Sunny Morning, a painting showing the pair in the garden at Les Pavillons, Villerville 1910 (fig. 1). As Thompson has recognized, "In Vuillard's portraits and group portraits, especially those painted from 1909-10 onwards, his attention to details of dress and setting reveals as much about the way his sitters lived as his attention to physiognomy reveals about their character. Just as the dramatis personae in A la Recherche du temps perdu appear and reappear, evolving over a protracted time-span, so in Vuillard's painting the same models are featured again and again: children grow up, marry and leave home, Lucy Hessel's hair turns grey, memories are evoked as one era succeeds another" (B. Thompson, op. cit., p. 110).
(fig.1) Edouard Vuillard, Sunny Morning, 1910, Private collection.