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Lot Essay
Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval will include this painting in their forthcoming Vuillard catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
By 1907 Vuillard had grown tired of his residence on the rue de la Tour in the haute-bourgeois Passy quarter in Paris. Early in 1908 he and his mother moved to 26, rue de Calais in the more modest Batignolles district. He remained there for the next twenty years. He and Mme Vuillard lived at first in an apartment on the fourth floor, and in October 1908 they moved downstairs to the second story. The apartments overlooked the place Vintimille (now the place Adolphe-Max) with its oval-shaped park, Le Square Berlioz, named in 1905 for the 19th century composer who had resided at 4, rue de Calais. A statue of Berlioz was located in the square and figures in numerous studies that Vuillard drew and painted of the park, as well as the famous five panel screen La place Vintimille he executed for his American friend Marguerite Chapin in 1911 (coll. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). The Berlioz monument may be seen, mostly cropped, at the extreme right edge of the present picture.
It may appear ironic that Vuillard would chose to live in a decidely middle class neighborhood at a time when his circle of friends and his patrons were no longer Bohemians of limited means as they had been in the 1890s, but instead were well-to-do members of the leisured upper class. However, Vuillard enjoyed the livelier streets and more varied architecture of the Batignolles neighborhood and was fond of observing people of varied backgrounds who frequented the park. In the present painting, a young mother or nanny sits on the bench with one young child beside her, as two others play on the ground in front of her. In contrast to the colored outfits of the children, the woman (as well as several other adults seated on the long bench in the background) wears the drab everyday clothing of the lower middle class. These are the types of people Vuillard grew up among and who worked for his mother in her small corset-making business. The artist would never completely sever the emotional ties to his humble, hard-working family background.
The present painting was executed in peinture à la colle, a technique in which ground pigments are mixed with glue that is kept heated in small pots, drying matte and slightly lighter in tone once it is applied to the support and cools. Vuillard had learned the technique while painting theater sets and decorative panels in the 1890s, and from around 1907 he began to use it extensively and in preference to oils when painting on paper, board and canvas in smaller easel formats. The technique permits quick reworking and overpainting, and may be applied quite thickly in layers, creating a lively, encrusted surface of subtle half tones.
By 1907 Vuillard had grown tired of his residence on the rue de la Tour in the haute-bourgeois Passy quarter in Paris. Early in 1908 he and his mother moved to 26, rue de Calais in the more modest Batignolles district. He remained there for the next twenty years. He and Mme Vuillard lived at first in an apartment on the fourth floor, and in October 1908 they moved downstairs to the second story. The apartments overlooked the place Vintimille (now the place Adolphe-Max) with its oval-shaped park, Le Square Berlioz, named in 1905 for the 19th century composer who had resided at 4, rue de Calais. A statue of Berlioz was located in the square and figures in numerous studies that Vuillard drew and painted of the park, as well as the famous five panel screen La place Vintimille he executed for his American friend Marguerite Chapin in 1911 (coll. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). The Berlioz monument may be seen, mostly cropped, at the extreme right edge of the present picture.
It may appear ironic that Vuillard would chose to live in a decidely middle class neighborhood at a time when his circle of friends and his patrons were no longer Bohemians of limited means as they had been in the 1890s, but instead were well-to-do members of the leisured upper class. However, Vuillard enjoyed the livelier streets and more varied architecture of the Batignolles neighborhood and was fond of observing people of varied backgrounds who frequented the park. In the present painting, a young mother or nanny sits on the bench with one young child beside her, as two others play on the ground in front of her. In contrast to the colored outfits of the children, the woman (as well as several other adults seated on the long bench in the background) wears the drab everyday clothing of the lower middle class. These are the types of people Vuillard grew up among and who worked for his mother in her small corset-making business. The artist would never completely sever the emotional ties to his humble, hard-working family background.
The present painting was executed in peinture à la colle, a technique in which ground pigments are mixed with glue that is kept heated in small pots, drying matte and slightly lighter in tone once it is applied to the support and cools. Vuillard had learned the technique while painting theater sets and decorative panels in the 1890s, and from around 1907 he began to use it extensively and in preference to oils when painting on paper, board and canvas in smaller easel formats. The technique permits quick reworking and overpainting, and may be applied quite thickly in layers, creating a lively, encrusted surface of subtle half tones.