Edouard Vuillard

French, 1868 - 1940

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We look slightly down onto a balding, bearded man with pale, peachy skin and wearing a three-piece suit, seated in a wooden armchair behind an L-shaped desk, in this loosely painted vertical portrait. A tabby cat with a white chest sits on his lap. The room around them is packed with piles of papers, books, and paintings hung on scarlet-red walls. The man’s body faces us, and he looks off to our right under dark, bushy, peaked eyebrows. His round head is fringed with gray hair, and he has a full, light gray beard. His gray eyes are bloodshot beneath heavy lids, with dark rings underneath. He has a short nose, and the flesh of his cheeks hangs in loose paunches alongside his nose. Close inspection finds strokes of plum and lavender purple, mint and sage green, and ice blue creating highlights and shadows on this face. His left hand, to our right, hangs loosely over the arm of the chair, while his other hand gently rests around the chest of the small cat that sits on his lap. The man wears a chocolate-brown jacket over a charcoal-gray vest, and a dark bowtie with a white shirt that just shows at his throat and wrists. Reams of pink, yellow, white, green, and gold paper are arrayed on the desk in front of the man, and in tall, uneven piles to his left, with more on a chair against the wall behind him. A small paperweight globe of multicolored glass on a brass base rests on one sheet of paper on the desk. Two small and one large gilt-framed portraits hang on the velvety red wall in the background, and others are reflected in a gilt-framed mirror at the upper right corner of the painting. A white door with four horizontal panels is closed behind the man at the upper left corner. The brushwork in the painting is quick and loose, with touches of contrasting colors throughout. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “E. Vuillard 1912.”
Edouard Vuillard, Théodore Duret, 1912, oil on cardboard on wood, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.70

Théodore Duret

Edouard Vuillard · 1912 · oil on cardboard on wood ·  Accession ID  1963.10.70

A screen made up of five tall, rectangular panels, set side by side and each surrounded by a gold frame, is painted as a single scene showing a tree-lined sidewalk curving around a park in a city. The scene is loosely painted with short, rounded brushstrokes. The top two-thirds to three-quarters of most of the panels are filled with the lime and olive-green leaves of the trees that line the sidewalk and park. In the leftmost panel, the sidewalk and road lead back to a row of caramel-brown building façades. The sidewalk is pale taupe, and the street is painted with dashes of the same taupe against terracotta brown, suggesting cobblestones. Spindly trees are spaced in a row along the sidewalk in round holes covered with smoke-gray metal grates. A black fence, painted with thin, sometimes broken black lines encloses the park beyond, which has a path around plantings and the vivid green lawn. Touches of pink on a sage-green tree to our left in the park suggest flowers. A gray statue on a high plinth is partially lost in the break between the two rightmost panels. Men, women, and children, painted with a few strokes of black, gray, or marine or periwinkle blue, walk along the sidewalk and the garden path, or sit at the base of the fence or on benches spaced along the sidewalk. The women seem to wear long dresses and the men dark clothing and hats. Two carriages are pulled up on the street near a lamp post alongside the sidewalk near the lower left. In the leftmost panel, horse-drawn carriages move along the road leading back to the buildings, and more people seem to be gathered on the sidewalk near the left edge of the panel in the distance. The artist signed the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “E. Vuillard.” The panels of the screen have been set up so the panels rest on a platform or on the floor in a shallow zig-zag pattern, in a room with an off white wall and bisque-brown molding along the floor.
Edouard Vuillard, Place Vintimille, 1911, five-panel screen, distemper on paper laid down on canvas, Gift of Enid A. Haupt, 1998.47.1-5

Place Vintimille

Edouard Vuillard · 1911 · five-panel screen, distemper on paper laid down on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.47.1-5

Edouard Vuillard, Vase of Flowers on a Mantelpiece, c. 1900, oil on cardboard, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.99

Vase of Flowers on a Mantelpiece

Edouard Vuillard · c. 1900 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1970.17.99

Two people, perhaps a woman and man, and a baby sit at a table in a courtyard surrounded by vine-covered walls in this square painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible dabs, dashes, or smudges. The table is to the left of center. The man sits on the far side, to our left, and the woman, who appears to have her brown hair pulled up, sits facing away from us wearing a smoke-gray garment. A child wearing pink and pale blue sits to our right of the woman and seems to raise both arms. The ground is dotted with cream white and fog gray against the brown board on which this was painted. Steps lead up to a building at the back of the courtyard to the left, and the vine-covered wall stretches across the right two-thirds of the background. The artist signed the lower left corner, “E Vuilllard.”
Edouard Vuillard, Repast in a Garden, 1898, oil on cardboard, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.229

Repast in a Garden

Edouard Vuillard · 1898 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1963.10.229

Ambroise Vollard, Edouard Vuillard, Edouard Vuillard, Interior with Pink Wallpaper II (Interieur aux tentures roses II), c. 1896 (published 1899), color lithograph on China paper, Rosenwald Collection, 1950.16.272

Interior with Pink Wallpaper II (Interieur aux tentures roses II)

Ambroise Vollard, Edouard Vuillard, Edouard Vuillard · c. 1896 (published 1899) · color lithograph on China paper ·  Accession ID  1950.16.272

Two pale-skinned women are shown from the waist up behind a counter in an interior space in this nearly square painting. Loosely painted patterns on their clothing, bunches of flowers to our right, and the background to our left create a patchwork of claret red, ivory white, forest green, deep burgundy, and golden yellow. The woman standing closer to us takes up the left half of the composition. She faces our right in profile. Her features are painted with blended strokes so are indistinct. Her auburn hair is pulled up, and her high-collared, garnet-red and white striped shirt has long sleeves with puffy shoulders. She looks down at a red vase of flowers she holds at its base with the hand we see. The second woman stands at the first woman’s far shoulder. She turns her face slightly toward us, and also gazes down at the flowers on the counter. Her high-necked shirt is ruby red. Four wine-red vases in front of the women are filled with dark maroon-red or cream-white flowers, perhaps chrysanthemums, forest-green and tan greenery, and one vivid, tomato-red blossom. A gap between two vases could be another vase either patterned with white and celestial blue or reflecting those colors. A dark red and two white blossoms are in the lower left corner of the composition, next to a long, lidded box with light brown sides and a navy-blue top. A loosely painted form in the upper left corner, over the first woman’s shoulder, could be a figurine or another person. Though the details are vague, there is a suggestion of a face turned leftward. She has blond hair and wears a long, loose marigold-yellow garment. The right arm, to our left, could be raised to shoulder height, and she stands before a crimson background, maybe a curtain. The rest of the background is painted with dots and touches of apple red, maroon, orange, sage green, dark brown, and butter yellow. The artist signed the canvas near the lower right corner, “E. Vuillard.”
Edouard Vuillard, Woman in a Striped Dress, 1895, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.38

Woman in a Striped Dress

Edouard Vuillard · 1895 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.38

Edouard Vuillard, Madame Bonnard, 1895/1900, oil on cardboard, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1995.47.13

Madame Bonnard

Edouard Vuillard · 1895/1900 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1995.47.13

Edouard Vuillard, Breakfast, 1894, oil on cardboard, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.97

Breakfast

Edouard Vuillard · 1894 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1970.17.97

Edouard Vuillard, Woman Sitting by the Fireside, c. 1894, oil on cardboard, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.96

Woman Sitting by the Fireside

Edouard Vuillard · c. 1894 · oil on cardboard ·  Accession ID  1970.17.96

A woman pushes aside a deep golden yellow curtain that fills three-quarters of this nearly square painting. The curtain runs on a rod parallel and close to the top of the canvas, extends off the right edge, and falls behind a bed covered in the same color. The bed is cropped by the bottom and left edges of the painting, and a brown, arched wood footboard almost reaches the right side. The woman stands on the far side of the bed, facing away from us as she pulls at the curtain with her right hand. She wears a navy-blue dress and a brown braid falls down her back. She reveals an area covered in a pink, green, and white floral pattern that seems to match the size of the curtain, at least along the left edge where it is exposed. A round mirror hangs on the floral-patterned area above a red piece of furniture, perhaps a small table or stool. The wall around the patterned area and curtain is painted bone white. A line incised in the paint running from the top left corner of the floral area to the top edge of the canvas suggests a crack in the wall. The paint is loosely applied so brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially in the floral pattern. The artist’s signature is painted in red in the lower left corner: "E. Vuillard."
Edouard Vuillard, The Yellow Curtain, c. 1893, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.95

The Yellow Curtain

Edouard Vuillard · c. 1893 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.95