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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

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 86

Medium

oil on cardboard on wood

Dimensions

overall: 95.2 x 74.8 cm (37 1/2 x 29 7/16 in.)

framed: 126 x 106 cm (49 5/8 x 41 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1963.10.70

Artists / Makers

Edouard Vuillard (artist) French, 1868 - 1940

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower left: E. Vuillard / 1912

Provenance

The sitter, Théodore Duret [1838-1937], Paris; (his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 1 March 1928, no.47); (Jos Hessel, Paris); sold to the Musée National des Beaux-Arts, Algiers, who shortly returned it to Hessel; sold 19 December 1928 to (Alex Reid & Lefèvre, London); sold 11 February 1929 to Étienne Bignou, Paris; sold 22 November 1929 to Chester Dale [1882-1962], New York;[2] bequest 1963 to NGA.

[1] Reid & Lefèvre, Paintings Sold, sheet no. 145, #278/28 gives acquisition source and sale information (Lefèvre archives, Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, Tate Britain, London, TGA 2002/11, Box 283; copy in NGA curatorial files).

[2] Chester Dale papers in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Bignou, Etienne
Dale, Chester
Hessel, Jos
Reid & Lefèvre, Ltd, Alex

Exhibition History

1930: Cent ans de peinture française, Galeries Georges Petit, 1930, no. 64, repro., as Théodore Duret dans son cabinet de travail.

1930: Painting in Paris from American Collections, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1930, no. 99, repro.

1943: Twentieth Century Portraits, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1943, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1965: The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

2003: Edouard Vuillard, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2003-2004, no. 304, repro., as Théodore Duret in His Study (shown only in Washington).

2010: From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 2010-January 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1944: Jewell, Edward Alden. French Impressionists and their Contemporaries Represented in American Collections. New York, 1944: repro. 191.

1963: MacNeil, Neil. "Chester Dale: Collector." McCalls (November 1963): 122, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 138.

1965: Twentieth Century French Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965 (rev. ed.): 93, repro.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:504, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 126, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 370, repro.

1979: Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979: 126, pl. 114.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 580, no. 889, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 430, repro.

2003: Salomon, Antoine, and Guy Cogeval. Vuillard, The Inexhaustible Glance: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. 3 vols. Milan and Paris, 2003: 2:no. IX-199, repro., as Théodore Duret in His Study.