ÉDOUARD VUILLARD

(1868-1940)

Portrait de Madame Hessel en robe rose accoudée à une table

Footnotes

Provenance
The artist's studio.
Jacques Blot Collection, Paris.
Augusto Lopes Veira de Abreu Collection, Porto.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 4 December 1974, lot 13.
Cyril Segal Collection, Israel (acquired at the above sale).
Evelyn Segal Collection, London.
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature
A. Salomon & G. Cogeval, Vuillard, The Inexhaustible Glance, Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, Vol. II, Paris, 2003, no. VII - 347 (illustrated p. 713).

Depicted here as a young dark-haired woman in a blush pink dress, Madame Hessel was the wife of the artist's agent Jos Hessel. Vuillard first met the dealer and his wife in 1900 whilst visiting Felix Vallotton near Lausanne, and the three quickly became firm friends. From that year onwards the artist would spend every summer with the couple until his death in 1940. Lucy Hessel became Vuillard's friend, lover, model and muse, and the pair grew old together as an apparently acknowledged couple alongside her official marriage. The Hessels, their friends and their homes would feature in many of Vuillard's paintings over the years.

The present work depicts the small salon in the Hessel apartment on the rue de Rivoli, in which the couple would display a constantly rotating exhibition of artwork. Vuillard was apparently such a frequent visitor to their home that the Hessels' butler dubbed him the 'house painter'. Here, the sitter's figure and dress are treated in the same manner as the brushwork to the rugs and pictures on the wall behind, an effect which serves to unify the disparate elements and pull them together onto one plane. By blurring the boundaries between background and foreground, the composition becomes one of colour, light and pattern, and very much looks back to Vuillard's previous involvement with the Nabis.

Vuillard joined the Nabi brotherhood in 1889 and, together with Sérusier, Denis, Bonnard and Ranson, admired the work of Gauguin, whose use of colour and pattern served to create a flat pictorial surface. This emphasis on the physicality of the picture surface can also be linked to Vuillard's dedicated involvement in theatre design, on which he worked intensely at the end of the nineteenth century. Set design allowed him to specialise in the use of distemper which he would apply to backdrops with a broom, allowing him to quickly lay down colours that would at first appear dull, but would dry to a subtle sheen. We see a similar effect in the present work, which is constructed from a variety of short dabs of paint and contrasting scumbled swirls on the board.

Even during his short involvement with the Nabis, Vuillard eschewed his associates' mystical subjects in favour of depicting his everyday world and that of the three women he lived with at the time – his mother, sister Marie and Grandmother Michaud. Lucy Hessel quickly became Vuillard's preoccupation after their first meeting however, and an undated note written in another hand found tucked into Vuillard's journal for 1907-1908 described her influence thus: 'As for Lucie, guiding light that she is – domination – bewitchment...and totally dazzled by her' (G. Groom, Edouard Vuillard, Painter-Decorator, Patrons and Projects, 1892 – 1912, New Haven & London, 1993, p. 148).