Edouard Vuillard
Cuiseaux, Saône-et-Loire 1868 - 1940
La Baule near Saint-Nazaire
Les reines-marguerites
Mixed technique
14 1/4 x 16 1/2 in / 36.2 x 41.9 cm
In the 1920s Vuillard rented the Closerie des Genêts at Vaucresson eight miles west of Paris, a prosperous, leafy town with picturesque villas. The Hessels took the Villa Anna next door, later buying the Clos Cézanne. Vuillard was by now one of the most prominent French portraitists of his day, embedded in a circle of artists, intellectuals and theatre folk. Apart from portrait commissions, he continued to delight in depicting the cluttered, cosy bourgeois interiors, often with family members, that had intrigued him from his youth. In the early 1920s he painted a number of views of rooms in the Closerie des Genêts seen from oblique angles, the play of walls and vistas to further rooms and distant windows showing an interest in complex depths of field. Vuillard’s elderly, widowed mother is a tranquil presence in many of these works, a black-clad, dignified matriarch who is rarely shown idle: knitting, writing or sewing. Equally important to the poise of such works are the modest vases of flowers on mantelpieces or the dining room table.
