Edouard VUILLARD

Though he was a lifelong bachelor and never had any children of his own, Edouard Vuillard delighted in depicting children throughout his career. In his intimate paintings, pastels and drawings of infants and children, Vuillard’s distinct interest in the way in which they perceive and interact with the world around them is always evident. Yet his depictions of children were never sentimental, and he often portrayed them unaware of the viewer, happily engaged in their own activities.

This large pastel is a preparatory study for the composition of a pair of oil paintings by Vuillard of c.1915, formerly with Wildenstein in New York and later in a private collection. The two paintings - which may at one time have made up one single work - each depict half of the composition of the present pastel. Together they make up a decorative frieze-like painting, of nearly identical dimensions to the present sheet, showing the complete arrangement of two children at play among the papers and materials of the artist’s studio. As the composition of the painting has been described, ‘A fair-haired and a dark-haired child seated facing one another, playing, the one on the left with brightly coloured threads of tapestry, the other with modelling clay. In the right half the colours are bright and the child is rendered in pink flesh-tones; in the left half, the colours are more subdued and the child’s flesh is rendered in a cold half-tone. To the right of centre is a jug of anemones on the green ground of a portfolio; on the far right, a group of statuettes.’ Vuillard’s painting shows several differences with the present sheet, however. For example, the empty vase in the centre of the composition is filled with flowers in the painting, while the child at the right has more hair than in the pastel than in the painting. 

A related painting of the same composition, executed in oil on cardboard, is in the collection of the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne. The painting was commissioned from the artist in 1915 by Émile Lévy, the owner of a printing shop, for his offices at 73 rue Claude Bernard in Paris, but after Lévy’s death the following year was purchased from the artist by the Swiss physician Dr. Henri-Auguste Widmer.

As Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval note, ‘The first mention of a commission for a decorative frieze from Émile Lévy appears in the artist’s journal for 5 February 1915: ‘at Émile Lévy’s[,], question [of] decorative art[,] asks me again [for a] small panel.’…The subject was a most unusual one for Vuillard: two babies playing, surrounded by tapestry-works, statuettes and a jug of anemones. The painter was once again influenced by eighteenth-century overdoors depicting putti at play surrounded by plant motifs. Boucher painted several works of this kind, as did Le Moyne…This astonishing, horizontal panel is certainly one of those which posed the greatest difficulties for Vuillard and…fills page after page of his Journal. It was the range of colours that have him the most trouble; he began, therefore, with a grisaille of monochrome greys, returning to it time and time and again and struggling to define an overall harmony for several weeks…The ‘finished’ panel was delivered on 18 September 1915, but Vuillard went on touching it up until the sudden death of his patron on 26 January 1916. Some time after this, Dr. Widmer…offered to acquire the panel for 500 francs. Vuillard accepted his offer but continued touching it up until April 1916, at which time it entered Dr. Widmer’s collection in Switzerland.’ The Lévy-Widmer painting can be seen on the easel in a photograph taken by Vuillard of his studio on the Rue de Calais in Paris in c.1916.

Vuillard produced several preparatory studies for the Lévy commission. A preparatory sketch for the entire composition, executed in pen and ink on papier calque, was on the art market in Germany in 1996, while a large compositional study in distemper appeared at auction in Paris in 1960. Two separate pastel studies for each of the pair of oil paintings are in a private collection, while one for the whole composition is in another private collection. A large pastel sketch for the entire composition was exhibited in Japan in 1979-1980 and is today in a private collection.