Don't have an account yet?

Click here to register »


I am already registered - Login:




Lot 3214* - A207 Impressionist & Modern Art - Friday, 01. December 2023, 04.30 PM

ÉDOUARD VUILLARD

(Cuiseaux 1868–1940 La Baule)
Madame Jean Bloch et ses enfants (première version). 1927–29.
Distemper on canvas.
With signature stamp lower left: E Vuillard.
192.8 × 179.5 cm.


Provenance:
- Collection of Katia Pissarro, Paris.
- With JPL Fine Arts, London.
- Private collection, London, 2002 acquired from the above gallery.
- Private collection, Spain.

Literature:
- Antoine Salomon und Guy Cogeval: Vuillard. Le regard innombrable. Catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, Paris 2003, vol. III, p. 1442, no. XI-261 (ill.).
- Stephen Brown: Edouard Vuillard. A painter and his muses, 1890–1940, New York 2012, p. 58 (ill.).

Vuillard turned early on to the subject of the interior as a place of intimate everyday scenes and a private area of life: a counterpoint to the hectic and rapidly developing public city life at the turn of the century. He admired the interiors of 17th-century Dutch painting. As early as 1888, he made a drawing based on Vermeer's “Spitzenköpplerin”.

The work presented here was created around 1927 and is the first version of a commissioned work that was created in the studio. Vuillard painted on a large, almost square canvas, the family of Jean Bloch, a Jewish real estate agent and art collector who was arrested under the Nazi regime in 1941 and never returned from Auschwitz. In contrast to the earlier Nabi interiors, the figures are no longer captured seemingly at random and virtually merge with the surroundings. They are posed and the mother in particular looks almost shyly into the “camera.” Nevertheless, an intimate domesticity is also depicted here: the mother is reading a book, a girl is playing with a doll, another child seems to be playing with the governess, who is barely visible on the left edge of the picture. As Vuillard himself once said: “Je ne fais pas de portraits, je peins des gens chez eux.” (Chastel, 1946, p. 94).
His interest in craft and interior decoration is also reflected in the carpet, the ornamental pattern of the canapé and the flatness of the red and green fabric in the background.

Another version of this painting has been acquired in spring by the mahJ (Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme) Paris for the museum's own collection.


CHF 60 000 / 80 000 | (€ 61 860 / 82 470)

Sold for CHF 75 000 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.