According to Colta Ives (2018), “The enormous appeal of gardens in the early twentieth century, especially to women of means, found frequent expression in the work of Édouard Vuillard, ” (C. Ives, p. 94).

This painting was begun in 1920 at Vaucresson, a residential suburb west of Paris, where Vuillard’s friends Lucy and Josse (Jos) Hessel had recently purchased the house depicted in the background. Jos, a partner in the art firm of Bernheim-Jeune, had become Vuillard’s dealer in 1912. His wife was one of Vuillard’s great loves; their relationship spanned more than three decades, until the artist’s death in 1940. The woman in a housedress standing at right is Lucy’s cousin Marcelle Aron. Lucy kneels across from her, at left, camouflaged by one of the large rosebushes that serve as a decorative screen in the foreground. Quote from TheMet

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Garden at Vaucresson

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Timelines

• France, 1900 A.D.-present

Essays

• Japonisme
• The Nabis and Decorative Painting

MetPublications

Sources:

• Ives, Colta. Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018, p 94, https://books.google.com/books?id=wJJNDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed Oct 9, 2018).
• TheMet, “Garden at Vaucresson, 1923,” by Édouard Vuillard, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488693, (accessed Oct 9, 2018).

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