
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
- Artist: Édouard Vuillard (French, Cuiseaux 1868–1940 La Baule)
- Date: 1920; reworked 1926, 1935, 1936
- Medium: Distemper on canvas
- Dimensions: 59 1/2 x 43 5/8 in. (151.1 x 110.8 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1952
For More Information
Timelines
MetPublications
- Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence
- Painters in Paris, 1895–1950
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 8, Modern Europe
- Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 3, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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).
Thanks for Visiting 🙂
~Sunnyside
Magnificent, thanks for the introduction and paintings themselves!
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You are kind to comment – thank you for visiting! 🙂
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I’m laughing at myself! Now I see her after several minutes of befuddled scrutiny. This beautiful painting could be the basis of a “Where’s Lucy?” game! 🙂 The word “camouflaged” used in the commentary is fitting.
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LOL! I know how you feel — I didn’t find the second woman for a long time….:-)
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