Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940

May 4, 2012 - September 23, 2012

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Edouard Vuillard's circlesPatrons & Gallerists (9)Muses & Friends (11)Artists (7)

Marcelle Aron

Muses & Friends

About

Marcelle Aron, born Marcelle Reiss, appears in a number of works by Vuillard. She was Lucy Hessel’s first cousin and close friend. Her husband was the writer Tristan Bernard.

Tristan Bernard

Writer

Tristan Bernard

Muses & Friends

Artists

About

Tristan Bernard (1866–1947) was a popular novelist and playwright, a member of the circle of La Revue Blanche. He was born Paul Bernard in Besançon; Tristan was a pseudonym. He met Vuillard as a student at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. After a brief career in business he turned to writing; his first work was published in La Revue Blanche in 1894, and he went on to compose numerous witty comedies and satires. His second wife was Marcelle Aron. During World War II he was interned at the Drancy deportation camp, but was released in 1943 and returned to Paris.

Gaston Bernheim

Gallerist

Gaston Bernheim

Patrons & Gallerists

About

Gaston (1870–1953) Bernheim was the grandson of Joseph Bernheim, a manufacturer of artists’ paints in Besançon. In 1863 Joseph’s son Alexander (1839–1915) opened the Galerie Bernheim in Paris, exhibiting painters of the Barbizon school and, beginning in 1874, the first Impressionists. In 1906 Gaston, with his brother Josse, founded a branch of the gallery, calling it Bernheim-Jeune to distinguish it from their father’s establishment. It became a center of avant-garde painting, especially Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Vuillard began show regularly there in 1900, exhibiting with Bernheim-Jeune from 1900 to 1913. Gaston married Suzanne Adler, and late in life took the surname Bernheim de Villers.

Josse (Joseph) Bernheim

Gallerist

Josse (Joseph) Bernheim

Patrons & Gallerists

About

Josse Bernheim (1870–1941) and his brother Gaston assisted in mounting the first exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh in Paris, held at their father’s gallery, Galerie Bernheim, in 1901. Five years later, Josse and Gaston founded the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, which became a center of avant-garde painting. The gallery showed Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, including Renoir, Monet, Bonnard, Cézanne, Seurat, van Dongen, Matisse, Rousseau, Dufy, Vlaminck, Modigliani, and Utrillo. From 1900 to 1913 Edouard Vuillard exhibited there regularly. Josse married Mathilde Adler, sister of Suzanne Adler, Gaston’s wife. During World War II Josse took the surname Dauberville, which his sons retained.

Pierre Bonnard

Artist

Pierre Bonnard

Muses & Friends

Artists

About

The Nabi painter and printmaker Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) was a close friend of Vuillard, and with him is perhaps the best-known artist of the group, renowned as a master of color and light.

Jos Hessel

Gallerist

Jos Hessel

Patrons & Gallerists

Muses & Friends

About

Jos Hessel (1859–1942) was a Belgian-born Frenchman, cousin of Josse and Gaston Bernheim. He worked as a journalist for Le Temps and as an art dealer, first in partnership with the Bernheims, managing the gallery Bernheim-Jeune for a time, and later independently. In the latter part of Vuillard’s career he was the painter’s principal agent and dealer, as well as a close friend. In the first decades of the twentieth century he and his wife, Lucy, formed the center of an active social and cultural circle in Paris and at their various country homes in northern France. In 1940, when France fell to the Germans, Jos and his wife fled Paris, first to Brittany, later to Cannes.

Lucy Hessel

Muse

Lucy Hessel

Muses & Friends

Patrons & Gallerists

About

Lucy Hessel (d. 1941), born Lucy (or Lucie) Reiss, was the doyenne of a lively circle of artists and writers. Vuillard met her in 1895 and they probably became lovers around 1902; their relationship lasted for the next forty years. Lucy was Vuillard’s most frequent model. When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, the Hessels and Vuillard fled the city together, and they were with the artist when he died.

Lulu (Lucie) Hessel

Muse

Lulu (Lucie) Hessel

Muses & Friends

About

Lulu Grandjean-Hessel (1921–2004) was born Lucie Grandjean, the child of a French soldier injured in World War I who was a friend of the Hessel family. After her father’s death, Jos and Lucy Hessel adopted her. After 1930 she appears frequently in Vuillard’s paintings and occasionally served as a model for his decorative scenes—once as the fairy Titania, and once in the guise of a muse. In 1940 Lulu married Jacques Arpels, scion of the family of jewelers who owned the firm of Van Cleef & Arpels. They later divorced, and she remarried.

Henri Kapferer

Collector

Henri Kapferer

Patrons & Gallerists

About

Henri Kapferer, like his brother Marcel, was a successful businessmen and passionate art patron. Originally an aeronautics engineer, he designed airplanes and founded the Compagnie Generale Transaérienne, which later became Air France. Henri and Marcel commissioned and collected a number of Vuillard’s works.

Marcel Kapferer

Collector

Marcel Kapferer

Patrons & Gallerists

About

A successful businessman, passionate art patron, and collector, Marcel went into the oil business and became director of the French branch of Royal Dutch Shell. His wife, Simone, was the daughter of Jules Aron, originally the manager of the Rothschild Bank’s Russian enterprises and later a banker in Paris. She and her husband left Paris in June 1940; they survived the war in Cannes.

Misia Natanson

Muse

Misia Natanson

Patrons & Gallerists

Muses & Friends

About

Marie-Sophie-Olga-Zenaïde Godebska (1872–1950), called Misia, was born in St. Petersburg, Rus¬sia, the daughter of a celebrated Polish sculptor. When she was a child her family moved to Belgium, then to Paris. A talented pianist, she studied with Gabriel Fauré in her youth. She married the publisher and art critic Thadée Natanson in 1893. Her glittering salon attracted most of the creative spirits of Paris—the poets Verlaine, Valéry, and Mallarmé; the writers Gide and Colette; the com¬posers Debussy and Ravel; theater luminaries such as Caruso and Diaghilev. In later years her friends were to include Picasso, Laurencin, Cocteau, and the couturier Coco Chanel. Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vallotton, Bonnard, and Vuillard all painted her. In 1904 Misia and Thadée divorced. She married twice more: first Alfred Edwards, a wealthy American businessman, then the Spanish painter José Sert.

Thadée Natanson

Patron

Thadée Natanson

Artists

Patrons & Gallerists

Muses & Friends

About

Thadée Natanson (1868–1951) was a lawyer, businessman, journalist, collector, and art critic, son of a Polish banker who emigrated to Paris in 1878. He is best known as the cofounder, with his brothers Alexandre and Alfred, of the avant-garde cultural magazine La Revue Blanche, where he served as editor from its inception in 1889. There, he supported experimental theater and was among the first to champion the Nabi painters. He met Vuillard in 1891 and sponsored the painter’s first show, at the offices of the Revue. In 1893 he married the pianist Misia Godebska. Under his editorship the Revue became a voice of the young, progressive intelligentsia of Paris and was a leader in the effort to clear the name of the maligned Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus. Its circle included the Nabis, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, the authors Octave Mirbeau, Marcel Proust, and Alfred Jarry, and the painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Félix Vallotton. The Revue closed in 1901 and Thadée took a job running a coal mine in Hungary. In 1904 he and Misia divorced. He and Vuillard remained lifelong friends. He was able to avoid arrest during the Occupation and died in France.

Marcel Proust

Novelist, Critic

Marcel Proust

Artists

About

Proust (1871–1922), the great novelist and critic of modern art at the turn of the twentieth century, moved in literary and artistic circles that overlapped with those of Vuillard. The two men knew each other, though they were not close, and met at least once, at Cabourg in the summer of 1907. Proust recalled his visit to the painter in a letter to his lover, Reynaldo Hahn (whom Vuillard painted in 1932–33): Vuillard “wore a blue workshirt,” he noted, writing a bit mockingly of the painter’s speaking style: “He says, with intensity, ‘A chap like Giotto, don’t you know, or a chap like Titian, don’t you know, knew just as much as Monet; or a chap like Raphael . . . ,’ etc. He says ‘chap’ once every twenty seconds. But he is a rare fellow.” Vuillard is thought by some to be the primary model for Proust’s character Elstir, the painter. Proust and Vuillard shared a certain sensibility, an approach to art that relied on nuance, detail, precise observation, and implied correspondences to depict real and imagined worlds.

Ker-Xavier Roussel

Artist

Ker-Xavier Roussel

Artists

Muses & Friends

About

The painter and printmaker Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944), born François Xavier Roussel, was a close friend of Vuillard, whom he had met at school at the Lycée Condorcet, and one of the core members of the Nabi group. His work, often landscapes and mythological scenes, is characterized by rich color and pattern. In 1893 he married Marie Vuillard, the artist’s sister. The couple, with their daughter, Annette, appear frequently in Vuillard’s paintings.

Sam Salz

Gallerist

Sam Salz

Patrons & Gallerists

About

The celebrated art dealer Sam Salz (1894–1981) was born in Austria. He settled in Paris between the world wars and established a gallery of contemporary art. His business prospered, and he began to build a significant personal collection, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. In 1938, as circumstances for Jews worsened in Europe, he moved to New York, where he established himself as one of America’s most prominent art dealers. His roster of clients included many major collectors and patrons, as well as Hollywood celebrities. Jos Hessel introduced Vuillard to Salz in 1938 and he became the painter’s leading American representative. In 1939, not long before the German invasion of France, Salz and the actor Edward G. Robinson traveled to Paris to have their portraits painted by him.

Paul Sérusier

Artist

Paul Sérusier

Artists

About

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927), a leading French Post-Impressionist, studied at the Académie Julian, and with Paul Gauguin, his mentor. His signature work, The Talisman, painted under Gauguin in the summer of 1888, astonished and excited his fellow artists with its nearly abstract forms and vivid, nonnaturalistic color. It became the key work that prompted Sérusier, Vuillard, Bonnard, Vallotton, Denis, and their friends to found the Nabi group.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Artists

About

The Post-Impressionist painter and vanguard printmaker Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) does not fall within any narrowly defined stylistic school. Born to a wealthy, noble family, he lived a bohemian life in Paris, where he became one of the great experimentalists in the medium of lithography. He was a member of the Natanson circle and a friend of Vuillard, who painted his portrait in 1898.

Marie Vuillard

Mother

Marie Vuillard

Muses & Friends

About

Vuillard’s mother, born Marie Michaud, was the daughter of a textile manufacturer and designer. She married Honoré Vuillard, a military officer and later a tax inspector, in 1859. They had three children, Marie (b. 1861), Alexandre (1863–1927), and Edouard. Upon her husband’s retirement the family moved to Paris in 1877. Her husband died in 1883, and she opened a dressmaking workshop. She worked for many years as a corset maker, couturier, and dressmaker, as well as assisting her son in his photographic work.

Marie Vuillard Roussel

Sister

Marie Vuillard Roussel

Muses & Friends

About

The painter’s older sister, Marie (b. 1861), was born in Cuiseaux, in the Jura region. The family moved to Paris in 1877. Around 1886 she began to work in her mother’s corset shop. She was a frequent model for her brother’s paintings and prints until her marriage to his friend, the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, in 1893. They had a daughter, Annette, born in 1898, and son who died in infancy. The marriage was a stormy one, whose tensions are captured in several of Vuillard’s paintings of the family.

Patrons & Gallerists

Muses & Friends

Artists