Édouard Vuillard

Comte Raoul de Ricci, Paris (commissioned from the artist)
Thence by descent to the present owners

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, E. Vuillard, 1938, no. 194
Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Vuillard, 1948, no. 89bis

Antoine Salomon & Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, Le Regard innombrable, Catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, Paris, 2003, vol. III, no. XI-228, illustrated p. 1423

The canvas is not lined. There is some fine stable craquelure located mostly on the desk next to the inkwell and on the chair back. There is a 3 by 2cm. area of retouching towards the flowers on the shelves. Apart from 5 scattered small spots of retouching along the lower edge, this work is in very good condition. Colours: The tones are overall brighter and more attractive in the original.
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This portrait of the Comtesse Raoul de Ricci was commissioned by her husband, the Comte Raoul de Ricci. Vuillard accepted an increasingly large number of portrait commissions towards the end of his life. Describing these characteristic works, Belinda Thomson has observed: "From about 1912 onwards Vuillard began to take on an increasing number of portraits, and in the last two decades of his life, from 1920 to 1940, his output was dominated by portraiture... For the most part his later portraits were formal commissions and, appropriately enough, given Vuillard's established status, his clients tended to be successful in their own right, well-known personalities of stage, literature, politics or medicine. Partly in deference to their standing and expectations but also in keeping with his own interests as a technician, these portraits were brought to a higher degree of resolution than any of his exhaustive drawings of details and sometimes photographs of the settings. Despite this rather over-involved technique and attention to detail, which repays close scrutiny, many of these late portraits can be found to share the solid sense of design and judicious harmonization of colours of his earlier work" (Belinda Thomson, Vuillard, Oxford, 1988, p. 126).

Even when painting in an apparently more conservative manner, Vuillard succeeded in retaining many of the characteristics of his work of the Nabis period. Earlier in his career the decorative flatness of his compositions had given a formal unity to the wide variety of highly patterned surfaces that competed for attention. Three decades later the attraction of fabrics and interiors has not waned. While faithfully recording the features of the Countess, he pays equal attention to the composition and execution of the details of the interior space, including the corner of ornate carpet visible in the bottom right corner. Vuillard respects the status and wealth of the sitter while still adding something of his own energy and spirit to the painting through the textured application of paint and vibrant brushstrokes.