Edouard Vuillard

Estate of the artist
Private Collection, France
Jacques Guerlain Collection, Paris (acquired in 1941)
Thence by descent to the present owners

Antoine Salomon & Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, Le Regard innombrable. Catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, Paris, 2003, vol. II, no. IX-136, illustrated p. 1089

The canvas is lined. There appear to be no retouchings visible under UV light. The surface retains rich impasto in the bouquet though the surface is slightly pressed in the background. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, although the colours are warmer in the original.
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'Every epithet dear to the Symbolist – like Mallarmé, like Verlaine, musical, Wagnerian even – has been used to describe Vuillard's intimism. There is some truth in all of them. No one responded as deliciously as he did to a certain demand for refinement at that time. Those tiny, dense paintings leap out at the viewer because of the charm of their tonalities; they make an impact through the effect, whether abrupt or harmonious, that they have on the sense before they have even been understood.'
André Chastel, Vuillard, Paris, 1946

This charming still life highlights Edouard Vuillard's dazzling ability to transform even the simplest arrangement of everyday objects into a glowing, jewel-like composition. With its decadently painted wallpaper, delicate yet lively treatment and vibrant palette, Le bouquet et le livre exemplifies the artist's successful combination of the intimisme of his earlier Nabis pictures with a newfound vitality of colour that was to define his most celebrated turn-of-the-century works.

From 1899, following the disbandment of the Nabis group, Vuillard was represented by the prestigious Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris and his association with the Bernheim brothers allowed him to move in very different social circles; commissioned to paint the portraits of their wealthy clientele, the artist gained access to some of the most opulently appointed homes in Paris. The son of a dress-maker and a lifelong bachelor with strong ties to the female members of his family, Vuillard had always possessed a fascination for textiles and his initiation into the fabrics, wallpaper and carpets of the haute bourgeoisie at this time served to reignite his sensibility for rich colour and pattern. Painted circa 1910, the present work testifies to Vuillard's highly attuned mastery for combining colour and texture, with the shock of the azure blue cushion, precariously balanced on the table, both setting off the delicate intricacy of the wallpaper and foregrounding the sumptuous petals of the bouquet.

A man of modest character, Vuillard never fully abandoned his intimiste taste for the personal and the everyday, and the subject of the present work, a small red book abandoned next to a rather unruly bouquet of flowers in an understated vase, is deceptively unassuming. Vuillard approximates the viewer to his composition, foreshortening the space to frame the encounter with the bouquet centred and at eye level, imbuing it with all the delicious charm alluded to by André Chastel.