Day 331 - Vuillard garden

February 9, 2023

Gallery 828 brings me squarely back to the post-Impressionist world. The gallery is primarily devoted to paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, artists whose names have been known to me but whose works have largely been  unfamiliar.  Both were representational painters, but, by eschewing sharp lines and instead creating  forms through broad strokes of color, their images often have a dreamy quality and seem to verge on abstraction. 

I especially like a large canvas (about six feet high and five feet wide) that Vuillard began in 1920 and reworked several times before completing it in 1936. Entitled "Garden at Vaucresson," it depicts the house and garden in a Paris suburb owned by Josse and Lucy Hessel,  Vuillard's Jewish art dealer and long-time lover, respectively.  (What did Josse know, and how did he feel, about this arrangement, I wonder?) The scene has three distinct zones. In the background is the three-story house, set among tall trees; the middle ground is defined by a hedge that forms the garden's back wall and by the flower bed and swath of lawn in front of the hedge; and the foreground consists of a lush stand of flowers. It is so lush, in fact, that it almost hides Lucy, who,, in contrast to her pink-robed cousin, Marcelle Aron, seems to be crouched among the flowers; Lucy's hat looks like a flower, and you have to look closely to see her face in profile.  The middle zone is bathed in light;  a lighter shade of green is used to capture the light filtering through the trees and striking the underside of the leaves, while the house is almost completely shaded by the trees. The painting seems to capture the house's essence as a private retreat, away from the cacophony of the city.