The Nabi Shock. Paris & London 2026 catalogue ISSU

THE NABI SHOCK

To Waring Hopkins, Internationally acclaimed art dealer and distinguished expert on the Nabis. With timeless gratitude.

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p.117

FOREWORD STÉPHANE CUSTOT

PAUL RANSON

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INTRODUCTION GILLES GENTY

JÓZSEF RIPPL-RÓNAI

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ÉMILE BERNARD

KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL

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PIERRE BONNARD

PAUL SÉRUSIER

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MAURICE DENIS

FÉLIX VALLOTTON

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CHARLES FILIGER

ÉDOUARD VUILLARD

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ETEL ADNAN

FRANÇOIS RÉAU

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BEN ARPÉA

ANNE ROTHENSTEIN

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MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ

CHRISTINE SAFA

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IAN DAVENPORT

FABIENNE VERDIER

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p.296

MARCEL DZAMA

EARLY COLLECTORS

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p.304

PIERRE KNOP

CREDITS

THE POETRY OF LIFE STÉPHANE CUSTOT Nabi subjects are often close to home: sisters, wives, mothers, punctuated by the occasional celebrated stage actor. Most appear in quiet interiors or secluded gardens. These are scenes of stillness and introspection, characterised by flat planes of unmodulated colour, bold contours, textured surfaces and the distinctive outlines that give Nabi painting its rhythm. There is mysticism here, certainly, but also emotion, tenderness and an almost reverential sense of silence.

Opening my new gallery in Paris with an exhibition devoted to the Nabis feels less a matter of curatorial choice and more a homecoming – a full-circle return to the artists who shaped my eye and imagination. My connection with the group began early in my career, during the years I worked closely with my cousin, Waring Hopkins, at our gallery in the heart of Paris’ right bank district. Being surrounded from the outset by Nabi paintings of the highest calibre sharpened my eye and honed my instincts, and I developed a lasting affection for their boldness, intimacy and aesthetic brilliance. Now, as I establish a gallery in Paris once again, it gives me enormous pleasure to return to these artistic roots.

Today, the Nabis feel more alive and resonant than ever. In recent years, their work has been celebrated in major museum exhibitions across Europe and the United States; important holdings also remain on view at The Phillips Collection in Washington and, of course, the Musée d’Orsay here in Paris. Together, these presentations have shed fresh light on the movement, underscoring its enduring appeal and striking relevance today.

For this exhibition, we have brought together an exceptional group of paintings, including important works by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard, those young friends who first formed their brotherhood at the Lycée Condorcet. These are presented alongside rare works by early members Paul Ranson, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Félix Vallotton, as well as by artists closely associated with the group, Paul Sérusier, József Rippl-Rónai, Charles Filiger and Émile Bernard.

These presentations establish the Nabis as the first truly modern artists. Certainly among the first to adopt the view that, as articulated by Maurice Denis, a ‘painting – before being a warhorse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of any kind – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, assembled in a certain order’. The Nabis didn’t seek to represent the world as they saw it, but rather the experience of being enveloped in it. The art they created was, above all, meant to move the viewer emotionally – through the richness of the colours, the tactile quality of the brushstrokes, the interplay of hues and the rhythm of the composition.

The paintings date from that remarkably concentrated and fertile period between 1888 and 1900, when the Nabis were actively working together in Paris. In just twelve years they redefined what painting could be. Their interests were extraordinarily wide-ranging: beyond canvases and works on paper, they designed theatre sets, posters and textiles. Here you will find Denis designing stained glass and lampshades, Bonnard creating illustrations for musical scores and concert programmes, and Ranson’s wonderful Japanese-inspired tiger cartoon, which migrated from paper into carpets and paintings. Across the exhibition there is a true breadth of media: sketches, intimate drawings and fully realised oils, all united by a shared spirit.

Today, a unique constellation of circumstances once again encourages artists to look at the world with an imaginative sensibility rather than a literal eye. The visual, formal and dematerialised propositions of the 20th century have been replaced by poetic explorations of what it means to inhabit the world. In their place stands a personal, introspective 5

THE POETRY OF LIFE

and subjective perspective, shaped by our age of individualism. Like the Nabis, who transcended the visible surface of things to evoke interior states and symbolic meaning, today’s practitioners move past rigid formalism to embrace atmosphere, memory and the texture of daily life. Further, boundaries between art and craft have, once more, dissolved. Just as the Nabis ventured beyond the canvas into the applied arts, many contemporary artists move fluidly between painting, fashion and interiors. The Nabis’ flat aesthetic and vibrant colour resonate with contemporary painting, where figuration and rich surfaces are once again embraced. In this exhibition we are delighted, therefore, to create a dialogue with pieces by contemporary artists whose practice reflects or reimagines the Nabi spirit. Like Bonnard and Vuillard, Christine Safa likes to paint from memory, symbolic scenes that strip away the trivial and reach the deepest meaning. Etel Adnan works in a similar spirit, paring her landscapes down to their essentials to capture the emotional presence of a place. Marcel•la Barceló’s sinuous lines recall Denis’ lampshade designs, a sensibility echoed in the rich surfaces of Marcel Dzama’s watercolours. Ian Davenport’s profound exploration of colour subtly echoes Filiger’s chromatic studies. There are also rich landscapes by Ben Arpéa and Anne Rothenstein that echo Vallotton’s unique paysage composé approach to sunsets and moonlight scenes, while Vuillard’s poetic and philosophical conception of the world – that we are rooted in a reality that in turn interacts with us, is extended by Pierre Knop, François Réau and Fabienne Verdier. ‘The Nabi Shock,’ our inaugural presentation in Paris (which will travel to our London gallery this summer), celebrates artists who transformed modern painting with extraordinary boldness, whose radical energy and daring vision continues to resonate and inspire new generations of artistic visionaries.

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ENJOYING THE NABIS TODAY GILLES GENTY underestimated by art historians, this influence is essential to understanding the development of the group’s aesthetic: it is apparent in Bonnard’s study for Le Corsage à carreaux (1892) [p. 54], and Denis’ Marthe au tablier rouge (esquisse) (c. 1892) [p. 74]. The Nabis were also passionate about Japonisme, as is evinced by Vuillard’s Biana Duhamel dans le rôle de Miss Helyett (1891) [p. 204]. The kakemono format used by Vuillard seems to have been directly inspired by the prints published by Siegfried Bing in his review Japon Artistique (1888–91), some of which, furnished in several folds, could be removed from the review and hung on the wall.

A BROTHERHOOD OF ARTISTS BOUND BY FRIENDSHIP The story of the Nabis began with the close friendship between a group of teenage artists – Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis – at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris in the period 1885–87. To understand the birth of their artistic calling, one has to picture their passionate discussions about the writers (Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé) and the philosophers (Schopenhauer and Bergson) introduced to them by their teachers; to imagine their first artistic emotions at the Louvre and at the revelation of Paul Gauguin’s painting; to share their astonishment at the Japanese prints exhibited at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890; and to understand the flux of new artists, both French and foreign, who shared their ideals and gradually joined their group – Paul Ranson, Georges Lacombe, Félix Vallotton, József Rippl-Rónai and others. And thus the group of ‘Nabis’ was born.

EXALTING THE UNREMARKABLE In their combat against the hidebound nature of the official academies, the Nabis aimed to do away with boundaries: those that separated the ‘major’ from the ‘minor’ arts, those between subjects considered worthy of the Salons with others reduced to purely private consumption, and the boundary between easel painting and the decorative arts. Furthermore, like the Art Nouveau designers, whose contemporaries and sometimes friends they were, the Nabis’ goal was to create ‘Total Art’ decors. In addition to their easel paintings, they conceived a great many objects of daily life, for example in Denis’ design for a lampshade, Au Pont du Nord un bal était donné (1894) [p. 80–81], in which he transformed a folk song into elegant Japanizing arabesques; and Ranson’s cartoon, Le Grand Tigre (1893) [p. 122] – which evolved into tapestries and rugs. It is clear today the degree to which the Nabis heralded the 20th century revival of the decorative arts (textiles, the arts of fire – glass and ceramic, and so on): Henri Matisse was their direct heir.

THE RIGHT TO DARE ANYTHING The group called themselves ‘Nabis’, recalling the English Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, to reflect the quasi-spiritual dimension of their shared admiration for Gauguin. It was not by chance they chose the title ‘The Talisman’ (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) for the painting made in summer 1888 by Paul Sérusier under Gauguin’s direction, which would become the medium for transmission of this aesthetic. However, the true breakthrough for the Pont-Aven School came at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, when works by Gauguin and his circle were displayed on the walls of the Café Volpini. It was there that the Nabis saw a style of painting that went beyond Impressionism. Inspired, Paul Sérusier used unrestrained brushstrokes and flat tints in his Bretonne allaitant (1892) [p.166], a masterpiece of these radical years, as did Filiger in Famille du Pêcheurs (1894) [p. 110]. The Nabis were also interested in the Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Long

WOMEN PLACED CENTRE STAGE Art and the formation of its history are never dissociated from the societies in which they develop. For this reason, recent exhibitions 9

ENJOYING THE NABIS TODAY

fascinated the Nabis. Vuillard painted the actor’s portrait in a radical manner on many occasions, as in Coquelin Cadet dans “Le Malade imaginaire” (c. 1890) [p.196]. Another was the brilliant art critic Gabriel-Albert Aurier [p.296], who was one of the first to understand Vincent van Gogh’s painting and who wrote a pioneering article in 1892: ‘Les Symbolistes’ in La Revue Encyclopédique. Subsequently, the Nabis experienced a period of disenchantment from ‘modernist’ critics who only had eyes for Cubism, which probably culminated in 1947 with the article published in Les Cahiers d’aujourd’hui in which Christian Zervos asked whether Bonnard was a ‘great painter’. Matisse took it upon himself to give a robust reply! During the 1960s, enterprising American collectors showed a passion for the Pont-Aven School and the Nabis: Arthur Altschul, whose collection represented a landmark in art history, acquired József Rippl-Rónai’s Femme au chapeau (c. 1892–95) [p. 134] and Mère et enfant (c. 1891–92) [p. 148], while Robert Walker, based in Paris, owned Filiger’s Lamentation sur le Christ mort (c. 1895) [p. 92]. Sam Josefowitz’s fascination with the Nabis was fundamental to the movement’s recognition. Owning some of the greatest masterpieces by Vuillard and his friends, he was the instigator of a number of important travelling exhibitions. Official recognition of the Nabis followed with major international retrospectives. In 1984, the Bonnard retrospective (Paris, Washington and Dallas) was the first to highlight the links between Bonnard’s late period and the great all-over works by Mark Rothko and Sam Francis. The show dedicated to Vallotton in 1991–93 (New Haven, Houston, Indianapolis, Amsterdam, Lausanne) shone a light on the artist’s mature works and, in the process, his links with the German and Dutch movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as with Edward Hopper.

on the Nabis have explored the relationship between this group of exclusively male painters and women. In the tireless observation of their domestic environments, the Nabis used their mothers, partners, wives and sisters as their primary models. This was the subject of the very recent exhibition ‘Private Lives, Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900’ (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 2021). Vuillard’s mother was a fundamental reference point in his emotional landscape, as was recently made clear in the exhibition ‘Maman: Vuillard and Madame Vuillard’ (Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, UK, 2018–19). The title, inspired by Vuillard’s own terms of affection, should not mask the richness (and complexity) contained in these moments of everyday life captured by the painter. Consider also the sometimes almost theatrical portrayals Vuillard gives of his sister, Marie, the future wife of his friend the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, for example in the strange and original Marie au jardin (1893) [p. 212] – shown to one side of an expanse of profuse vegetation, she appears to have the same texture as the greenery. Vuillard’s point here is that we are all literally inhabited by the places and objects by which we are surrounded. A follower of young philosophers like Bergson, Vuillard expressed concepts since developed by contemporary psychology. Visitors to the recent exhibition ‘Femmes chez les Nabis, de fil en aiguille’ (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pont-Aven, FR, 2024) discovered that some of these women had been artists and important contributers to the discourse and philosophy of the Nabis. One was Marthe Meurier, seen in Marthe au tablier rouge (esquisse), who collaborated on the paintings of her beloved Denis by adding poetic painted flowers to the compositions. FROM THE ARTISTS’ FAMILIES TO LEADING INTERNATIONAL MUSEUMS For a long time, the dealings of the Nabi group were limited to a tight circle of initiates. At first, they were supported by Symbolist writers (Mallarmé, Kahn and Mirbeau) and their works collected by their immediate entourage; for example, by the actor Coquelin Cadet (1848–1909), who was involved in the avant-garde theatre that so

AN AESTHETIC ELUCIDATED BY CONTEMPORARY ART As may be recalled, Surrealist André Breton – a great admirer of Arthur Rimbaud and Symbolism in general – was one of the first to rediscover Filiger. This dialogue between Post-Impressionism and contemporary art 10

GILLES GENTY

to those of Sérusier. And, in the same way that Maurice Denis and Bonnard aimed to capture nothing but the essence of reality, Christine Safa paints from memory. The face bathed with light in her Nathan et Vigne II (2026) [p.284] compellingly brings to mind those painted by Odilon Redon, whom the Nabis admired. Ben Arpéa’s landscapes are inspired by the Pop art of Tom Wesselmann and David Hockney, but are also imbued with the strangeness to be found in Félix Vallotton’s work. And how can we not think of Bonnard’s sublimated vision of nature when confronted by the world of Pierre Knop, in the way he juxtaposes and binds his motifs together with a continuous weave of textures, as though his painting were a tapestry? As for the meticulousness with which Ian Davenport explores the expressive possibilities of colouration in Notation Chromatic [p.252], it clearly has ties with the production of Josef Albers, but also that of Charles Filiger. The glossy brilliance of his paintings creates a mirror effect that challenges the viewer, much like the hieratic faces [p.106] of his predecessor. It is a history that is very much alive and forward-looking!

is more vibrant than ever today: in his preface to the 2013 exhibition ‘Félix Vallotton, le feu sous la glace’ (Paris, Amsterdam), Guy Cogeval brilliantly compared Vallotton’s staged settings with those of Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock, affinities that had already been sketched out in the exhibition ‘Alfred Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal. In spring 2013, the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne offered a prolific comparison between the American artist Alex Katz and Vallotton. In 2015–16, contemporary artist and film director Joann Sfar was invited by the Musée d’Orsay to present 60 paintings and 60 drawings inspired by Bonnard. To accompany his drawings in the catalogue, Sfar authored a text in which, with extreme pertinence, he questioned the relationship between Bonnard – and, by extension, every artist – and his models, the body, desires and figuration. He also examined the profound and almost philosophical seriousness of Bonnard’s painting, in that it confronts viewers with the mundanities of everyday life, obliging them to put their own existence into perspective. In just a few pages, Sfar offers a surprising view of Bonnard, as perhaps only a contemporary artist would be able to. In fact, while the Nabis’ place in art history has become as self-evident as those of the famous ‘-isms’ (Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism), the group’s aesthetic, their vision of the world and their analysis of human relationships are constantly being examined by contemporary artists, while the inspiration they provide continues to be extensive. For example, Fabienne Verdier finds new forms of expression in the art of the Far East; like Bonnard, who painted alongside his musician brother-in-law, she has often worked to the live sounds of a quartet (Aix-en-Provence, 2017–18). Etel Adnan updates Maurice Denis’s famous aphorism that a painting is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, assembled in a certain order. She, a poet, also upholds one of the major characteristics of Nabi painting: that a picture can never be simply the reproduction of a scene, but that the scene itself is a bearer of meaning. The flat tints in the works of Anne Rothenstein – she illustrates books, like the Nabis – bear great similarity 11

ÉMILE BERNARD

ÉMILE BERNARD 1868–1941 Six years after arriving in Paris in 1878, Émile Bernard joined the free studio run by Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), where he made friends with artists Henri de ToulouseLautrec and Louis Anquetin. After just two years, in 1886, he was asked to leave, as his use of the pointillist technique went against Cormon’s teaching. In 1887, Bernard went to Brittany with Anquetin, and met Émile Schuffenecker in Concarneau the following year. He then went to Pont-Aven where he became enthralled by the ideas of Paul Gauguin, and introduced Gauguin to zincography. In 1886, Bernard joined the Mercure de France as an art critic and in 1892 wrote a complimentary article on Paul Cézanne. In 1907, he published their correspondence. In 1888, Bernard’s work was exhibited for the first time, alongside that of Toulouse-Lautrec, in a show held at the Grand Restaurant-Bouillon; he exhibited again that same year at the Salon des Indépendants. Rejected from the Salon d’Automne in 1889, he was one of the artists who exhibited at the Café Volpini on the fringe of the Exposition Universelle. He was later included in the exhibition at the Café des Arts with the group of artists he had met in Pont-Aven. Bernard definitively broke off his relations with Gauguin in 1891, and a year later he decided to mount a first retrospective of the work of his great friend Vincent van Gogh, who had died two years earlier. Supported by his patron Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, Bernard spent the years 1893 and 1904 travelling in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Palestine and Egypt. On returning to France in 1905, he founded the journal Rénovation Esthétique, which he edited until 1910. Like Anquetin, Bernard encouraged his colleagues to return to both the classicism of the Old Masters (Raphael, Velázquez, Poussin) and the medieval technique of woodcuts. Bernard died in 1941, having published the rest of his correspondence with Cézanne (1925) and an essay entitled ‘La connaissance de l’art’ (1935).

ÉMILE BERNARD

NUS DANS UN PAYSAGE c. 1887 oil on canvas 14 5/8 × 18 in / 37 × 45.5 cm PROVENANCE Gabriel-Albert Aurier (directly from the artist); thence by descent to Suzanne Aurier-Williame (his wife) Estate of Suzanne Aurier-Williame, Nohant-par-Bruère Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris: 10 December 2016 (lot no. 20) Private collection LITERATURE Jean-Jacques Luthi, Émile Bernard, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint (Paris: Side Editions, 1982), no.69 (repro.) Jean-Jacques Luthi and Israël Armand, Émile Bernard, sa vie, son œuvre. Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Editions des Catalogues raisonnés, 2014), no.89, p.151 (repro.) This painting is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity dated 12 March 2018 and signed in Paris by Béatrice Recchi Altarriba, granddaughter of Emile Bernard.

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PIERRE BONNARD

PIERRE BONNARD 1867–1947 Born into a middle-class family, and a brilliant pupil at secondary school, Pierre Bonnard studied law in 1886–87 while also attending the Académie Julian. It was there he met Maurice Denis, Gabriel Ibels, Paul Ranson and Paul Sérusier. After a brief spell at the École des Arts Décoratifs, followed by the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, Bonnard turned against his family’s wishes and took up painting full time. In 1889 he formed the Nabi group with these six fellow-artists and designed his first poster for FranceChampagne. In 1891, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants and at the gallery Le Barc de Boutteville; in 1896 he had his first solo exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery. Very active in the theatre world, Bonnard produced illustrations for André Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre, then for Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Œuvre. After becoming close with Alfred Jarry, he collaborated on the sets for Jarry’s play Ubu Roi in 1896, followed by the Almanach du père Ubu illustré in 1901. He worked as a preferred illustrator for La Revue blanche until 1903 from the time of its creation by Thadée Natanson and his two brothers in 1889; he also produced prints commissioned by Ambroise Vollard for the album of Peintres Graveurs (1896), for Jules Renard’s Les Histoires naturelles in 1904, and André Gide’s Prométhée mal enchaîné (1920). In 1912, Bonnard moved to Vernonnet, near Giverny, and frequently visited his elder colleague Claude Monet, returning to a more Impressionist style just as Cubism was prevailing. A year later, he went to Hamburg with Vuillard at the invitation of the historian Alfred Lichtwark, before experiencing a period of artistic crisis during the First World War. In 1924, a major retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie Druet. Two years later, Bonnard bought a villa in Le Cannet, where he lived until his death in 1947.

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PIERRE BONNARD

AU CAFÉ c. 1890 watercolour, Indian ink and pencil on paper 12 1/2 × 4 1/2 in / 31.6 × 11.5 cm PROVENANCE Gabriel-Albert Aurier (directly from the artist) Succession Gabriel-Albert Aurier Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris: 10 December 2016 (lot no. 13) Private collection This artwork is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity issued in Paris by Bernheim-Jeune on 12 January 2018 and signed by Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Floriane Dauberville. It is registered in the Bernheim-Jeune archive under number 218-01 12 B [titled ‘Femme au cabaret’].

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PARIS 1900, THE ‘CITY OF LIGHT’ Lugné-Poe shared a studio at 28 Rue Pigalle [1], at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, a short stroll from the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, the meeting place of the Impressionists. The café was also central to a number of avant-garde cabarets: Jehan Sarrazin’s Le Divan Japonais, Rodolphe Salis’s Le Chat Noir, Aristide Bruant’s Le Mirliton, and, of course, Zidler and Oller’s Moulin Rouge, for which Bonnard designed a poster. Although Bonnard produced several paintings of café-concerts, such as Le Jardin de Paris (1896) (Hays Collection, promised to the Musée d’Orsay), very few works, with the exception of Au Bar (1892) [2], depict cafés. This specificity and originality are indisputably the most important aspects of this watercolour.

Once part of the highly discerning collection of art critic Gabriel-Albert Aurier (see his biography on p. 296), this drawing reveals a little-known and surprising aspect of Bonnard’s production: his depiction of Parisian cafés during La Belle Époque. Celebrated in literature and painting in the late 19th century, French cafés were fundamental places of leisure and conviviality, lavishly described by writers ­ – for example, the Café Riche on the capital’s grand boulevards, not far from the Paris Opéra, which Émile Zola used as a setting for several scenes in his novel La Curée (1871), as did Guy de Maupassant for certain chapters in Bel Ami (1885). Cafés were also meeting places for writers and painters: Charles Baudelaire was a regular at the Momus, Paul Verlaine at the François Ier, and Zola at the Café Guerbois, which was also frequented by Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro. Soon, guides were published listing the different cafés according to their specific characteristics: Auguste Lepage published Les Cafés politiques et littéraires de Paris in 1874, followed by Les Dîners artistiques et littéraires de Paris in 1884. Cafés were a favourite motif among the Impressionists: see L’Absinthe (1876) by Degas (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) and La Prune (1878) by Manet (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art). Artists even exhibited in cafés, for instance Van Gogh at Le Tambourin, run by Agostina Segatori. It should be mentioned that the first public commercial screening of a film was held by the Lumière brothers at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895. In 1890–91, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and Aurélien

[2]

INFLUENCED BY JAPONISME What is most striking about Au café (c. 1890) [p. 22], however, is its very tall and narrow format, which raises questions about its purpose. It could have been a preparatory work for a folding screen, of which we see only one panel here, a study for an easel painting, or even a decorative strip to be used in a magazine. Regardless, its kakemono format attests

[1]

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PIERRE BONNARD

chirimen-e (prints on a kind of crepe paper) was confirmed by his visit to the large exhibition of Japanese prints, fabrics, and objects at the École des Beaux-Arts in spring 1890. Bonnard became, as his friends affectionately called him, the ‘Nabi japonard’.1 From that time on, he had a fondness for the kakemono format, which prompted him to use daring graphic designs enhanced by the two-dimensionality of Japanese prints. For example, consider Femme à la robe à pois (1891) [4], one panel of the screen Quatre Femmes au jardin (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), which Bonnard dismantled in 1892 to transform its sections into easel paintings. The female figure in Au café receives similar treatment, shown in profile and given an identical hat that extends almost disproportionately forward in curves that echo the cast-iron legs of the café table.

to the influence of Japanese prints, enthusiastically discovered by the Nabis in the art review Le Japon artistique (1888–91) [3], published by Siegfried Bing.

THE HIDDEN REALITY Bonnard did not treat this figure purely graphically, however attractive the idea may have been. There are several details that suggest a more complex interpretation of the scene: the feathered boa around her neck (an accessory also seen in some of ToulouseLautrec’s sketches of demi-mondaines), the woman’s right hand strangely contorted behind her back as it seems to reach for a glass, and the position of the man facing her, shown seated in this version but standing in another [5]. Gradually, the mild and rather superficial café scenes painted by Jean Béraud made way for a coarser reality, revealing the harsher aspects of life in Paris in the 1900s. This is almost the world of Jean-Louis Forain, but without that artist’s malevolent gaze. Bonnard did not depict this young woman without wishing to illustrate something more than what we see. In fact, cafés were looked upon with mistrust and suspicion by the authorities throughout the 19th century, with Balzac referring to them as the ‘people’s parliaments’ and Gambetta viewing them as ‘salons of democracy’. By the end of the century, alcoholism and immorality were the greatest issues of concern. In L’Assommoir (1877), Émile Zola viewed bars as dens of iniquity, while Alfred Carel, in Les Brasseries à femmes (1884), and, even more explicitly,

[3]

Originally from Hamburg, Bing had come to Paris to set up a branch of his family’s company, which specialised in importing objects from the Far East. To open his new gallery, La Maison de L’Art Nouveau, he even commissioned Bonnard and his Nabi friends to design cartoons for a series of stainedglass windows to be made by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Bonnard’s infatuation with Japanese 25

AU CAFÉ

Ernest Guérin, in La brasserie, une plaie sociale (1891), labelled them places of debauchery and possible sexual soliciting. Considered in this context, the respective roles of the man in the bowler hat (indicative of his modest background) and the woman facing him directly, for a ‘woman of the world,’ suggest a dynamic worth exploring. It raises the question of who is attempting to seduce whom. Their relationship may develop into either a sentimental or a commercial affair. A humanist like his friend Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard makes no judgement: he observes, illustrates the scene, and leaves the interpretation open to the viewer. REFERENCES 1. With the meaning of ‘Japanese] Nabi’ but based on a pun on the sound of his surname.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Postcard, Paris, Le Café de la Nouvelle Athènes et la rue Pigalle [2]. Pierre Bonnard, Au Bar (c. 1892), oil on card, 23 × 19 cm (private collection) [3]. Utamaro, Serving Girl in an Inn, published in Siegfried Bing, La Japon artistique, no. 21 (January 1890), pl.Baa [4]. Bonnard, Femme à la robe à pois (1891) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), from his Quatre femmes au jardin (1891), distemper on canvas, 160.3 × 48 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) [5]. Bonnard, Au café (1890), pen and ink, brush and watercolour on paper, 28.7 × 6.7 cm (private collection), reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Bonnard, Magier der Farbe’, Wuppertal, Von der Heydt-Museum, 14 September 2010 – 30 January 2011, p. 148

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[4]

[5]

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PIERRE BONNARD

FRANCIS THOMÉ, MANDOLINE c.1890 watercolour, gouache and graphite on paper 12 7/8 × 8 1/4 in / 32.5 × 21 cm studio stamped lower right ‘Bonnard’ PROVENANCE Philippe Huisman, Paris (acquired from the artist’s estate in 1950) Private collection (by descent) Christie’s, Paris: 2 December 2008 (lot no.71) Private collection LITERATURE Antoine Terrasse, Pierre Bonnard (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), p.51 (repro. in b&w)

This work is accompanied by a letter issued by Bernheim-Jeune in Paris on 27 November 2008, and signed by Michel Dauberville and Guy-Patrice Dauberville.

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IN A POETIC AND MUSICAL MOOD This is the musical category to which Francis Thomé, Mandoline (c.1890) [p.30] belongs, a Spanish serenade he composed in 1883 and of which, in 1884, he published a version for piano and mandolin. The covers of Thomé’s scores were very rarely illustrated, with the exception of conventional floral motifs or unexceptional drawings. Did Thomé ask, through Claude Terrasse, that Pierre Bonnard design more attractive covers for his musical scores, or were they the result of Bonnard’s own enthusiasm for this new cultural realm? In addition to this magnificent watercolour, which was almost unpublished until it reappeared in 2008, other preparatory drawings are now known: two studies of the young woman facing left, of which one is a pencil drawing and the other a version with watercolour highlights [1]; and two profile studies facing right: a pen‑and‑ink drawing, and this water-coloured version, which is incontrovertibly the most finished work.

It is with pleasure that art historians have, over recent years, reassessed the role of music in Bonnard’s production. It was no doubt through the painter’s brother-in-law, the composer Claude Terrasse, that Bonnard met Francis Thomé, Terrasse’s teacher at the Conservatoire in Paris. Thomé had also been the singing teacher of Bonnard’s sister Andrée, herself a talented pianist. The young married couple of Claude and Andrée settled in their property Villa Bach in Arcachon, where they gave small concerts for which Bonnard, when holidaying with them, produced small programmes decorated with watercolours (see Villa Bach (La Chasse à courre) (1890-91) [p.36]). On his return to Paris, Bonnard composed designs for the covers of opera scores (Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas, Le Cid by Massenet) and piano scores (Pas redoublé by Emilio Mendiri, Espièglerie and Mandoline by Francis Thomé). François Luc Joseph Thomé (1850–1909) was born to British parents in Port-Louis in Mauritius, and studied at the Conservatoire in Paris from 1866 to 1873. He studied harmony under Jules Duprato, piano under Antoine Marmontel, organ under César Franck, and finally composition under Ambroise Thomas. When his studies at the Conservatoire ended, he received first prize in fugue and second prize in piano and harmony, whereupon he embarked on a career as a concert performer, teacher and composer, quickly finding success. His comic opera La Bourse ou la Vie (1873), his ballet Djemmah (1886), performed at the Eden-Théâtre, and his incidental music for the Odéon, the Théâtre d’Application and the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin opened the doors of the capital’s salons to him. He quickly achieved prominence through his piano pieces, of which he composed more than 150 between 1871 and 1909 in the form of solo works and duets, and with vocal and instrumental transcriptions. These allowed them to be played at home, which partly explains their popularity. The titles of his piano pieces – Simple aveu, Sous la feuillée, Si tu veux faisons un rêve, Papillons roses, Badinage, and so on – encapsulate the cheerful lightness that delighted the salons during the last two decades of the 19th century.

[1]

Recognisable by her reddish hair, this young woman is not unknown: she is Berthe Schaedlin, Bonnard’s cousin, with whom the 32

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artist was in love. Bonnard portrayed her on numerous occasions between 1890 and 1893. For example, she appears in two of the four panels of Femmes au jardin (1891) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), as well as in La Jeune fille assise au lapin (1891) (Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art). Bonnard’s feelings for Berthe are not unassociated with her continual presence in his work. She prompted him to give free rein to his invention in his search for the most effective visual solutions. Starting from an identical compositional format above a blank space reserved for the future text, he drew his sweetheart facing sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, set against a background enlivened with elegant, comma-like shapes inspired by Japanese art. It is not known whether these many designs were intended for publication or were simply creative embellishments of the artist’s daily life, like the programmes for the Villa Bach concerts. This drawing belonged to Philippe Huisman, a member of a family of art-lovers. His father, Georges Huisman, had been Directeur Général des Beaux-Arts during the Third Republic, in which capacity he promoted the introduction of nocturnes in museums, for which the Palais du Louvre remained illuminated during the evenings. Georges Huisman also supported the inclusion in French national collections of works by Picasso, Matisse, Léger and Braque. For his part, Philippe Huisman authored several books on Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Berthe Morisot and 18th century watercolours. And, as director of the Wildenstein Foundation, he contributed to its series of Catalogues raisonnés. His personal collection included works by Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel. ILLUSTRATIONS [1] Pierre Bonnard, Projet de couverture pour “Mandoline morceaux de piano de Thomé” (1890), graphite and wash, 20.5 × 13 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

33

35 35

PIERRE BONNARD

VILLA BACH (LA CHASSE À COURRE) 1890–91 watercolour, Indian ink and pencil on paper 6 3/8 × 5 in / 16 × 12.7 cm initialled lower right ‘PB’ PROVENANCE Gabriel-Albert Aurier (directly from the artist) Succession Gabriel-Albert Aurier Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris: 10 December 2016 (lot no. 10) Private collection This artwork is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity issued in Paris by Bernheim-Jeune on 16 January 2018 and signed by Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Floriane Dauberville. It is registered in the Bernheim-Jeune archive under no. 218-01 16B.

37

A HOLIDAY IN ARACHON: VILLA BACH AN AMOROUS ENCOUNTER While doing his military service in Grenoble from November 1887, a young musician named Claude Terrasse (1867–1923) [1] met Charles Bonnard, with whom he quickly became friends. Charles was the brother of Pierre Bonnard, who was then a pupil at the Lycée Fontanes (later called Condorcet), alongside fellow students Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. During 1888, Terrasse, a future composer, was invited on several occasions to Le Clos [2], the Bonnards’ family home in Le Grand-Lemps, near Grenoble, where he met Charles and Pierre’s younger sister, Andrée Bonnard.

[2]

A HOLIDAY IN ARACHON Located on Boulevard d’Haussez in the ‘summer city’ of Arcachon, the villa was close to the station, and thus offered all the amenities a young couple might need. Prompted by an overwhelming desire to draw, as a letter to his sister makes clear, Bonnard soon visited them: “I am also bringing a great deal of resignation to the streams of music that are bound to escape from the Villa Bach. But the Muse of Painting will be avenged, as I am bringing my box of colours with me, and streams of green, blue and yellow will flow in return”. This enthusiasm was also confirmed by Charles, who told Terrasse: “My brother has asked me to warn you not to rack your brains looking for distractions to last until Christmas. He’s going to bring his doodle box and while he’s capturing Arcachon beach on canvas, I’ll be collecting whales for lunch.” Contrary to what Charles thought, it was not the beaches that would immediately inspire Pierre, but the concerts that Terrasse held in his home.

[1]

The pair met again in Paris in early 1889, and in September or October of the same year Terrasse left for Arcachon, where he had been offered the post of harmonics teacher at the Dominican-run Collège Saint-Elme. He held this position from 1889 to 1896.1 A lengthy correspondence followed between the suitor and Bonnard’s mother, Madame Frédéric Mertzdorff, during which the young musician increasingly declared his love for Andrée. After the couple’s wedding, celebrated on 24 September 1890 by the mayor of Le Grand-Lemps, they moved into the Villa Bach in Arcachon. Pierre Bonnard and Terrasse soon became close friends, and the artist portrayed the composer in several intimate paintings from 1891 onwards.

RHYTHMICALLY ARRANGED LINES Undoubtedly with the idea of illustrating concert programmes, Bonnard created a series of drawings for private use, with no known plans for publication.2 The motifs he chose for these unique works had no direct connection to music but reflected his imagination and abundant inventiveness: he depicted Claude and Andrée sitting tenderly together under foliage, a young woman playing a mandolin,3 a young woman sitting in an orchard,4 Andrée walking a dog,5 and even some skaters. What all these drawings have in common is their size (about 16 × 13 cm) and the fact that they all go by the title Villa Bach. 38

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Plage in Arcachon. Nonetheless, Bonnard did not stop collaborating with his brother-in-law. In 1893 together they published Petites Scènes familières, a series of scores for songs composed by Terrasse, with illustrations that had been started at the Villa Bach in 1891, and Le Petit Solfège illustré, intended to make learning music less dull for children. It is important to note the significance of the relationship between Bonnard and GabrielAlbert Aurier, the first collector to own Villa Bach (La Chasse à courre) (1890–91). A poet

[3]

Villa Bach (La Chasse à courre) (1890–91) [p. 36] is an exception in this series, because although hunting as a subject is far removed from the concerts given at the Villa Bach, the horn offers a direct, though tongue-in-cheek reference to music. Here, Bonnard takes up a motif that he had used in an earlier drawing [3], but this time he transforms it radically. Instead of the stiffness of his youthful watercolour, he now prefers a Japanizing distortion of the outlines. Far from being anecdotal, these small graphic pieces allowed Bonnard to experiment for the benefit of future works; for example, the motif of leaping dogs, whose bodies, partly treated in reserve, i.e. leaving the paper visible, are created using a line drawn almost without lifting the pen. He reused this dynamic arrangement of forms in 1891/1892 in a watercolour with the title Femme avec un chien [4]. The series of drawings for the Villa Bach ended in 1892. Following the birth of their first child, Jean Terrasse, in May of that year, the couple moved to the Villa Bijou on Boulevard de la

[4]

and art critic, Aurier came to own several works by Bonnard, including Au café (c. 1890) [p. 22]. Aurier (see p. 296) was an ardent defender of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and the Nabis, and, in particular, Bonnard. This is evident from the place of honour he gave the artist in his influential article on the Symbolists, published in the Revue Encyclopédique in April 1892, in which he reproduced one of Bonnard’s watercolours, whose whereabouts today are unknown [5].

39

VILLA BACH (LA CHASSE À COURRE)

REFERENCES 1. See Philippe Cathé, Claude Terrasse (Paris: L’Hexaèdre, 2004), p. 23 ff. 2. 22 drawings today in Austin (TX), in the collection of the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas, and described Carlton Lake, Baudelaire to Beckett: A Century of French Art and Literature. A Cat. of Books, Manuscripts, and Related Material Drawn from the Collections of the Humanities Research Center (Austin, TX: Harry Ransom Humanities, 1976). 3. See Gilles Genty and Pierrette Vernon, Bonnard, inédits (Paris: Éditions Cercle d’Art, 2006), chapter ‘Bonnard et la musique’, p. 60 ff. 4. Reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition Pierre Bonnard, Lisbon, Fundação Arpàd Szenes – Viera da Silva, 11 July – 30 September 2001, p. 21. 5. Reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition Pierre Bonnard, The Graphic Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 December 1989 – 4 February 1990, p. 44.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Unknown photographer, Claude Terrasse regardant une photographie (private collection) [2]. Postcard, Le Grand-Lemps (Isère) – Le Clos [3]. Pierre Bonnard, Départ pour la chasse (c. 1884), graphite, pen and ink, watercolour on paper, 16.5 × 11.7 cm (private collection) [4]. Bonnard, Femme avec un chien (c. 1892), graphite, pen and ink, watercolour on paper, 25.7 × 18.4 cm (Springfield, Ma, Museum of Fine Arts) [5]. Albert Aurier, “Les Symbolistes”, La Revue Encyclopédique (April 1892)

40

PIERRE BONNARD

[5]

41

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CHEZ LA BRODEUSE c.1895 oil on panel 13 1/2 × 16 in / 34.2 × 40.6 cm signed lower right ‘Bonnard’; signed on reverse ‘Bonnard’ PROVENANCE Eugène Zak, Paris (acquired 1947) Jeanne Castel, Paris Arthur Jeffress, London Anita Estelle Pleydell-Bouverie (Audrey Evelyn James), London Sotheby’s, London 12 June 1963 (lot no.62) Arthur Tooth & Sons, London (acquired from the above) [no.7061] Cecil G. Bernstein, London Christie’s, London 24 June 1991 (lot no.8) Nahmad collection, Switzerland Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Bonnard’, musée Boymans, Rotterdam, 1953, catalogue no.5 (repro.) ‘Bonnard’, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 6 January–13 March 1966, no.34, p.37 (repro. in b&w p.80) ‘Pierre Bonnard’, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 8 October 1966–1 January 1967, catalogue no.23 (repro. in b&w); toured to musée du Louvre, Paris, 13 January–15 April 1967, catalogue no.28 (repro. in b&w) 45

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EXHIBITIONS CONTINUED ‘Collection David et Ezra Nahmad, Impressionnisme et audaces du XIXe siècle’, Musée Paul Valéry, Sète, 29 June–27 October 2013, catalogue no.42, pp.155, 158, 256 (repro. in colour p.156) ‘De l’Impressionnisme à Bonnard et Picasso. Collection Nahmad’, musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, 6 July–3 November 2019, catalogue no.1, p.20 (repro. in colour p.21) ‘Bonnard et le Japon’, Hôtel de Caumont, Centre d’Art, Aix-en-Provence, 30 April–6 October 2024, catalogue no.73 (repro. in colour p.119) LITERATURE François-Joachim Beer, Pierre Bonnard (Marseille: Éditions Françaises d'Art, 1947), no.41, p.61 (repro. in b&w) Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. 4 et Ier supplément (Paris: Éditions Bernheim-Jeune, 1974), no.88, p.145 (repro. in b&w)

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CHEZ LA BRODEUSE Lugné-Poe shared a studio between them at 28 Rue Pigalle. And it was in Montmartre that Bonnard met Maria Boursin (1869–1942) in 1893, the woman who would become his lifelong companion. And, again in Batignolles, he took a new studio in 1896. During the period 1895–96, he continuously painted the Butte he loved so much, whose focal point was the Moulin Rouge [1]. In 1905, he lived in Rue de Douai, followed by Rue Lepic, and it was only in 1910 that he moved his studio to the Left Bank, at 21 Quai Voltaire, where Misia Natanson lived.

THE BUTTE MONTMARTRE, ARTIST’S HAVEN With its stack of small picturesque streets strewn across its ramparts, the Butte Montmartre was dear to Bonnard’s heart. Although he was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, it was in the Europe district of Paris that he lived from 1888 – in his grandmother’s house at 8 Rue de Parme – and where he fraternised with Édouard Manet, Stéphane Mallarmé and Gustave Caillebotte. A pupil at the Lycée Fontanes (later renamed Lycée Condorcet), a stone’s throw from Saint-Lazare Station, it was at school that he met Maurice Denis and Aurélien Lugné-Poe – the latter the future director of the Théâtre de l’Œuvre – who would become his companions on his artistic journey. From that moment on, for Bonnard

[2]

So which street is Bonnard showing us here, even taking care to include the number 7 on the pediment of the porch facing us? It may well be Rue de Parme, as even today the buildings on the odd-numbered side still have that arrangement of windows, the horizontal lines of the stones and the same yellow colour. It should not be forgotten, however, that when painting in his studio, Bonnard often combined motifs already present in other works, sometimes earlier ones. One such example is the passers-by slipping off to the left, one of whom can gradually be made out in the half-darkness of the porch. Identical figures are seen in Les Enfants revenant de l’école (c.1895) (Washington, National Gallery of Art) and in Les Grands Boulevards (c.1895) [2]. In that same year, 1895, Bonnard also created Les Parisiennes [3], which would be featured in La Revue blanche, and began work on his portfolio of lithographs Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris published by Ambroise Vollard in 1899.

[1]

the Butte Montmartre became a place where family ties mingled with creative fervour. In 1889, he set up his first studio at 14 Rue Lechapelais, in the Batignolles district, near Avenue and Place de Clichy. In April 1891, Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard and

Like his friend Vuillard,1 whose mother ran a dressmaking workshop at 346 Rue SaintHonoreé, Bonnard enjoyed depicting the 47

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published in Siegfried Bing’s review Japon Artistique (1888–91), which they hung on the walls of their studios, should not be forgotten. It was this fondness for the “Japanese crépes”, as Bonnard referred to them, that prompted Félix Fenéon to coin for him the nickname the Nabi “très japonard” at the end of the exhibition of his works at the Salon des Indépendants in 1892. The figures of the two young women standing out against the light-filled background may have been related to Bonnard’s memory of the Chinese shadow puppets actioned by Henri Rivière at Rodolphe Salis’s Chat Noir cabaret, situated close to the Moulin Rouge. Is it just chance that the artist’s memories of shadow puppets are present in several of his works of that same period, in particular, on a plate in his Petit Solfège illustré (1893) and his early designs for the poster created for the Moulin Rouge? The impression Bonnard gives us of witnessing a scene captured spontaneously, frozen in an instant as if in a photograph, is the result of the skilful construction of his composition: the deeply shaded foreground, which strongly contrasts with the bright, warm light

[3]

city’s myriad small trades – known as the Cris de Paris – that filled the capital’s buildings and streets with life during the Belle Époque: washerwomen, seamstresses, bread carriers, trinket sellers, street singers, barrel organ players, vendors of seasonal goods, and so on. While seamstresses were an accustomed part of Bonnard’s surroundings, it is also possible that, to compose this particular painting, he drew on an earlier source. The silent communication between the two women echoes the serene atmospheres of 17th century Dutch painting. The warm palette and the contrast between light and dark areas also resemble the intimate scenes painted by Jean Siméon Chardin,2 whom Bonnard admired. One that comes to mind is La Mère laborieuse (1740), which he may have seen on one of his many visits to the Louvre.

[4]

of the background, conceals the face of the young woman on the right, turning her into a silhouette. In Le Cheval de fiacre (c.1895) [4], Bonnard plays in similar fashion with the contrast between a dark foreground and a brightly lit background to create what in the language of the cinema is called ‘depth of field’. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the first-ever cinematic screening of moving

MEETING POINT OF JAPANISM AND THE NASCENT CINEMATIC IMAGE The influence of Japanism on Chez la brodeuse (c.1895) [p.44] has often been noted, but the passion of the Nabis for the plates 48

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decided his future work, as – to mention one piece above all others – his Intérieur au balcon (1919) illustrates [5]. In addition to being a means of dramatising the outside world, windows are also an invitation to dream.

images was held by the Lumière brothers at the Grand Café on Boulevard des Capucines on 28 December 1895. A PAINTING WITHIN A PAINTING

REALITY CLOAKED IN MYSTERY

The year he created Chez la brodeuse Bonnard underwent a key experience. In an interview with Raymond Cogniat in 1933, he stated: “[…] around the year 1895: one day, the words and theories that formed the basis of my conversations – colour, harmony, the relationships between lines and tones, balance – lost their abstract meaning and became something very concrete. Suddenly, I understood what I was seeking and how I might attempt to achieve it”.3 In fact, the arrangements of interlacing patterns and bold blocks of colour he had focused on during the years 1890–94 had become a system of representation that had reached its limits. Like Vuillard, Bonnard gradually reintroduced perspective and deeper spatial composition, returning to one of the emblematic approaches taken by painting since the Renaissance: that of being a window looking onto the world.

To fully appreciate the richness of Chez la brodeuse, it is perhaps best, quite simply, to look at the scene with fresh eyes, almost those of a child: why have the two young women lowered their gaze? Why hasn’t Bonnard shown them at work, as Vuillard so often does? What confidences are they sharing? By deliberately leaving these questions unanswered, Bonnard – like Odilon Redon – invites us to experience the unknown and the mysterious in the most ordinary circumstances of everyday life. There are many links between the man called the “prince of dreams” and Bonnard: it will be remembered that the famous painting by Maurice Denis, Hommage à Cézanne (1900) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), showing the Nabi group, was originally conceived by Denis as a tribute to Odilon Redon. Standing at the far left of the group, it is towards him that all eyes are turned, notably Bonnard’s, who held Redon in great admiration. When, in 1912, in reply to a question on the importance of this artist, Bonnard said, “I have the greatest admiration for Odilon Redon […] All our generation are under his spell and receive his guidance”.5 The links between the two artists are also precise: a year before Bonnard painted Chez la brodeuse, he visited Redon’s exhibition held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in spring 1894.

Soon, the window and the French window became central motifs in his paintings. One anecdote remains well known: after one of his final visits to the Louvre, Bonnard said to Jean Leymarie, who was accompanying him, “The best thing about museums is the windows”.4 Set slightly off-centre, the window in Chez la brodeuse offers a visual escape that also serves as a ‘painting within the painting’. As such, it heralds the role this device would later play in the works of Henri Matisse. Bonnard’s paintings during the period 1895– 97 are without question the experiments that

Iconographically, the arrangement in his painting of a window bathed in light echoes the window Redon placed at the centre of his lithograph Le Jour, plate VI in his Songes series (1891), and even more so that of Le Liseur (1892) [6]. The dialogue Bonnard creates between the interior and the exterior, between shadow and light, no doubt invites the viewer to make a symbolic reading of La Brodeuse. As a lover of Maurice Maeterlinck’s theatre and Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry, Bonnard never imposes a definitive interpretation, but instead invites us to imagine, to construct our own narrative – in short, to dream. Speaking

[5]

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wit John Deakin, who later became a close friend of Francis Bacon. After the Second World War, Jeffress showed his full potential when he founded the Hanover Gallery in London with Erica Brausen. They hosted the first solo exhibition of Bacon. Following his tragic death by suicide in 1961, Jeffress left two works from his collection to the Tate (including a portrait of Émile Bernard by Toulouse-Lautrec) and many more to Southampton City Art Gallery, notably pieces by Lucian Freud, Graham Sutherland, and a very original Bonnard: Deux Chiens jouant (1891).7 Chez la brodeuse entered the hands of Anita Estelle Pleydell-Bouverie (1902–1968), whose family history is also rather extraordinary: her grandmother claimed to be an illegitimate granddaughter of Edward VII, while she herself – who was born Audrey Evelyn James – was the unacknowledged natural daughter of Sir Edward Grey, Viscount of Fallodon. She was successively married to Muir Dudley Coats (1922–27), Marshall Field III (1930–34), and Peter Pleydell-Bouverie (1938–46), consistently displaying a strong spirit of independence. Photographed by Cecil Beaton, and mentioned in his Book of Beauty, she loved painting and purchased three works by Vuillard, one of which was Intérieur ensoleillé (1921–22) (Tate, London). Chez la brodeuse later entered the collection of Mr and Mrs Cecil G. Bernstein, director of Granada Television. A great lover of art, Bernstein organised exhibitions in the rooms of his company, as demonstrated by a photograph in which he is chatting with Sir Gerald Kelly (1879–1972), director of the Royal Academy.8

[6]

of Redon’s work, Bonnard observed: “What strikes me above all in his work is the union of two almost opposing qualities: very pure substance and very mysterious expression”.6 FOR THE LOVE OF ART After passing through the hands of Eugène Zak, a great collector of Vuillard, Chez la brodeuse was acquired by the English collector, and one of the Bright Young Things, Arthur Tilden Jeffress (1905–1961). His father, Albert, an American who had made his fortune in the tobacco business, moved his family to the UK in 1902 and settled them in Kenton Grange, a 27-acre estate in Middlesex. After finishing his studies at Harrow and Cambridge, Arthur began collecting vintage cars, then turned to the theatre. He then met the photographer and gallerist André Ostier, who undoubtedly produced some of the finest portraits of the artists of his time, notably Pablo Picasso and Bonnard. Under his guidance, Arthur Jeffress lived the life of a refined dandy in London, buying paintings and hosting lavish parties in the home of the famous dancer Maud Allan. During the 1930s, Jeffress’ partner was the photographer and

REFERENCES 1. Édouard Vuillard, La Couturière (1895), colour

lithograph, 26 × 16 cm (private collection).

2. On this, see Oliver Seifert, “Bonnard, Chardin und der Dialog mit den Alten Meistern”, in exh. cat. Pierre Bonnard Magier der Farbe, Wuppertal, Von der HeydtMuseum, 2010, p.67. 3. Raymond Cogniat, “Leurs débuts. Pierre Bonnard”, Les Nouvelles Littéraires (29 July 1933), p.8.

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PIERRE BONNARD 4. Quoted by Jean Leymarie in his preface to the catalogue of the exhibition “Bonnard dans sa lumière”, Saint-Paul-deVence, Fondation Maeght, 1975, p.11. 5. Pierre Bonnard, “Hommage à Odilon Redon”, La Vie no.41 (30 November 1912). 6. Quoted by Jean Leymarie, op. cit., p.18. 7. Pierre Bonnard, Two Dogs Playing (1891), oil on canvas,

37 × 39.7 cm (Southampton, Southampton City Art Gallery). 8. There is a photograph of Sir Gerald Kelly (1879–1972), director of the Royal Academy talking to Cecil Bernstein at the opening of “Pictures You Can Live With”, in 6 December 1954, at the head office of the Granada Group in London (Getty images, Fox Photos, inv. 901871954).

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Pierre Bonnard, Le Moulin Rouge (1896), oil on canvas, 60 × 40 cm (Toulouse, Fondation Bemberg)

[2]. Bonnard, Les Grands Boulevards (c.1895), brush,

Indian ink and gouache on laminated paper, 32.3 × 49.2 cm (Le Cannet, musée Bonnard) [3]. Bonnard, Les Parisiennes (1895), lithograph on paper, 20.6 × 12.5 cm (private collection)

[4]. Bonnard, Le Cheval de fiacre (c.1895), oil on panel,

29.7 × 40 cm (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection)

[5]. Bonnard, L’Intérieur au balcon (1919), oil on canvas,

52 × 77 cm (Le Havre, musée André Malraux)

[6]. Odilon Redon, Le Liseur (1892), lithograph on fibrous paper, 31 × 23.6 cm (private collection)

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ÉTUDE POUR ‘LE CORSAGE À CARREAUX’ 1892 oil on card affixed to panel 9 1/4 × 6 3/4 in / 23.5 × 17 cm PROVENANCE Édouard Vuillard collection Antoine Salomon, Paris Madame Claude Dalsace, Paris Galerie Berès, Paris Private collection, Switzerland Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Au temps des Nabis’, Huguette Berès, Paris, 1990, cat. no. 14 (not repro.) ‘Pierre Bonnard’, Musée Maillol, Paris, 31 May – 9 October 2000, cat. no. 7, p. 24 (repro. in colour) LITERATURE Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard. Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, vol. 4 et Ier supplément (Paris: Éditions Bernheim-Jeune, 1974), no.01728, p.137 (repro. in b&w) André Fermigier, Pierre Bonnard (New York: Abrams, 1987), p.52 (repro.) Claude Jeancolas, La peinture des Nabis (Paris: Éditions Franck Van Wilder, 2002), p.60 (repro. in colour p.61)

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AN ICON OF JAPONISME women were also regularly portrayed by their respective brothers, making it possible to trace the evolution of their styles.

It is profoundly moving to follow the various stages in the creation of a work of art, from the artists’ initial idea to the final version. Exploring the many possibilities shaped by the artist’s imagination, their hesitations, and eventual decisions provides access to what still remains a mystery: what we call creation. This painting invites us to do just that. ANDRÉE BONNARD AND HER DOGS

[1]

Bonnard’s relationship with his sister Andrée (1872–1923) [1], the figure in Étude pour ‘Le Corsage à carreaux’ c. 1892 [p. 54] was very similar to that between Édouard Vuillard and his sister Marie. Both sisters married artists: Marie became the wife of the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Andrée married the composer and musician Claude Terrasse. Bonnard, who developed a genuine artistic dialogue with Terrasse, created many illustrations for him, particularly those for the concerts the musician gave at the Villa Bach in Arcachon [p.38]. Both

[2]

Bonnard usually depicted Andrée1 accompanied by her dogs, Bella and Ravageau,and even painted a portrait of the latter. Although he disrupted the conventional pictorial approach to full-length figures in Andrée Bonnard et ses chiens (1890) [2] by introducing movement, Bonnard remained uncertain about how to organise 56

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tail, this time he was much more adventurous in his use of formal solutions inspired by Japonisme. The publication of the review Le Japon artistique (1888–91) by Siegfried Bing, and the opening in the spring of 1890 of a large exhibition on Japanese art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, clearly contributed to this shift.

the different elements in the space. There is a sense of hesitation between his volumetric representation of the two moving dogs and the contraction of perspectival depth, combined with the flat-tint treatment he applied to the upper section of the painting. It was during 1891 and 1892 that Bonnard truly found his style, as Étude pour ‘Le Corsage à carreaux’ demonstrates. SUDDENLY, A CAT APPEARS...

[3]

One of his earliest ideas can be seen on page 49 of a sketchbook from 1890–91 [3], where Bonnard sketched his sister sitting at a table as a cat decides to join her. The distinctly Art Nouveau curves of the animal’s tail, and the way he created the motifs on the clothing, both attest to the extent of the continued influence on him of Japanese prints. It is worth noting that, in this initial sketch, Andrée is not wearing a red-and-white checked blouse but a blue-and-white checked dress with a red polka-dot jabot, which reappears in Femme au chien (1891) [4]. In the same sketchbook, this time on page 50, Bonnard also made a study for the latter painting. From the outset, he had planned to paint two portraits of Andrée: one with a cat, the other with a dog, one set indoors, the other outdoors.

[4]

The influence of Japanese art was also the subject of a leading article written by Bernard Dorival (1914–2003), then curator at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, in which he focused on the painting Le Corsage à carreaux when it entered the French national collections.2 Following Ursula Perruchi-Petri’s innovative research 3 and the seminal exhibition Japonisme (Paris, Grand Palais, 1988), Bonnard’s fascination with Japanese prints has been well documented. Like Claude Monet, Bonnard purchased original prints, collecting them more for their aesthetic value than for their rarity. The one by Utagawa Kuniyoshi [5, overleaf] is a good example: it mattered little to the painter that it was just one part of a triptych because it suggested inventive decorative motifs. Perruchi-Petri recounts an anecdote shared by Professor Hans R. Hahnloser: when he asked Bonnard what he owed most

AN ICON OF JAPONISME The motif of the red checked blouse later appeared in the large watercolour Femme avec au chien (1891–92) [p.39], in which Andrée is seen playing with a lively dog. Although Bonnard once again employed the idea of an elegant serpentine form to depict the dog’s 57

ÉTUDE POUR ‘LE CORSAGE À CARREAUX’

when painted in oils. And it is precisely this fundamental step that is the subject of this particular painting.

to the Japanese, the artist replied, ‘The small checked patterns!4’

[5]

THE COMPOSITION CRYSTALLISES [6]

At the start of 1892, the definitive composition took shape: based on a drawing enhanced with watercolour [6], Bonnard returned to his idea of depicting Andrée, this time dressed in a uniform red-and-white checked blouse, eating at a table with her cat in front of her. The cat, now sitting up, seems eager to take part in the meal, as suggested by its wide-open eyes and a paw, sketched in pencil, boldly stretched towards a plate. Bonnard has given Andrée the pose she will adopt in the final painting, including her slightly off-kilter shoulders and the elegant curl of hair on her forehead. The large brown bottle on the right would later be replaced by a white carafe, which gives greater prominence to the young woman. The entire scene is bathed in a warm orange light, cast by a suspension lamp suggested by a few pencil lines at the top of the image. The most surprising aspect of this watercolour is the male figure sketched in on the far left, whose identity remains unknown: is he the composer Terrasse, or Bonnard himself? The painter still had to experiment with the effects that the colours would produce

THE NEO-IMPRESSIONIST TEMPTATION Whereas in his earlier preparatory studies Bonnard had used flat tints and sinuous lines, at this point he began to construct his painting using a profusion of small touches of colour, like the Neo-Impressionists. Long undervalued by art historians, the influence of the technique developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac now appears to have been more significant than previously thought. It should not be forgotten that, under the aegis of the poet Gustave Kahn and the art critic Félix Fénéon, both of whom were great supporters of Neo-Impressionism, in 1891 the Nabis were included in an exhibition of Impressionist and Symbolist works in Saint-Germain-enLaye. From 1892 onwards, they also exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, created by Seurat and his friends in 1884 to defend their new approach to painting. Although Maurice Denis and Vuillard were the Nabis who most 58

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admired Neo-Impressionism, Étude pour ‘Le Corsage à carreaux’ shows that Bonnard was not unaware of its formal potential: all the elements in the final composition vibrate with luminous colour, enhanced further by the small juxtaposed touches applied in the ferment of creation. He even used the support he had left almost bare, covered simply with a grey-white preparation, to represent certain motifs, such as Andrée’s face. What we see here is no longer the figurative use of colour but the formal logic developed by the Fauves. Furthermore, Bonnard executed his painting without the aid of any underlying drawing, like those painted by André Derain and Henri Matisse in the years 1904–05. Bonnard then abandoned the peripheral motifs in the previous watercolour: the figure of the man disappeared, and the framing became tighter, which he bordered with a black line as though it could better restrain the expansion of the colours. Bonnard was acting here like a photographer who crops the shots on his contact sheet. More developed than the other motifs, the cat has almost become the focal point of the composition. The lines of Baudelaire’ s poem Le Chat come to mind: Seraphic cat, singular cat, / In whom, as in an angel, all is / As subtle as harmonious! [...] A familiar figure in the place; / He presides, judges, inspires / Everything within his province; / Perhaps he is a fay, a god? 5 The last two versions of Le Corsage à carreaux [7 & 8, overleaf] follow the composition of the painting exhibited; in them, Bonnard narrowed the framing further, almost adopting the vertical format of the kakemono. Although he reverted to a more Japanizing style, playing with curves and counter-curves like a counterpoint musician, he retained the marvellous chromatic eloquence of the painting on display, which the Surrealist painter André Masson (1896–1987), who was very attentive to the work of the Nabis, later described as lyrical effusion.6

[7]

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REFERENCES 1. On this point, see the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Entre chiens & chats, Bonnard et l’animalité’, Le Cannet, Musée Bonnard, 2 July – 6 November 2016. 2. Although the painting belonged to Andrée and Claude Terrasse, it was their son who sold it to the museum. See Bernard Dorival, ‘Le Corsage à carreaux et les japonismes de Bonnard’, La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, no. 1 (1969), pp. 22–24. 3. Ursula Perruchi-Petri, Die Nabis und Japan (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1976). 4. Quoted in the cat. of the ‘Bonnard’ exhibition, Zurich, Kunsthaus, 14 December 1984 – 10 March 1985, p. 82. 5. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, Spleen et idéal, poem no. LI (1857). Eng. trans. by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954). 6. Quoted in Georges Charbonnier, Le Monologue du peintre, I (Paris: Julliard, 1959), pp. 190–91.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Unknown photographer, Andrée Bonnard (c. 1900) (private collection) [2]. Pierre Bonnard, Andrée Bonnard et ses chiens (1890), oil on canvas, 180 × 80 cm (private collection) [3]. Bonnard, Andrée et son chat, Carnet de dessins / folio no.49 (1890–91), graphite, pen and ink on paper, 13.2 × 20 cm (private collection) [4]. Bonnard, Femme au chien (1891), oil on canvas, 40.6 × 32.4 cm (Williamstown, Ma, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) [5]. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Tokiwa Gozen, the Mistress of Minamoto no Yoshitone, in a Kabuki Scene, coloured woodcut, 35.5 × 24.5 cm (private collection, former Pierre Bonnard collection) [6]. Bonnard, Etude pour ‘Le Corsage à carreaux’ (1892), pencil, pen and ink, watercolour on paper (private collection) [7]. Bonnard, Le Corsage à carreaux (1892), oil on canvas, 61 × 33 cm (collection of Spencer and Marlene Hays, promised to the Musée d’Orsay) [8]. Bonnard, Le Corsage à carreaux (1892), oil on canvas, 61 × 33 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

[8]

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MAURICE DENIS 1870–1943 In 1888, Maurice Denis began studies at the Académie Julian with Ker-Xavier Roussel and Édouard Vuillard, both of whom he had met while at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. Striking up friendships with Pierre Bonnard and Paul Ranson, the five formed the Nabi group the following year, for which Denis would be both the spokesman and the theoretician. On 23 and 30 August 1890 – the year he first took part in the Salon des Indépendants – Denis explained his credo in the review Art et Critique: ‘Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of some sort – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, put together in a certain order’. A champion of synthetism and mellow colours, the artist, nicknamed by his friends ‘the Nabi of the beautiful icons’, painted decorative panels for such influential people as the composer Ernest Chausson and the parliamentary deputy Denys Cochin, as his list of contacts had grown since he began frequenting the salon of the painter Henry Lerolle (1848–1925), whom he had met in 1891. There he met Renoir and Degas, as well as the authors Paul Claudel, Stéphane Mallarmé, André Gide and Paul Valéry, and the musicians Vincent d’Indy and Claude Debussy. Lerolle also introduced him to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. In 1912, he converted a former hospital in Saint-Germainen-Laye into a studio he called Le Prieuré (The Priory), which he decorated on the theme of Saint Martha, in celebration of his wife Marthe, who died in 1919. That same year, Denis founded the Ateliers d’art sacré with the painter Georges Desvallières, where he continued the teaching vocation he had begun at the Académie Ranson in 1908. Beginning in 1940, Denis sympathised with the Vichy regime and was consequently appointed chairman of the Comité d’organisation professionnelle des arts graphiques et plastiques. He passed away in 1943 after being involved in a road accident.

MAURICE DENIS

LE CHEVAL BLANC 1894 gouache on paper laid on canvas 55 1/8 × 33 1/2 in / 140 × 85 cm monogrammed and dated right ‘MAUD / 94’ PROVENANCE The Estate of Maurice Denis Collection Anne-Marie Poncet-Denis, Vich (the artist’s daughter) [Private collection] Galerie Malingue, Paris Private collection

EXHIBITIONS ‘Exposition des Fioretti ou Petites fleurs de saint François’, galerie Druet, Paris, 22 May–3 June 1911 ‘Exposition 1er groupe, MM. Maurice Denis, Hermann-Paul, Pierre Laprade’, Galerie E. Druet, Paris, 27 November–9 December 1911 ‘Maurice Denis, Genève et le Chablais’, Maison des Arts et des Loisirs, Thonon, France, January–March 1971, cat. no.12 ‘Maurice Denis 1870–1943’, Musée des BeauxArts, Lyon, 29 September–18 December 1994; touring to Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, 22 January–2 April 1995; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 21 April–18 June 1995; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 7 July–17 September 1995, catalogue no.237 (repro. in colour p.334)

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LITERATURE Nabi 1888–1900, Kunsthaus, Zurich and national du Grand Palais, Paris, 1993, cat. no.50.2, p.170 (repro. in b&w) This work is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity, dated 23 December 2025 and signed by Marie-Claire Rodriguez on behalf of Claire Denis, the artist’s granddaughter. It is registered in the Maurice Denis archive under the indexing number 894.5101 and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Maurice Denis, initiated by his son Dominique Denis and continued by Claire Denis, assisted by Fabienne Stahl.

68

THE ONLY MATERIAL IN PAINTING IS LIGHT This monumental and remarkable gouache combines aspects of medieval art with influences of Japonisme. It is a design for a stained-glass window and the result of an unexpected collaboration that represents a milestone in the history of art. Everything began with Siegfried Bing (1838– 1905) [1], who arrived in Paris in 1854 from Hamburg to work with his father, a ceramics manufacturer. Wishing to develop his business by importing objets d’art from Asia, in 1871 Bing opened his own shop in Paris, then, in order to broaden and refine his knowledge, he made two trips to China and Japan, in 1875 and 1880. A discerning collector, he moved in circles of historians passionate about Asian art, and had social relations with the Goncourt brothers, Louis Gonse, Philippe Burty and Roger Marx. Soon after he launched the review Le Japon Artistique (1888–91), which enthralled many young artists, including the Nabis, who hung its colour illustrations on the walls of their studios. Bing also lent numerous works to the large ‘Exposition de la gravure japonaise’ (Exhibition of Japanese Prints) held at the École des Beaux-Arts in spring 1890.

[2]

the development of the decorative arts. His meeting there with Louis Comfort Tiffany proved a revelation, and, on his return, he took the decision to open a gallery under the name ‘L’Art Nouveau’ [2], which he set up on the corner of Rue de Provence and Rue Chauchat, just behind the Hôtel Drouot. He initially commissioned the interior design from the Belgian architect Victor Horta but, following differences of opinion between the two, he passed the order to the French architect Louis Bonnier. Inside, the objects imported from Asia were displayed in glass cases and were set opposite contemporary creations, such as Neo-Impressionist paintings by Paul Signac, Théo Van Rysselberghe and Henri-Edmond Cross, and Symbolist works by William Degouve de Nuncques, Eugène Carrière and Jacques-Émile Blanche. But it was the Nabis who took pride of place, notably through an exceptional commission for stained-glass windows.

[1]

However, his dream lay in another direction: he wanted to create a fusion between the art of the Far East and emerging contemporary creation. At the instigation of Henri Roujon, the director of the École des Beaux-Arts, in 1893 Bing left for the United States – specifically to visit Chicago, where a major World’s Fair was being held – to study 69

LE CHEVAL BLANC (PROJET DE VITRAIL)

process is a secret they are unwilling to reveal. Do you want to come and see this? It might interest you. Several of us have arranged to meet on Friday around 3pm in my studio. Come along, it’s you and Bonnard who would probably be the most interested.1

‘THE ONLY MATERIAL IN PAINTING IS LIGHT’ The circumstances of the commission are known to us thanks to a letter written by Édouard Vuillard to Maurice Denis, dated 30 May 1894: My dear friend, here is a proposal from Ibels. He has made the acquaintance of Bing, the dealer of curiosities who, to assist artistes-décorateurs, would like to sell in France a special coloured glass which can be given, it would appear, all kinds of colours and gradations in the same tint while remaining transparent. He has some samples of this glass at his home and some articles produced by artists in that country (they are Americans). Ibels has told him about us and Bing is expecting us so that he can show us the ten samples; he would undertake to have our designs executed by others because the actual manufacturing

Probably in an effort to accustom the French public with Tiffany’s new type of glass, on 2 June 1894 Bing supported the purchase of a stained-glass window decorated with an almost abstract image of an assortment of leaves [3]. During the same period, Bing ordered a series of cartoons for stainedglass windows from the Nabis without insisting on any particular theme: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec created a circus scene,

[3]

[4]

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Papa Chrysanthème (Philadelphia, Museum of Art), Félix Vallotton a scene of Parisiennes (private collection) and Ker-Xavier Roussel Au Jardin (Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art). Denis designed four scenes: Le Bateau, Femmes au ruisseau [4], Vierge aux rosiers, and this Cheval Blanc (1894) [p.66]. The stages involved in the production of the windows are now well known to us from Denis’ private correspondence; for example, a letter from Siegfried Bing to Denis, dated 30 October 1894, informs us that the cartoons were about to be sent:

For Gustave Geffroy: […] Tiffany’s sumptuous and deeply colourful stained-glass windows, made from designs by Vallotton, ToulouseLautrec, Séruzier [sic], Maurice Denis, Vuillard, Ibels, Isaac, Bonnard, Roussel, Ramon, Besnard, a whole group of artists who have found in this medium a superb means to apply their conceptions of lines and colours.4 As for Jacques-Émile Blanche, he considered it the ideal realisation for the Nabis’ decorative aesthetic:

In the next few days, I shall send a large number of cartoons for stainedglass windows to America, and I would be very pleased if yours, on which I place the greatest importance, could be included in this shipment.2

[…] They have everything required to succeed: acute understanding of the line that they distort and reform into arabesques; harmony between the figure and the landscape, treated more or less in the same way, as though geographically; a fervent preference for large and intense flat tints, with something very dynamic in the stillness that nonetheless surrounds the figures, and often a strong heraldic quality given to their more unrefined models.5

A letter dated 12 March 1895 tells us that the windows were in the process of being made, while another, posted in late April, asks Denis for a poster, which was ultimately produced by Félix Vallotton. UNANIMOUS ACCLAIM

This enthusiasm was no doubt inspired by the near-miraculous synthesis achieved in these windows by Denis and the Nabis, between their aesthetic principles and the decorative demands of the stained-glass technique. The tall trees that traverse the Cheval blanc are inspired by those in his Paysage aux arbres verts (1893) [5, overleaf], their sinuous forms contributing to create the same fabled atmosphere. What revelation are we about to witness? Of what is the horse a symbol? A tender declaration from Denis to Marthe, his beloved? What journeys do the boats in the background encourage us to imagine? Like Maurice Maeterlinck, whom he greatly admired, Denis preferred to suggest than to declare, thus leaving the viewer to dream unhindered. From a formal perspective, while the Cheval blanc is decidedly a fruit of Art Nouveau culture, it is also tinged with a Symbolist sentiment that would influence Wassily Kandinsky’s equestrian scenes in the years 1914–1917.

The stained-glass windows, which were displayed at the Champ de Mars from 25 April 1895 as part of the ‘Exposition nationale des Beaux-Arts’ under numbers 384 to 394, met with great success. For the poet Émile Verhaeren, a strong defender of new painting: The idea to give [the Nabis] the task of designing stained-glass cartoons was indeed a happy one. Mr Tiffany, using his glass of velvety colours – so pleasing to the eye, so warm and rich – has created a splendid set. One dreams of the charm of these radiant windows in the intimacy of the home, bringing their exuberant gaiety and their wondrous glow to the monotony of daily life.3

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The histories of the stained-glass windows have remained shrouded: Moisson Fleurie by Ranson was exhibited in Dresden in 1897, then in London and Edinburgh in 1899, before all trace of it was lost – like those of Ibels, Vallotton and Sérusier. Only Bonnard’s Maternité was purchased by a leading Parisian gallery, while Au Jardin (1894) by Ker-Xavier Roussel was acquired by Vicki and Roger Sant before passing into the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.6

AN EXCEPTIONAL EVENT… SHROUDED IN MYSTERY! The stained-glass windows were installed in Siegfried Bing’s gallery in December 1895. However, with the exception of ToulouseLautrec’s, which was placed above the secondary entrance door on Rue de Provence, we have no photographic evidence of the other windows installed [6, 7].

[5]

Were they placed in front of existing windows or illuminated artificially? And which of the four cartoons proposed by Denis was chosen for creation in glass? Here too, mystery remains. The only certainty is that a window with the title Paysage was exhibited at the Champ de Mars with number 391. But which cartoon does Paysage correspond to? In reality, the radical modernity of the preparatory drawings – and even more so of the stained glass admired by aesthetes – was spurned by collectors. In the pavilion he installed at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Bing settled for a more restrained decorative scheme – in which the prevailing motif was the flowing lines of Eugène Gaillard and the interlacing motifs of Eugène Colonna – rather than the avant-garde spirit of the Nabis.

[6]

Perhaps one day a miracle will come to pass, reviving that magical moment in the history of art, evinced, for Maurice Denis at least, by the gouache Cheval blanc. REFERENCES 1. Paris, Archives Salomon, quoted in Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Vuillard. Le Regard innombrable, Catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, vol. I (Paris/ Milan: Wildenstein Institute/Skira, 2003), p.428. 2. These letters, written by Siegfried Bing or his assistant M. Morot, can be consulted online on the site of the Archives Départementales des Yvelines, under the heading

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MAURICE DENIS “Archives patrimoniales du Musée départemental Maurice Denis”, under the classification numbers 166J 5 / Ms 12358, Ms 12359, Ms 12360, Ms 12361 (https://archives.yvelines.fr/ rechercher/archives-en-ligne/correspondances-du-museedepartemental-maurice-denis). 3. Émile Verhaeren, “Le Salon du Champs-de-March”, L’Art Moderne (2 June 1895), pp.172-73. 4. Gustave Geffroy, “Salon de 1895, Au Champ-de-March et aux Champs-Élysées, Les objets d’art”, La Vie Artistique (Paris: E. Dentu, 1895), p.305. 5. Jacques-Émile Blanche, “Les Objets d’art. I. – Au Salon du Champs-de-March”, La Revue Blanche (15 May 1895), pp.466-67. 6. On this, see the exhibition catalogue Bonnard to Vuillard. The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life. The Nabi Collection of Vicki and Roger Sant, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 26 October 2019–26 January 2020, p.158.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Unknown photographer, Siegfried Bing, Louis Gonse, Mme Koechlin, the son of Louis Gonse, Mme Gonse (1899) (Krafft Archives, Société des Amis du Vieux Reims, Musée Le Vergeur, Reims) [2]. Unknown photographer, View of the Gallery ‘L’Art Nouveau’ (c.1895) (private collection) [3]. Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stained-Glass Window

(1894), glass and lead, 110 × 70 cm (Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inv. 7972) [4]. Maurice Denis, Femmes au ruisseau (1894), gouache on paper mounted on canvas, 143 × 71 cm (Saint-Germain-enLaye, Musée Maurice Denis)

[5]. Maurice Denis, Paysage aux arbres verts or Les hêtres de Kerduel (1893), oil on canvas, 46 × 43 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) woodcut, 35.5 × 24.5 cm (private collection, former Pierre Bonnard collection) [6]. Unknown photographer, View of the Gallery ‘L’Art Nouveau’, with the Stained-Glass Window by Toulouse Lautrec (c.1895) (private collection). [7]. Henri de Toulouse Lautrec and Louis Comfort Tiffany, Au nouveau cirque, Papa chrysanthème (1895), marbled

and printed glass, called “verres américains”, 120 × x 85 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

[7]

MAURICE DENIS

PORTRAIT DE MARTHE AU TABLIER ROUGE (ESQUISSE) c. 1892 oil on card 7 3/8 × 5 3/4 in / 18.5 × 14.5 cm signed lower left with the artist’s initials ‘MAUD’; figurative sketch present on the underside of backboard PROVENANCE Collection Bernadette Denis (the artist’s daughter); thence by descent to JeanBaptiste Denis (the artist’s grandson) and subsequent family collections EXHIBITIONS ‘Maurice Denis’, Galerie Berès, Paris, 4 June – 22 July 1992, no. 19 (repro. in b&w) This work is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity, dated 30 August 2024 and signed on behalf of Claire Denis, the artist’s granddaughter. It is registered in the Maurice Denis archive under the indexing number 892.0016 and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Maurice Denis, initiated by his son Dominique Denis and continued by Claire Denis, assisted by Fabienne Stahl.

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MYSTERY IN PLAIN SIGHT dreamily into the distance. Does this mean that Denis successively painted his fiancée in different settings and at different times of the day? Did these different scenes really exist or were they the painter’s invention?

At first glance, Portrait de Marthe au tablier rouge (esquisse) (c. 1892) [p.74] has all the characteristics of a genre scene: a young woman dressed in a checked blouse and an orange-red apron is seated before a window, through which a large tree and a few houses can be made out. As she looks at us, she lets a napkin slip gently from her hands onto her lap. We are familiar with the elements in this composition: the setting is Saint-Germain-enLaye and the hills of Fourqueux are visible in the distance. This is the town where Maurice Denis and Marthe Meurier met in 1891 and got engaged a year later. Between their engagement and their wedding on 12 June 1893, the young couple experienced hopes and doubts as the opposition of their parents to the marriage grew. During that year, Denis painted a dazzling series of portraits of his fiancée, of which this is one. Denis settled on Marthe’s slightly upright pose in an early preparatory watercolour [1]. Her head faces slightly to the left and she already has a curl of hair hanging down her forehead. The background, however, is very different: two large flat fields of colour – one light, one dark – indicate that the scene is set in an interior. Denis’ final painting [2] shows Marthe seated on a sofa as she gazes

[2]

MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN DREAMS After Denis met Marthe in autumn 1890, he wrote constantly about his happiness in a journal he had kept since the age of 14: ‘Angels are women who hold me by the hand’. This poetic periphrasis expresses the symbolic process by which Denis would record the progressive realisation of this nascent love affair. It was through a sort of prose poem Denis called ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, which he wrote between 30 June and 29 December 1891, that the artist put his feelings into words: ‘One feels more beautiful when one loves. Attitudes are easy and chaste. Life becomes precious, discreet: sunsets have the mellowness of old paintings. But it is actually the heart that is beating too fast’.1 In Jeunes filles qu’on dirait des anges (1892) [3], as in certain paintings by the English

[1]

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was singing that song Entends-tu pas la nuit d’étoiles that I thought I alone loved, but that she loved too! That was how I discovered the happiness I’ve found in her ever since: her discreet love and her taste for beautiful things in the midst of humble domestic tasks.3 Denis paints a scene of everyday life in which reality is transfigured by a literary imagination in which the two lovers are steeped. In Marthe symboliste [4] or Portrait de jeune fille dans un décor de soir (both 1892) she wears her long hair in precisely the same fashion as in Portrait de Marthe au tablier rouge (esquisse), gently undulating as it descends from her left shoulder to her waist. It is not inconceivable that this is a reference to Mélisande’s golden hair into which Pelléas sinks his face. Remember that the production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, for which Denis and the Nabis created the sets in 1893, at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, was published in 1892. In Marthe symboliste, as is the case

[3]

Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), we feel we are seeing a triple portrait of Marthe. Dressed in the same checked blouse, like in some of Bonnard’s contemporary portraits of his sister Andrée, Marthe seems an apparition. The intensity of Denis’ passion for Marthe made her, in his eyes, almost unreal. He wrote in his Journal: ‘She is more beautiful. SHE IS MORE BEAUTIFUL than all images, than all representations, than all subjective efforts! She is outside of me, it is not me who created her. The embrace of our hands last night is more valid than all metaphysics to attest the reality of things’.2 REALITY TRANSFORMED Considered from this viewpoint, the content of this painting can be seen in a new light; Denis did not simply represent Marthe as sometimes performing trivial gestures and sometimes as a Symbolist icon, his work is an expression that the marvellous is an integral part of our everyday reality. This is precisely the meaning of these lines written in his Journal: The evening in September when I received her into my heart for the first time, the evening when she came into my life [...] She was going to do some ironing: she was fanning the stove where the irons were being heated. I can still see how she was standing. And at the same time, she was singing. I’d never heard her deep voice. She

[4]

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PORTRAIT DE MARTHE AU TABLIER ROUGE

It is difficult to have an idea of the precise chronology of these works as Denis’ creative dynamic was never linear. In this series he simultaneously developed multiple symbolic possibilities offered by a single motif, and, enthralled, we observe as an infinite love crystallises before our eyes and, even rarer, takes material form in a series of paintings. As Denis said, ‘Dream will become reality’.6 REFERENCES 1. Maurice Denis, ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, 30 September [1891], Journal, Tome I (1884–1904) (Paris: La Colombe, 1957), p.852. 2. Ibid. p.86 3. Denis, ‘Wednesday 16 November [1892]’, Journal, Tome I (1884–1904), p. 97. 4. Denis, ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, October [1891], ibid., pp.86–87. 5. Denis, ‘Les Amours de Marthe’, Friday 23 October [1891], ibid., p.87. 6. Denis, ‘28 November’ [1892], ibid., p. 98.

[5]

here, a large tree spreads its foliage in the background.

ILLUSTRATIONS

ON A PALE SILVER SOFA

[1]. Maurice Denis, Study for ‘Marthe au divan’ or ‘Marthe au tablier orange’(1892), watercolour on paper, 31.2 × 26 cm (former Henri-Marie Petiet collection) [2]. Denis, Marthe au divan or Marthe au tablier orange (1892), oil on cardboard, 38 × 28 cm (private collection)

In the beautiful love affair between Denis and Marthe, music and literature were omnipresent. Denis wrote: ‘We read things from the Song of Songs, and a poem by Edgar Poe and even by Baudelaire and Mallarmé [...] She read La Princesse Maleine until two o’clock in the morning. She is pale, on edge, caressing’,4 and then added, ‘I said to her (on the pale silver sofa where we were alone together): your neck is like the Tower of David, ringed with shields’.5 The pale silver sofa, seen in Marthe au divan or Marthe au tablier rouge (1892) [2], was the setting for the pair’s first emotions as they read poetry together at night. Denis used the motif one last time in Sur un canapé d’argent pâle [5], Plate X in his series Amour, published by Ambroise Vollard in 1899.

[3]. Denis, Jeunes filles qu’on dirait des anges (c. 1892) (private collection) [4]. Denis, Marthe symboliste or Portrait de jeune fille dans un décor de soir (1892), oil on canvas, 130 × 71 cm (Niigata, Niigata Prefectural National Museum) [5]. Denis, Sur le canapé d’argent pâle (1892–1899), plate X from the Amour series, colour lithograph on paper, 53 × 41 cm (private collection). Published by Ambroise Vollard in 1899

The portraits of Marthe painted by Denis during 1892 are like the pieces of a loving jigsaw. 78

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AU PONT DU NORD UN BAL ÉTAIT DONNÉ 1894 watercolour, ink, graphite and pen on paper 13 3/4 × 29 3/4 in / 35 × 75.5 cm signed and dated lower right ‘MAUD 94’; titled on two banners ‘AU PONT DU NORD / UN BAL ÉTAIT DONNÉ’ PROVENANCE Private collection Ader-Picard-Tajan, Paris: 19 March 1983 (lot no. 34) Collection Sam Josefowitz Christie’s, Paris: 2 December 2008 (lot no. 7) Galerie Hopkins, Paris Private collection EXHIBITIONS

LITERATURE

‘The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde’, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ, 4 December 1988 – 14 February 1989; touring to Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 11 March – 21 May 1989, cat. no.53, pl.12 (repro. in colour), pp. 39–40, p.78

Claire Fréches-Thory and Antoine Terrasse, Les Nabis (Paris: Flammarion, 1990) (repro. in colour, title page and p.161) Jean-Paul Bouillon, Maurice Denis (Geneva: Skira, 1993), p.65 (repro. in colour) This painting is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity, dated 4 July 2023 and signed on behalf of Claire Denis, the artist’s granddaughter. It is registered in the Maurice Denis archive and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Maurice Denis, initiated by his son Dominique Denis and continued by Claire Denis, assisted by Fabienne Stahl.

‘Nabis 1988–1900’, Kunsthaus, Zurich, 28 May – 15 August 1993; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2 touring to 1 Sept. 1993 – 3 January 1994, cat. no. 193, p. 372 (repro. in colour)

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MUSIC BEFORE ALL ELSE like Au Pont du Nord un bal était donné, are very well finished. Originally designed to be used with paraffin lamps, lampshades began to interest artists in the 1890s and 1900s as electricity was introduced more widely, as attested by the works of Antonin Daum and the artists of the Nancy School.

Indisputably one of the most accomplished watercolours of the 1890s, Au Pont du Nord un bal était donné (1894) [p. 80–81] demonstrates Maurice Denis’ love of the decorative arts and the way in which he gave great symbolic value to everyday objects. ART IN AN EVERYDAY WORLD Like William Morris and the English PreRaphaelites, the Nabis had the goal of renewing the decorative arts with the aim of turning our everyday surroundings into a total work of art. Every object, from a door handle to a dessert table, a carpet to wallpaper, had to be artistic. It was with this in mind that in 1891 Pierre Bonnard entered the competition at the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs to design a dining room. In a more theoretical perspective, in 1892 Denis argued for an alliance between art and crafts, even between artists and the business world: ‘Where is the businessman willing to enlist the invaluable help of these decorators, to take a little of the time they devote to making many paintings?’1

[1]

JAPONISME

Without waiting for actual commissions, Denis began to produce a series of designs: between 1891 and 1898, decorations for fans, some of which make direct reference to his relationship with Marthe Meurier; and wallpaper designs,2 including Les Colombes, Les Trains and Les Bateaux Jaunes, all conceived in 1893. Only Les Bateaux Roses (1893) was printed by L’Estampe Originale, directed by André Marty.

Making skilful use of flat tints and perspective, and the contrast between straight and sinuous lines, here Denis takes inspiration from Japanese graphic works to create a rhythmic image. The influence of Japonisme, fashionable in Paris following its presentation at the Expositions Universelles (1867, 1878, 1889), is seen here in several instances. Firstly in the Japanese lanterns lighting the bridge, a motif Denis had already used in Fête de noces sous les lanternes and in Erlkönig (1893). Such lanterns had been installed by James McNeill Whistler in his Peacock Room (1877), while Henri Rivière used them as a repetitive motif in the scenes he created [2, overleaf] for the production La Tentation de SaintAntoine, presented at Le Chat Noir theatre in 1887. Similar lanterns graced the cabaret Le Divan Japonais, by the poet Jehan Sarrazin, which ran from 1883 to 1892 on the Butte Montmartre. Secondly we see Japanese influence in the decorative motifs on the dancers’

Between 1893 and 1899, Denis created in partnership some fifteen lampshade designs; Fête de noces sous les lanternes (1893), today in the Sant Collection, promised to the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC [1]; Erlkönig (The Alder King) (17 November 1893) based on Goethe’s poem set to music by Franz Schubert; this piece – Au Pont du Nord un bal était donné; Marthe et Noële aux brebis (1896), Marthe et Noële aux marronniers (1896); Chevaux de bois (1900); and Le Trottoir roulant (c. 1900). Some have come down to us as sketches, while others, 85

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top hat, takes the girl out in a boat that overturns when part of the bridge collapses: Upon the bridge of Nantes, a dance is held / Fair Hélène longs to join the joy dispelled / ‘O dearest mother, wilt thou let me go?’ / ‘Nay, nay, my daughter, thou shalt not do so’ / She goes up to her chamber, tears begin to flow / Her brother comes, in a boat gilded bright / ‘What troubles thee, dear sister, on this night?’ / ‘Alas, dear brother, I shan’t join the dance!’ / ‘Oh, fear not, sister, I shall thee advance’ / ‘Take thy white dress and thy belt all of gold’ / Thrice she did turn... the bridge no longer holds / Fair Hélène into the Loire swiftly falls / ‘Alas! dear brother, dost thou hear my calls?’ / ‘Nay, nay, dear sister, I shall save thee yet!’ / Into the waters, both their fates are set / The bells do toll, with sorrow deeply met / ‘What makes the bells to toll so loud and clear? / Tis for Hélène and thy son held most dear / Behold the fate of children, stubborn still ’3

[2]

dresses, which seem to have been taken directly from the plates published in Siegfried Bing’s review Japon Artistique (1888–91); and lastly, in the elegant winding lines Denis uses to depict swirling water. Japan did not provide the only influence here, however: the two cartouches framing the boat, which bear the title of the song that gives the image its name, are explicit references to the Middle Ages, of which Denis was a great enthusiast. They suggest two lines by Paul Verlaine from the collection Sagesse (1880), for which Denis composed illustrations between 1889 and 1893. The meticulous precision with which he drew his motifs is reminiscent of the art of medieval enamelling.

BECOMING HIMSELF

MUSIC BEFORE ALL ELSE Music had already been the central theme of Erlkönig, based by Denis on Schubert’s Lied sung by his beloved Marthe. Denis had numerous ties with music; he was a close friend of Ernest Chausson, who bought many of his works, also of Claude Debussy, whose score of Pelléas et Mélisande he illustrated in 1894, and of Vincent d’Indy. The musical reference in Au Pont du Nord un bal était donné is not to classical music but an anonymous folk song. As often occurs with such songs, several versions exist due to regional variations and adaptations. In the original version, the story is related to the bridge in Nantes where a mother refuses to let her daughter, called Hélène, go dancing. In defiance of this injunction, Hélène’s brother, here seen wearing a 86

Faithful to the text, Denis includes all the details in the song: while the mother reiterates her command with a gesture on the far right of the composition, to her left men and women in festive dress are dashed into the water. Created in the early days of his marriage, just after their 1893 honeymoon in Brittany, the subject matter is far from insignificant and should be understood not in its literal sense but in its symbolism. Remember that in the early days of his relationship with Marthe, Denis was subject to doubt: would his love for his sweetheart be compatible with his artistic and spiritual commitment? In this context, the fact of the couple being thrown into the river must be understood as the materialisation of the possible perils that threatened Maurice and Marthe. Traditional places of socialisation, in the 19th century dances and balls were looked on with suspicion by the religious authorities. However, the story related by this song should be understood as a metaphor for a passage, a bridge between

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an earlier life and a future existence. And, in fact, 1894 was the year that Denis resolved the existential questions that had beset him and gave himself permission to be himself, so that he might offer his beloved a life of fulfilment. From this perspective, the golden boat, depicted fancifully as if it had come out a dream, becomes the symbol of this journey towards a new life full of hope. REFERENCES 1. Pierre Louis [Maurice Denis], ‘Pour les jeunes peintres’, Art et critique, no. 90 (20 February 1892), pp. 94–95. 2. See the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Bonnard to Vuillard, The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life, The Nabi Collection of Vicki and Roger Sant’ (Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection, 26 October 2019 – 26 January 2020), pp. 136–37. 3. See Bernard Cousin, L’Enfant et la Chanson, une histoire de la chanson d’enfant (Paris: Éditions Messidor, 1988).

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Maurice Denis, Fête de noces sous les lanternes (1893) (detail), ink, watercolour and gouache on paper, 17.2 × 71.7 cm (Roger and Vicky Sant Collection) [2]. Henri Rivière, scene design for La Tentation de SaintAntoine, presented at Le Chat Noir theatre, December 1887

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CHARLES FILIGER

CHARLES FILIGER 1863–1928 Charles Filiger was introduced to drawing as a child by his father, who worked as a draughtsman at the Thann fabric company. After attending a Jesuit school, in 1880 Filiger decided to study the decorative arts and, in 1887, moved to Paris to follow the courses at the Atelier Colarossi on Rue de la Grande-Chaumière. He visited Pont-Aven frequently between 1889 and 1892, and became friends with Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier while all three were staying in Le Pouldu, at the Buvette de la Plage belonging to Marie Henry (called Marie Poupée). Filiger spent the rest of his life in Brittany, sometimes visiting Paris to see his patron Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, who for ten years from 1890 financed him with a monthly stipend of 100 francs, in addition to the purchase of any paintings, of which de la Rochefoucauld had first choice. Although Filiger received money from his family after 1900, when the support of de la Rochefoucauld ceased, he suffered serious financial and physical hardship. Loneliness, worsening health (he was neurasthenic) and alcoholism obliged him to continually change boarding houses. Between 1905 and 1910 he was confined twice in hospices. Filiger survived on sales of his paintings and pottery decorations. He broke off relations with his brother Paul in 1910, shortly before the latter’s death. In 1914, he was taken into the hotel in Trégunc run by the Le Guellec family, who looked after Filiger until his death in 1928. After death Filiger became unknown until his rediscovery by André Breton in 1948, who subsequently took great pleasure in tracking down and obtaining the artist’s work, resulting in a rare and unique collection.

CHARLES FILIGER

LAMENTATION SUR LE CHRIST MORT c. 1895 gouache and gold paint on paper 13 × 14 in / 33.1 × 35.5 cm signed lower left ‘FILIGER’ PROVENANCE Piccadilly Gallery, London Robert Walker, Paris Arthur G. Altschul, New York (1977) Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above 2003) Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Symbolists’, The Piccadilly Gallery, London, 1970, no. 27 (repro.) ‘French Symbolist Painters: Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon and their followers’, Hayward Gallery, London, 7 June – 23 July 1972; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 9 August – 17 September 1972, cat. no. 73, p. 51 (repro. in b&w) ‘El Simbolismo en la Pintura Francesca’, Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, October–November 1972; Museo de Arte Moderno, Barcelona, December 1972 – January 1973, cat. no.62, p. 64 ‘Filiger: Dessins, gouaches, aquarelles’, Musée départemental Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 14 November 1981 – 15 February 1982; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quimper, 5 March – 30 April 1982, cat. no. 64

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‘Charles Filiger’, Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg, 16 June – 2 September 1990, cat. no. 44, p. 216 ‘Le Cercle de Gauguin en Bretagne’, Musée de Pont-Aven, Pont-Aven, 25 June – 26 September 1994 ‘Filiger: curated by André Cariou’, Galerie Malingue, Paris, 27 March – 22 June 2019, cat. p. 62 (repro. in colour) LITERATURE John Milner, Symbolists and Decadents (London: Studio Vista/Dutton, 1971), p.63 (repro.) Philippe Julian, Les Symbolistes (Neuchâtel-Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts and Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1973), no.46, p.54 Virginia Lee-Kobler, Charles Filiger: Synthesist, Symbolist and Recluse (Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1981), no.61 Belinda Thompson, The Post Impressionists (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983), no.170 Jacob Mira, Filiger l’inconnu (Paris: Le Bâteau Lavoir, 1989), no.111 André Cariou, Filiger: Correspondance et sources anciennes (Châteaulin: Locus Solus, 2019), no.84 This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Charles Filiger currently in preparation by André Cariou.

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TÊTE DE CHRIST AUX CHEVEUX DE FLAMMES c. 1892 gouache and gold paint on card 8 7/8 × 7 3/8 in / 22.4 × 18.6 cm PROVENANCE Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, Paris (directly from the artist); thence by descent to Eugène de la Rochefoucauld (his son) Mira Jacob Arthur G. Altschul, New York (acquired December 1961) Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above in 2003) Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Gauguin og hans venner: En udstilling af malerne som danne de l’école de Pont-Aven’, Winkel & Magnussen, Copenhagen, 1956, no. 56 ‘The Nabis and Their Circle’, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, 14 November – 30 December 1962, cat. p. 142 ‘Neo-Impressionists and Nabis in the Collection of Arthur G. Altschul’, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 20 January – 14 March 1965, cat. no. 27, p. 74 (repro. in b&w p.76) ‘Il Sacro et il profano nell’arte dei simbolisti’, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, 1 June – August 1969, cat. no. 128, p. 120 (repro. in b&w)

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‘The Sacred and Profane in Symbolist Art’, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1–26 November 1969, cat. no. 107, p. 102 (repro.) ‘Filiger: Dessins, gouaches, aquarelles’, Musée départemental Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 14 November 1981 – 15 February 1982; touring to Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quimper, 5 March – 30 April 1982, cat. no. 23, p. 46 (p. 47 repro. in b&w) ‘Charles Filiger’, Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg, 16 June – 2 September 1990, cat. no. 21 ‘Filiger: curated by André Cariou’, Galerie Malingue, Paris, 27 March – 22 June 2019, catalogue p. 40 (repro. in colour) LITERATURE The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin, vol.LI, no.4 (December 1962), p.142 Melvin Waldvogel, Art International VII/I (1963), p.55 Wladyslawa Jaworska, Paul Gauguin et l'école de Pont-Aven (Neuchâtel-Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts and Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1971), p.165 (repro.), p.260 Mira Jacob, Filiger l'inconnu (Paris: Le Bâteau Lavoir, 1989), no.74 André Cariou, Filiger: Correspondance et sources anciennes (Châteaulin: Locus Solus, 2019), no.53 This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Charles Filiger currently in preparation by André Cariou.

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SAINTE CÉCILE c.1892 gouache and gold paint on board 11 3/8 × 7 1/4 in / 28.8 × 18.4 cm signed lower right ‘FILIGER’ PROVENANCE Le Bateau-Lavoir, Paris Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucault, France Private collection (April 1984) Sotheby’s, New York: 11 November 2006 (lot no. 126) Private collection, Paris Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Charles Filiger’, Le Bateau Lavoir, Paris, 1989 ‘Charles Filiger’, Musée d’Art Moderne, Strasbourg, 16 June – 2 September 1990, cat. no. 160, p. 197 (repro. in colour p. 129) ‘Le Cercle de Gauguin en Bretagne’, Musée de Pont-Aven, Pont-Aven, 25 June – 26 September 1994 LITERATURE Mira Jacob, Filiger l'inconnu (Paris: Le Bâteau Lavoir, 1989), no.160, p.129 (repro.) André Cariou, Filiger. Correspondance et sources anciennes (Châteaulin: Locus Solus, 2019), no.72, p.119 (repro. in colour) This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Charles Filiger currently in preparation by André Cariou. 101

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NOTATION CHROMATIQUE 1905–18 watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper [double-sided] 9 5/8 × 10 1/2 in/24.4 × 26.7 cm initialled on side ‘CF’ PROVENANCE Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, Paris (directly from the artist) Collection Émile Bernard Clément Altarriba, Portugal Gérard Lévy Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Il Sacro e il profano nell’arte dei Simbolisti’, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin, June–August 1969, cat. no.135 (repro. in b&w p.127) ‘Charles Filiger’, l’Ancienne Boucherie – Historical Museum, Strasbourg, 16 June–2 September 1990, cat. no.67, fig.189, p.218, (repro. in colour p.212) [titled ‘Solar Figure no.3 / Chromatic Notations’] ‘L’aventure de Pont-Aven et Gauguin’, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, 2 April–22 June 2003; touring to Musée des BeauxArts, Quimper, 12 July–30 September 2003, cat. no.126 (repro. in colour p.339) This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Charles Filiger currently in preparation by André Cariou.

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FAMILLE DE PÊCHEURS 1894 gouache on card 11 1/4 × 8 in / 28.5 × 20.5 cm signed on artwork border lower left ‘FILIGER’ PROVENANCE Private collection, Brittany Yannick Doyen, Brittany Galerie Doyen, Brittany Galerie Laurentin, Paris (2005) Private collection, Paris Private collection This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the work of Charles Filiger currently in preparation by André Cariou.

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FAMILLE DE PÊCHEURS left is the same one as in Garçon debout3 and may be that of Joseph Pobal, a 13-year-old boy from Keraro whom Filiger met in 1893 and made several drawings of. The young woman had already been portrayed in La Sainte Famille (1890–92). The artist’s reuse and almost collage of figures is substantiated by contemporary accounts: in an unpublished manuscript, Maufra described how Filiger went about his compositions:

Hailing from Thann in Alsace, Charles Filiger studied at Colarossi’s studio in Paris before he met Gauguin, perhaps through the circle of Comte Antoine de La Rochefoucauld. In November 1893 he settled in Kersulé, a hamlet close to Le Pouldu in Brittany, which developed into an artistic centre after a number of painters left Pont-Aven following an influx of academic artists. While he was living in Kersulé, Filiger received a regular allowance from La Rochefoucauld. It was in Le Pouldu that Filiger was visited by Jan Verkade in 1892, and that Wladyslaw Slewinski rented a house where Rodéric O’Conor, Henri Moret and Armand Seguin came to join him. In May 1894, Filiger was visited by Gauguin in the company of Annah the Javanese, and in June he met the writer Alfred Jarry in Pont-Aven; the friendship they struck up was to prove decisive for Filiger, as their abundant correspondence bears out. Their letters inform us not only of the painter’s constant financial difficulties, but also about his plans and the works he produced. For example, in August 1894 he wrote to Jarry: ‘I have been working hard since I saw you. I’ve started a new panel, a ‘Breton family’, composed of larger figures than usual, and I’m shortly going to send it to Le Barc’.1 And on 30 July 1894, he announced to Jules Bois, director of the review Le Cœur, his plan to produce a large panel with the theme ‘A Fisherman’s Family’.

He worked slowly, making a thousand sketches, drawing little bits here and there, heads, hands, a leg, which he used to finish his tiny decorations, his naive, childlike compositions that were often interpretations of old idealised scenes.4 In which case, is ‘versions’ really the right word to describe his preparatory works or should we rather use ‘arrangements’, in the musical sense of the term, as Signac did when he numbered his works in ‘opuses’? The meaning of the scene is, however, equivocal and Filiger’s friend Alfred Jarry observed, not without humour, of Filiger’s Breton figures: Filiger, his resigned Bretons, oval almost lozenge-shaped, created for the torture from which they will not move, which will not alter these lepidopterans (I will find them much more beautiful crucified and – who knows? – they each bear the crucifixion at the heart of their immortally immobile face).5

Although the circumstances in which this composition was prepared are well known, it is more difficult to determine the order of the different preparatory works. Since the discovery of the gouache, four ‘versions’ of the composition have so far emerged: a study in blue gouache on tracing paper, a gouache in colour, a version that once belonged to the painter Rodéric O’Conor, and lastly the version exhibited, never previously published and one of the most complete.2 We do know, however, that this composition was noticed by critics and dealers at the time, and that the “Breton Family” version in the O’Conor collection was exhibited as number 71 at the 8th Exposition de Peintres Impressionnistes et Symbolistes at Le Barc de Boutteville.

While the figures in the scene are unquestionably Breton (the background shows the mouth of the River Laïta in Le Pouldu), they can also be viewed as sacred figures: the young woman as the Virgin, as suggested by her headscarf, and the Breton boys as Saints John the Baptist and Mark. The construction of the Famille de pêcheurs (1894) [p.110] is clearly derived from the formal solutions arrived at by the Pont-Aven School; the close framing and the faces in the foreground not fully depicted had already been seen in works by Anquetin and Émile Bernard in 1887 and 1888, and would appear again, for example, in Ranson’s Christ

Filiger made several preparatory studies for these gouaches; the head of the boy at bottom 112

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et Bouddha (1890). However, the scene’s immobility and atmosphere of silence and mystery are equally inherited from the art of the Italian Primitives, and Camille Mauclair was spot on when, reproving Filiger for his aesthetic passions, he identified his visual sources: ‘The way that Giotto draws a nose, that’s another thing Mr Filiger knows! As an artist, he’s smart, he goes to the right places’.6 The experimentation of the Pont-Aven School seems to mark the juncture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the simplified forms of the noses and eyes of Filiger’s figures are indisputably drawn from Cézanne and, more distantly, from medieval statuary, but equally undeniably lead to those of Picasso. REFERENCES 1. Letter from Charles Filiger to Alfred Jarry, dated ‘Pouldu mardi soir, août 94’ [Pouldu Tuesday evening, August 94], cited in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Charles Filiger 1863–1928’, Plougastel-Daoulas, Les Amis du Patrimoine de Plougastel, 1988, p.10. The reference is to the gallery Le Barc de Bouteville, where the exhibitions were of fundamental importance to the painters in the Pont-Aven School and the Nabis. 2. Filiger, Famille de pêcheurs (1894), gouache on tracing paper, 19.1 × 14 cm (private collection), reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘L’Aventure de Pont-Aven et Gauguin’, Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2 April–22 June 2003, ill. no.77, p.222. 2) Filiger, Famille de pêcheurs (1894), gouache on tracing paper, 19 × 14 cm (private collection), ibid., ill. no.78, p.222. 3) Filiger, Famille de pêcheurs (1894), gouache and gold on cardboard, 28 × 19.5 cm (private collection), ibid., no.73, pp.222-23. 3. Filiger, Garçon debout, gouache on cardboard, 38.5 × x 16.5 cm (private collection), reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Charles Filiger 1863–1928’, PlougastelDaoulas, Les Amis du Patrimoine de Plougastel, 1988, p.14. 4. Cited by François Bergot and Patrick Ramade in Bulletin des Amis du Musée de Rennes, special issue ‘Pont-Aven’, no.2 (summer 1978), p.25. 5. Cited in ‘L’Aventure de Pont-Aven et Gauguin’, op. cit., no.73, p.222. In summer 1894, Jarry began a study on Filiger’s work that was published in Mercure de France in September of that year. Jarry’s odd use of language uses the metaphor of butterflies or moths being pinned onto paper (the torture), from which they will not escape (‘not move’, to link with the notion of immobility). 6. Cited in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘L’Ecole de PontAven dans les collections publiques et privées de Bretagne’, Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 15 July–16 October 1978, n.p.

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PAUL RANSON 1861–1909 The son of the mayor of Limoges, Paul Ranson studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in the city before moving to Paris to study at the capital’s École des Arts Décoratifs. However, he left this new school in 1888 to attend the Académie Julian, where he remained until 1891. There he got to know Paul Sérusier, Henri Gabriel Ibels, Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis, with whom he formed the Nabis. Meetings of the group were held in his apartment, known as ‘Le Temple’, at 25 Boulevard du Montparnasse. In 1891, Ranson exhibited at the first annual Beaux-Arts exhibition in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, while also showing works alongside his companions at Le Barc de Boutteville gallery. Given the nickname ‘Nabi plus japonard que le nabi japonard’, he was above all a ‘painter-decorator’ who created panels, tapestries, wallpapers and stainedglass windows for collectors and manufacturers. He also formed a puppet theatre that performed in the salons of art patrons such as Coulon, Fontainas and Madame Straus, and he became a friend of the playwright Alfred Jarry. Between 1895 and 1903, Ranson devoted himself to tapestry-making, exhibiting cartoons and works of embroidery at the salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Suffering from financial difficulties and in poor health, in 1908 he opened the Académie Ranson with his wife to create extra income but died of typhoid the following year.

PAUL RANSON

LE GRAND TIGRE 1893 black Conté on paper 51 1/4 × 36 5/8 in / 130 × 93 cm signed lower right ‘P. Ranson’ PROVENANCE Paul Ranson – posthumous sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris: 7 June 1909 (lot no. 30 or 37) Jacques Rouché (director of the Paris Opera) (acquired from the above) Godillot collection, Paris Drouot, Paris: 27 November 1987 (lot no. 79) Galerie Hopkins Thomas, Paris Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Salon des Artistes Indépendants, 9th exhibition’, Grand Palais, Paris, 28 March – 30 April 1893, cat. no.1085 [titled ‘study for Le Tigre original print’] ‘Association for Art, 2nd exhibition’, Museum of Painting, Antwerp, 16 February – 16 March 1894, cat. no. 1 ‘La Libre Esthétique’, Palais des BeauxArts, Brussels, 24 February – 1 April 1898, cat. no. 296 ‘Die Nabis und Ihre Freunde’, Stadtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, 23 October 1963 – 6 January 1964, cat. no. 181 (repro. in b&w) ‘Paul-Elie Ranson’, Musée départemental Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 15 November 1997 – 16 February 1998, cat. no. 37 (repro. in colour) 123

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LITERATURE L’Art Moderne, 20 May 1893, p. 154 ‘La Décoration intérieure et les travaux féminins: La Tapisserie’, Maurice Pillard Verneuil, in Art et Décoration, vol. II, Librairie de l’Art et de la Décoration, Paris, 1897, p. 80 Agnès Humbert, Les Nabis et leur époque, 1888-1900 (Geneva: Éditions Pierre Callier, 1954), no.28 (repro. in b&w) Charles Chassé, Les Nabis et leurs temps (Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 1960) no.13 (repro. in b&w) [the glass screen; lists the piece as belonging to Michel Ranson, Paris] Agnès Humbert, Die Nabis und Ihre Epoche, 1888-1900 (Dresden: FundusBucher, 1967), no.28 (repro. in b&w) Patricia Eckert-Boyer, The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988), no.88 (not exhibited) Claire Fréches-Thory and Antoine Terrasse, Les Nabis (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), p.178 (repro. in b&w) Brigitte Ranson Bitker and Gilles Genty, Paul Ranson 1861-1909. Catalogue raisonné. Japonisme, Symbolisme, Art Nouveau (Paris: Somogy, 1999) no. 116, p. 140 (repro. in colour), repro. in colour on dust jacket

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A TIGER WITH A PROLIFIC LINEAGE That Le Grand Tigre (1893) [p. 122] was long the most celebrated of Ranson’s works is no doubt due to its extraordinary modernity. Resolutely Art Nouveau in style, it also heralded several powerful images during the 20th century, such as the jungle scenes painted by Henri Rousseau and the settings dreamed up by Al Dempster for Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967).

inspired by Ganku’s Tiger, published in an astonishing kakemono, or hanging scroll, format in Le Japon Artistique in February 1889 [1]. Ranson’s copies of Siegfried Bing’s Le Japon Artistique (1888–91), held in the Ranson family archive, reveal how often he used to leaf through them, and he even removed some of the plates so he could hang them on his studio walls.

PAUL RANSON, THE NABI ‘PLUS JAPONARD QUE LE NABI JAPONARD’

A MULTI–SOURCE MASTERPIECE In addition to Japanese sources, images from the period that inspired Ranson’s Le Grand Tigre included the series of heraldic lions sewn by Denis and Ranson in 1891 onto the stage curtain at the Théâtre d’Art for the performance of Rémy de Gourmont’s Théodat. Although the original stage set is no longer extant, an idea of the curtain is conveyed by the cover of the original dramatic text published in 1893 [2].

As the nickname affectionately given to him by his painter friends indicates, Ranson, together with Bonnard, was the Nabi most strongly influenced by Japanese art. Books written on the relationship between Ranson and Japonisme have rightly compared Le Grand Tigre to Utamaro’s Tiger in the Bamboo1 and to the various tigers depicted by Hokusai2 and Sharaku. Such comparisons are not surprising; after all, the Nabis visited the exhibition of Japanese art organised in 1890 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with great enthusiasm. Ranson may also have been

[1]

[2]

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One unexpected source may have been Henri Rousseau’s Surpris! or Tigre dans une tempête tropicale (1891) [3]. Exhibited that same year at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, where the Nabis would exhibit the following year, the painting caused a sensation, as related by the young Swiss painter Félix Vallotton: Mr. Rousseau is becoming more astonishing every year, but he is establishing himself and is winning a lot of attention. The public gathers around his works and laughter rings out [...]. His tiger surprising its prey is truly something to see; it is the alpha and omega of painting.’3 Admired by Alfred Jarry and Rémy de Gourmont, Rousseau was, in fact, closer to the milieu of the Nabis and La Revue blanche than is usually thought. Contemporary with Ranson’s Le Grand Tigre, the mystical and erotic tale La jalousie du tigre written by Albert Jeune and Gustave Moreau and published in the magazine La Plume, may have contributed to the painter’s creative process: ‘Then she saw [...] a large tiger, tawny and striped with bands of black velvet, splendidly supple and lying on its side, with teeth like enamel revealed by an ambiguous rictus, the flanks of the beast vibrating from a carnal growl. He looked at her.’4

[3]

ADMIRED BY CRITICS OF THE AVANT-GARDE Whether it was the large tapestry cartoon or the drawing for the lithograph with the same subject [4], both of which were exhibited in 1893, the first in Antwerp at the exhibition of the Association pour l’Art, and the second in Paris at the Indépendants, Le Grand Tigre drew an immediate response from critics. In the review L’Art Moderne, edited by Octave Maus, Edmond Picard and Émile Verhaeren, the critic wrote: Among the works that demand particular attention are those by Mr. P. Ranson, whose decorative panels, Le Tigre, Motif de sorcellerie, Lustral, and Harmonies de verts et de jaunes are composed with marked personal feeling and painted with a delicate

[4]

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awareness of colour. It is new and very appealing. Mr. Ranson applies human and animal figures to the decorative setting in a curious manner. His Tigre, with its fierce appearance, is the most welcome piece in his very interesting exhibition. This feline is one of the plates in the first album of L’Estampe Originale, the new publication from André Marty that we announced earlier, to which all the new artists have contributed. This first album, which is currently on show in Antwerp, includes works by Messrs ToulouseLautrec, Vallotton, Ibels, Denis, Anquetin, Bonnard, and Vuillard, among others. It is the first of a truly artistic series characterised by enjoyable variety and real originality.5

interlacing curves that echo the ‘dynamogenic lines’ theorised in the 19th century by Humbert de Superville8 and used by Art Nouveau designers. The animal’s tail, winding in a purely graphic display, recalls the ‘whip-tail’ decoration that the architect Victor Horta employed on the walls of his Hôtel Tassel (1893) in Brussels [5].9 JACQUES ROUCHÉ, THE FIRST OWNER OF ‘LE GRAND TIGRE’ Jacques Rouché (1862–1957), was a graduate of the elite scientific École Polytechnique and a hard-nosed businessman, who successfully developed the perfumes of the LT Piver company that belonged to his wife. Rouché was also an astute music critic and the dynamic director of the Théâtre des Arts. As director of the Paris Opéra from 1914, he brought the institution international renown through those he charged with its musical direction (such as Wilhelm Furtwängler), through the musicians he invited to perform (Francis Poulenc, Albert Roussel), and through the artists he commissioned to design its sets – Paul Colin for L’Orchestre en liberté (1931) and Fernand Léger for David Triomphant (1937).

A critic in Le Cœur observed: ‘I dream of a luxurious residence where fantastic, fearsome animals like the tiger would decorate the dining room.’6 A final comment comes from Thadée Natanson, the director of La Revue blanche: ‘To show one’s admiration for Mr. Ranson’s panels, it would suffice to say that he is a master decorator. Look at the cat, the swan, the line he uses in the bodies and women, the tiger.’7

Having placed Maurice Dufrêne in charge of the interior design of his mansion in the 17th arrondissement, Rouché commissioned Denis in 1907 to create a large decoration on the theme of ‘Terre latine, inspiratrice d’art et de poésie’ (The Latin world, catalyst of art and poetry), along with a two-part, stained-glass window depicting young women with mirrors. These works, which were removed by Rouché when he moved out of his mansion, are now held in the Musée Départemental Maurice Denis in SaintGermain-en-Laye.

One of the reasons Le Grand Tigre received such admiration was its radical style, with

A TIGER WITH A PROLIFIC LINEAGE Although Le Grand Tigre was never recreated in the form of a tapestry, it prompted a very real line of descent, which can be seen above all in the work of Ranson himself. In 1898, the artist produced a new cartoon on the

[5]

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REFERENCES

theme of the tiger [6, facing], which served as a model for a carpet woven after the artist’s death [7, facing]. Agnès Humbert recounted the work’s extraordinary story in 1954:

1. Kitagawa Utamaro, Tiger in the Bamboo (Zurich, Museum Rietberg). 2. Joséphin Péladan, Mélusine (Paris: Ollendorff, 1895).

The triumph of the curved line came about with the Tigre in 1898 [...] This second cartoon entered the Manufacture des Gobelins in the year of Ranson’s death (1909), from which a tapestry was woven in the workshop of the Savonnerie manufactory between 15 January 1910 and 15 January 1911. In 1936, it was deposited in the apartment of General Besson in the Hôtel des Invalides. During the period 1940–44, the apartment was occupied by the Germans. When they left Paris, they took the Tigre with them. Despite the efforts of the Commission de récupération artistique, the Tigre was never found again. It remains uncertain whether it is still embellishing the house of the Nazi who stole it or if it was perhaps destroyed in Germany during a bombing raid.

3. Félix Vallotton, ‘L’exposition des artistes indépendants’, Journal suisse (25 March 1891), p.3. 4. Albert Jeune and Gustave Moreau, ‘La Jalousie du tigre’, La Plume (15 January 1893), p.65. 5. Anonymous, ‘L’Association pour l’Art’, L’Art Moderne (20 May 1893), p. 154. 6. Théophile Gautier, ‘La montre’ in Emaux et Camées (Paris: Édition Charpentier, 1884). 7. Thadée Natanson, ‘Expositions / IXe exposition de la Société des Artistes Indépendants’, La Revue blanche (18 April 1893), p. 275. 8. In Essai sur les signes inconditionnels en art (1840), Humbert de Superville defined the collection and direction of the lines in space as an unconditional sign, i.e., an element that is immediately perceptible to the observer. 9. André Mellerio, Le Mouvement Idéaliste en Peinture (Paris: H. Floury, coll. Petite Bibliothèque d’Art Moderne, 1896), p. 53.

ILLUSTRATIONS

At the time Humbert was writing her book, the cartoon had disappeared and was only found again much later. Today, it belongs – like the carpet – to the Mobilier National in Paris. Le Grand Tigre has had a more unexpected posterity. The exceptionally expressive quality of its graphic style makes it feel as though the animal is literally about to step out of its frame and bound through the screen towards the viewer. It was not simply by chance that Ranson’s work was featured in the large Walt Disney exhibition held in the Grand Palais in Paris and then the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2007. As we are more aware today, cartoonists and animators studied the paintings from the 1890s to the 1920s very closely. A brilliant synthesis of Japonisme and Art Nouveau, the tiger is depicted in a way that a child might see it, with an apparent naivety that dissolves the boundary between reality and fantasy, and that above all retains its power to amaze.

[1]. Ganku (1750–1838), ‘Kakemono “Tigre”’, Le Japon Artistique, no.10 (February 1889), plate aaH, Gillot phototype, 61.5 × 23 cm (private collection) [2]. Cover of Rémy de Gourmont, Théodat (Paris: Edition du Mercure de France, 1893) [3]. Henri Rousseau, called Le Douanier Rousseau (1844–1910), Surpris! or Tigre dans une tempête tropicale (1891), oil on canvas, 128.9 × 161.9 cm (London, National Gallery of Art) [4]. Paul Ranson, Dessin pour ‘Le Tigre dans les jungles’ (1893), Indian ink on paper, 37 × 28 cm (private collection) [5]. Victor Horta (1861–1947), Hôtel Tassel, Brussels (1893) [6]. Ranson, Le Tigre acculé (1898), tempera on canvas, 54 × 112 cm (Paris, Mobilier National, inv. GOB 1418) [7]. Ranson, Le Tigre acculé (1910–11), wool carpet, 74 × 133 cm (Paris, Mobilier National, inv. GOB 1418-000)

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[6]

[7]

JÓZSEF RIPPL-RÓNAI

JÓZSEF RIPPL-RÓNAI 1861–1927 József Rippl-Rónai, from Kaposvár in south-western Hungary, initially obtained a degree in pharmacology and started his career working at an apothecary’s in his home city. Unfulfilled, he moved to Munich in 1884 to follow his burgeoning passion for art. There, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts and trained under German landscape and genre painter, Karl Raupp. Relocating to Paris in 1887 on the completion of his studies, RipplRónai joined the studio of the Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy, who was known for his large-scale biblical paintings. Rippl-Rónai quickly rejected Munkácsy’s traditional approach and sought out the avant-garde. After a fortuitous encounter with Paul Gauguin, he became friends with Aristide Maillol, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, whereupon, influenced by the work of James Whistler, Eugène Carrière and later Maurice Denis, he joined the Nabis. Rippl-Rónai’s use of soft, muted colours and bold black outlines evinces his affiliation with the Nabi aesthetic. Limiting his colour palette and simplifying his means of expression, Rippl-Rónai’s ‘black paintings’ brought him high praise. He was offered exhibitions in Paris, including at the Salon des Indépendants and with the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Concurrently, Rippl-Rónai designed for the Gobelins tapestry factory, where he melded traditional craftsmanship with his contemporary style. In 1902, he returned to Kaposvár and began to employ brighter colours in a looser, more expressionist style. In 1906, he was commissioned to design furniture and stained-glass windows for Count Tivadar Andrássy’s palace, further expanding his impact on the decorative arts. In 1909, Rippl-Rónai exhibited at the 8th Venice Biennale. Following these achievements, he continued to paint intimate portraits, landscapes and still lifes that reflected his association with both Hungarian and French modernism. A major retrospective, which presented Rippl-Rónai as one of Hungary’s preeminent modernists, was held in Budapest in 1921. Rippl-Rónai continued to work prolifically until his death in 1927.

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FEMME AU CHAPEAU c. 1892–95 watercolour and pastel on paper 16 1/2 × 12 3/4 in / 41.8 × 32.3 cm signed lower right ‘Ronai’ PROVENANCE Private collection Arthur G. Altschul, New York Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above 2002) Private collection

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FEATHERS: FIN-DE-SIÈCLE ELEGANCE PARIS, THE TESTING GROUND FOR A NEW AESTHETIC Like Vincent van Gogh, who arrived in Paris in 1886, József Rippl-Rónai’s understanding of painting was transformed by the artistic discoveries he made, especially during his stay in Pont-Aven in 1889. Upon returning to Paris, he decided to break with the academicism of his master, Mihály Munkácsy, and to work in his own studio. To achieve this, he moved into the Château de Neuilly [1] at 65 Rue de Villiers in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

[2]

It was here in Neuilly that I painted my series of ‘black’ paintings. Not that I saw the world in black, but I wanted to paint using that colour as a point of departure. I was convinced that this approach had its own rationale, just as much as a method based on violet, blue or any other colour. At that time, I was fascinated by black and grey, and I absolutely wanted to know what could be achieved with them.1

[1]

This somewhat grandiloquent name was a vestige of a real château built in 1751, which later became part of the Orléans family’s possessions, but was largely destroyed during the 1848 revolution that overthrew Louis-Philippe I. Confiscated by Napoleon III in 1852, the property was divided into 700 lots, and RipplRónai moved into one of the new buildings constructed on the site during the Second Empire. He lived there from 1892 to 1902 with his partner Lazarine Boudrion, sharing his studio with a young painter of Scottish descent, James Pitcairn-Knowles [2]. Born in Rotterdam in 1864, Pitcairn-Knowles had lived in Munich and then Weimar before moving to Paris in 1887, where he became a pupil of the academic painter Jean-Paul Laurens.

His fondness for black and grey, which dominate in Femme au chapeau (c. 1892–95) [p. 134] was likely influenced by Pitcairn-Knowles’ admiration for the works of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The latter’s Arrangement in Grey and Black (1871) [3] had just been acquired from the artist by the French State for the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. In his memoirs, Thadée Natanson confirmed the two painters’ admiration for the American Symbolist artist: ‘Rónai shared the large rooms and tall trees in the garden of his Neuilly house with a young British painter who was an even greater devotee of Whistler than he was.’2 Rippl-Rónai’s home ­– like that of Paul Ranson on Boulevard du Montparnasse, or the studio shared by Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice

Though not yet familiar with the Nabis, both painters, who were close to Aristide Maillol, experimented together, inspired by their exposure to avant-garde painting. For both artists, developing a new aesthetic meant limiting their palette and simplifying their means of expression, as Rippl-Rónai explained: 136

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museum in Kaposvár, the artist’s birthplace, do not allow for a definitive identification, although Boudrion’s profile is strikingly similar to that of the woman in the painting.

[3]

Denis at 28 Rue Pigalle – became a meeting place and centre for artistic exchange. Always generous with vivid details, Natanson recalled the meals Rippl-Rónai prepared, heavily spiced with paprika and accompanied by Tokay wine, which delighted Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his friends. [5]

Nonetheless, what makes this portrait so captivating is how Rippl-Rónai frames the woman’s face amidst a flurry of fabrics and feathers, marvellously conveyed through the powdery texture of the pastel. While the profile set against a solid background is typical of the fin-de-siècle style, the way in which the model’s pose interacts with her accessories (the hat and boa) echoes the grand tradition of English portraiture in the 18th century, particularly works by Thomas Gainsborough, whom Rippl-Rónai greatly admired. In the last decade of the 19th century, to create particularly striking material effects, RipplRónai did not hesitate to mix mediums, combining oil and pastel, or watercolour and pastel, as seen in this portrait.

FIN-DE-SIÈCLE ELEGANCE The identity of the elegant lady in the hat remains a mystery, even today. Was it his companion Lazarine Boudrion [4], or one of the young women Rippl-Rónai portrayed at the time, such as in Femme lisant sous la lampe (1891) [5]? The photographs held today in the

The accessories worn by this elegant woman were carefully selected: they not only enhance the model’s splendour but also represent a fashion and craftsmanship with its own codes, social conventions, and distinct professions. For example, the plumassiers-panachiers, detailed in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–72), shared their privileges with the plumassiers-fleuristes, who

[4]

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arranged and mounted with such skill and taste that they are a hundred times more beautiful than in the past, but even with the most ordinary and common types of plumage, marvels of grace and elegance can be achieved.

worked with both feathers and artificial flowers within the same guild. These materials were commonly used in hat-making, and by the 19th century, demand for this luxury craft had grown so large that it evolved into a thriving industry. Etiquette manuals advised that feathers be worn only by married women – leaving single women to settle for hats adorned with flowers or fruit.

The golden age of feathers in hats and boas occurred between the 1880s and the 1920s, spanning the period from La Belle Époque to the Roaring Twenties. This trend is evidenced not only by abundant postcards [6] but also by paintings from artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso. The fashion came to an end with the rise of the motor car, as elaborate plumes proved incompatible with car interiors and the effects of wind at speed. REFERENCES 1. Judit Szabadi, József Rippl-Rónai (Budapest: Corvina, 1978), p. 12. 2. Thadée Natanson, Peints à leur tour (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1948), p. 296.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Eugène Atget (1857–1927), Immeuble du 65, rue de Villiers, Neuilly-sur-Seine (1914), silver print on paper, 16.5 × 21.6 cm (New York, Museum of Modern Collection) [2]. Unknown photographer, József Rippl-Rónai et James Pitcairn-Knowles à Neuilly-sur-Seine (1896) (Kaposvár, Rippl-Rónai Múzeum) [6]

[3]. James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Arrangement in Grey and Black (1871), oil on canvas, 144.3 × 163 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

At the time, ostrich feathers were imported from South Africa, heron feathers from Venezuela and white turkey feathers from the western United States. In France, attempts were made to compete by creating beautiful colour and texture effects with feathers from local species. The fashion for feathers remained strong well into the second decade of the 20th century. As the illustrated weekly Le Miroir commented in 1914:

[4]. Unknown photographer, Lazarine Boudrion dans l’appartement de Neuilly-sur-Seine (1892–95) (Kaposvár, Rippl-Rónai Múzeum) [5]. József Rippl-Rónai, Femme lisant sous la lampe (1891), oil and pastel on canvas, 46.2 × 38.2 cm (private collection) [6]. Postcard, Élégante au chapeau à plume (c. 1900)

The art of the plumassiers has reached such a level of perfection that it seems to have reached its peak. Not only are aigrettes, paradis, and crosses now perfectly dyed in any shade, and 138

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WOMAN IN BLACK WITH VASE c.1892 oil on canvas 76 5/12× 35 5/8 in / 194 × 90.5 cm signed lower left ‘Ronai’ PROVENANCE Étienne Donath, Paris (directly from the artist); thence by descent to Dr. Renée Donath, Les Rasses, Switzerland (his daughter) Arthur G. Altschul, New York Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above 2002) Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Neo-Impressionists and Nabis in the Collection of Arthur G. Altschul’, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 20 January – 14 March 1965, cat. no.38, p.88 (repro. in b&w p.89)

LITERATURE József Rippl-Rónai, Rippl-Rónai József: Emlékezései (Budapest: A Nyugat kiadása, 1911), reprinted in 1957 József Rippl-Rónai, “Rippl-Rónai sur LuiMême: Extrait de ses Mémoires,” Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie, XLVI (March 1932), pp.170–172 François Gachot, Rippl-Rónai. L’Art Hongrois I (Budapest: Új Idők Irodalmi Intézet Rt. [Singer és Wolfner], 1944)

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Elek Petrovics, Rippl-Rónai Joszef (Budapest: 1944) George L. Mauner, The Nabis. Their History and their Art 1888–1896 (London: Garland, 1978), p.ix, pp.225–26, fig.73 (repro. in b&w)

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WOMAN IN BLACK WITH VASE Rippl-Rónai also formed a close friendship with the Scottish painter James PitcairnKnowles, who introduced him to the art of that famous American painter working in Paris, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834– 1903), whom Rippl-Rónai even mentions in his memoirs. Inspired by Whistler’s sober paintings, Rippl-Rónai developed a style that remained relatively independent of the Nabis. The paintings he created in Paris at that time are characterised by restrained, sombre colours, flatness and strong contouring. He referred to his reduced palette of the 1890s as his ‘black period’: ‘I was greatly preoccupied by the black and grey colours; I was eager to discover what and how one could resolve them in art,’ he wrote.1 Inspired by Whistler’s elongated formats and near-monochrome tonal harmonies, Rippl-Rónai painted a series of female figures.

RIPPL-RÓNAI’S RADICAL AESTHETIC: ‘BLACK PERIOD’ TONALITY Between 1887 and 1900, Hungarian-born painter József Rippl-Rónai lived in France. Trips to Pont Aven in Brittany in 1888 and 1889 seem to have introduced him to the work of the young Nabi artists, although he did not meet Gauguin until around 1894. Nevertheless, from 1892 onward, Rippl-Rónai made Paris his headquarters. His renowned master painting, My Grandmother (1894) [1], garnered the attention of the artists’ circle that swirled around Alexander, Thaddeus and Louis-Alfred Natanson’s celebrated art and literary periodical, La Revue Blanche, and he was invited to join them. My Grandmother also brought Rippl-Rónai closer to the Nabi group who he had likely first met through the Académie Julian when studying there for a brief period, starting around 1888–1889, after his apprenticeship with Mihály Munkácsy. Although participating in Nabi exhibitions only occasionally, among his friends were Ranson, Vallotton, Vuillard, Bonnard, and others.

The black dress of Woman in Black with Vase (c.1982) [p.142] sweeps diagonally across the narrow vertical canvas, the line of the skirt echoing the fall of her hair, while the opposing diagonal of her bodice is continued in the dark, indistinct form of the picture hanging on the wall behind her. The junction of wall and floor is omitted, reinforcing the painting’s flatness. Her gesture is slow and deliberate, suggesting a trance-like state. There is no conversational partner; the domestic interior acts as a buffer against the distracting sounds of the active world outside. The solitary figure placed within an interior was ideally suited to express the Symbolist silence sought by the Nabi artists. The subject of this painting is the Londonborn French portrait and genre painter, Hélène Le Roy d’Etiolles, who was the head of a ladies’ art school in Paris where Rippl-Rónai lectured.2 The painting within the painting, which we can see on the wall behind Hélène cannot be identified with any certainty, although it may be a free rendering of an early sketch for the lower portion of the artist’s My Grandmother.3 Between 1892 and 1894, Rippl-Rónai painted several versions of this composition. A second oil from the same year of 1892, Woman

[1]

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this piece, as here in Woman in Black with Vase, forms the counterpoint. With its ‘black period’ sombre, low-key tonality and single-figure composition, Woman in Black with Vase remains one of the most important works of Rippl-Rónai’s oeuvre. Several years after painting the piece, according to the artist’s memoirs, Emperor Franz Joseph, upon seeing the Budapest variant (Woman with a Birdcage) at an exhibition, remarked that it looked not like an oil painting but like a charcoal drawing – a comment Rippl-Rónai accepted as a compliment!5 [LM]

[2]

with a Birdcage [2], held in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery, in Budapest, where it is currently on display, substitutes the vase with a jade green birdcage, complete with yellow canary. While, as is frequent in Rippl-Ronai’s single figure paintings, references to the setting are minimal, in contrast with the artist’s other variations of this composition, here the interior of a sitting room is suggested with a finely drawn blue settee with an arched back and, on the left, the faint outline of a chair. Nonetheless, the ethereal figure and Art Nouveau curves of Hélène remain essentially the same. Set this time against a background of dark turquoise and cerulean, the pale pink hands holding the cage and the woman’s contemplative planar profile create striking counterpoints.4 A third oil, painted in 1894, reintroduces the vase: Slender Woman with Vase (1894) [3], now in the collection of, and on display at, the Art Institute of Chicago. This later version elaborates the setting: the floor and skirting boards are included, and the stark whiteness of the wall behind the elongated figure contrasts sharply with her black dress, which in

[3]

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REFERENCES 1. George L. Mauner, The Nabis. Their History and Their Art, 1888-1896 (London: Garland, 1978), p.225. 2. Neo-Impressionists and Nabis in the collection of Arthur G. Altschul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1965), p.88. 3. Ibid. 4. Edit Plesznivy, Woman with a Birdcage, József RipplRónai [https://en.mng.hu/artworks/54167/]. 5. Neo-Impressionists and Nabis..., op. cit., p.88.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. József Rippl-Rónai, My Grandmother (1894), oil on canvas, 152 × 115 cm (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery, no.4042) [2]. Rippl-Rónai, Woman with a Birdcage (1892), oil on canvas, 185.5 × 130 cm (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery, no.FK1385) [3]. Rippl-Rónai, Slender Woman with Vase (1894), oil on canvas, 186 × 73 cm (Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, no.2011.308)

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MÈRE ET ENFANT c. 1891–92 pastel on paper laid down on canvas 16 × 12 1/2 / 40.6 × 31.8 cm signed lower left ‘Ronai’; faintly signed and dated on reverse ‘Rippl-Ronai 91’ PROVENANCE Étienne Donath, Paris (directly from the artist); thence by descent to Dr. Renée Donath, Les Rasses, Switzerland (his daughter) [Brummer Gallery, New York] Arthur G. Altschul, New York Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above 2002) Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Neo-Impressionists and Nabis in the Collection of Arthur G. Altschul’, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 20 January – 14 March 1965, cat. no. 37, p. 87 (repro. in b&w p. 88)

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THE HUNGARIAN NABI BUDAPEST-PARIS-BUDAPEST For artists from the Hungarian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th century, Paris was the European capital of the arts, far surpassing Vienna, Munich or Berlin. It was the city where they could truly unleash their creativity. For instance, Franz Liszt’s years in Paris – from 1823 to 1844 – were the most productive of his career. Similarly, Mihály Munkácsy, who moved to Paris in 1871, not only thrived as an artist but also became a teacher at the École des BeauxArts. Although an academic history painter, Munkácsy maintained a painting studio that young Hungarian artists aspired to join, as his extensive contacts in the elite social circles of Paris were a major asset for winning commissions. It was for this reason that, after spending time in Munich between January 1884 and February 1887, József Rippl-Rónai moved to Paris to become Munkácsy’s pupil. In 1889, the young artist broadened his artistic horizons with a trip to Pont-Aven, where he met James Pitcairn-Knowles, a painter of Scottish descent but born in Rotterdam, who introduced him to Aristide Maillol. This marked the beginning of Rippl-Rónai’s gradual shift away from Munkácsy’s academicism, leading him to adopt a lighter palette and simplify his means of expression. Although Mère et enfant (c. 1891–92) [p. 148] and the painting Mere avec son enfant (1890) [1] reflects the academic tradition with its plain background reminiscent of Italian Primitives, the blending of colours, casting of shadows and Dutchinfluenced composition are apparent. At the same time, the artist’s preference for flat tints, typical of the Nabis, is evident.

[1]

several of us shared in the happy surprise and pleasure we had each felt on discovering the portrait of a small and pale old peasant woman with a lively gaze, a portrait of the artist’s grandmother, signed with a foreign name that none of us had heard of. Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Roussel and, I think, Maurice Denis, all agreed that we should recognise the talent of this unknown artist. Completely unknown, because we did not yet know Maillol, of whom this Rippl-Rónai was already a friend.1 Enrolled at the Académie Julian like Pierre Bonnard and his friends, and meeting Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whom he greatly admired, Rippl-Rónai soon embraced the Nabi aesthetic. This is evident in Mère et enfant, where he frames the scene tightly and outlines his motif with a few strokes, giving it substance with flat tints and powdery pastel to create a refined texture. Like Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard, RipplRónai reworked certain areas (the hair and bodice of the mother) by scratching away the paint to reveal the support beneath. Although

RIPPL-RÓNAI BECOMES THE ‘HUNGARIAN NABI’ Thadée Natanson, director of La Revue blanche, provides insight into how RipplRónai met the Nabis: It happened a long time ago, towards the end of the last century, when people still used to meet at the opening of the Salon, held that year on the Champs de Mars. On meeting up, 150

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REFERENCES

cast shadows have disappeared, tonal gradations remain, as seen in the mother’s cheeks, realised with a fusion of pink and white strokes. By this time, Rippl-Rónai had become a full member of the Nabi brotherhood, earning the ‘Hungarian Nabi’ nickname from his fellow members. He was invited by Siegfried Bing to participate in exhibitions at Bing’s gallery, L’Art Nouveau.

1. Thadée Natanson, Peints à leur tour (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1948), p. 294.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. József Rippl-Rónai, Mère avec son enfant (1890), oil on wood, 41.2 × 32 cm (Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Galeria)

THE WORK’S COLLECTORS The first owner of Mère et enfant was Étienne Donath, a Hungarian born in Budapest in 1897. Upon arriving in Paris, he opened an antiques dealership in the 9th arrondissement in 1934, close to the Hôtel Drouot. His wife, Renée Tapfer, originally from Romania, was a doctor. With the outbreak of war and the German occupation of northern France, Donath was forced to cease his business in the capital. Between 1939 and 1941, he raised enough funds to leave the city with his family. In May 1942, they moved to the Free Zone and settled in Nice, later relocating to Monaco in 1943. During his absence, his business was closed, his apartment looted (with 1,000 books dispersed), and some possessions sold at Drouot’s. After the war, his daughter Renée managed to recover some of these items. The painting then entered the collection of Arthur G. Altschul (1920–2002), a notable American collector of Neo-Impressionist and Nabi works. Born in Manhattan, Altschul studied at Deerfield Academy (Massachusetts) and Yale College, served in the Marines from 1943 to 1945, and worked as a reporter for The New York Times. After becoming a partner at Lazard Frères in 1945, he joined Lehman Brothers as an analyst before becoming an investor-partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co from 1959 to 1999. A passionate collector for over forty years, Altschul was also a staunch supporter of the museum world, contributing to exhibitions and acquisitions. He served on the boards of directors and/or as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. 151

KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL

KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL 1867–1944 While a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris in 1882, KerXavier Roussel met Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and the future stage director Aurélien Lugné-Poe, all of whom he would remain close to throughout his life. In 1885 he studied under the painter Diogène Maillart (1840–1926), followed in 1888 by William Bouguereau (1825–1905) and Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797–1890) at the BeauxArts, while also attending the Académie Julian. He then formed the Nabi group with Vuillard, Denis, Paul Ranson, Georges Lacombe and Pierre Bonnard, which exhibited with the gallery Le Barc de Boutteville from 1891 to 1894. In 1893, they also exhibited at at the offices of La Revue blanche, the same year that Roussel decorated stage sets for Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Œuvre with Bonnard, Paul Sérusier and Vuillard. From 1894 to 1903, his work was presented in the Libre Esthétique exhibitions in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard engaged him to produce colour lithographs. The Galerie Bernheim-Jeune dedicated a solo exhibition to him in 1906, the pivotal year in which he visited the studios of Paul Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence), Paul Signac (Saint-Tropez) and Henri-Edmond Cross (Cavalaire) with Denis. Roussel specialised in large ornamental works, for which he received several commissions, among them the curtain for the stage production of Le Cortège de Bacchus at the Théâtre de la Comédie des ChampsÉlysées in 1912, decorations for the Kunstmuseum in Winterthur in 1918, and panels in 1922 for the villa in Antibes belonging to Marcel Monteux. He also decorated the Théâtre de Chaillot in 1937 and created an elevenmetre panel with the title Pax Nutrix for the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1938. Roussel lost the use of one eye in 1941 but worked on the album of lithographs Les Églogues published in 1944. He died in 1944 in his house La Jacanette in the town of L’Étang-laVille, where he had lived since 1899.

KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL

FEMMES AU JARDIN c. 1893–95 pastel on paper 10 7/8 × 16 5/8 in / 27.5 × 42 cm signed lower right ‘K. Xavier’ PROVENANCE Private collection Sotheby’s, London: 4 December 1996 (lot no. 343) Private collection, Paris (acquired from the above) Private collection

This artwork will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work, currently in preparation by Dr. Mathias Chivot.

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DEUX ÂGES DE LA VIE (COMPOSITION DEUX FEMMES) c. 1892 oil on canvas 11 1/2 × 20 1/2 in / 29 × 52 cm signed lower left ‘K. X. Roussel’

PROVENANCE Galerie Maratier, Paris Léon Nauwinck, Paris (violinist, painter and friend of Édouard Vuillard) (from the above 1944); by descent after 1971 Galerie Hopkins Thomas, Paris Private collection (from the above 1994)

EXHIBITIONS

‘Ker-Xavier Roussel. Jardin privé, jardin rêvé’, Musée des impressionnismes, Giverny, 27 July – 11 November 2019, no.4, p. 55 (repro. in colour)

‘Ker-Xavier Roussel’, Galerie Maratier, Paris, 1944, no. 173 ‘Ker-Xavier Roussel: 1867–1944’, Musée départemental Maurice Denis, SaintGermain-en-Laye, 4 March – 23 May 1994, no. 10, p. 6 (repro. in colour); repro in colour on catalogue cover and on exhibition poster

LITERATURE Claude Jeancolas, La Peinture des Nabis (Paris: Éditions Franck Van Wilder, 2002), p.72 (repro. in colour)

‘Francia szimbolistak: Gauguin, PontAven, Nabis’, Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest, 10 November 1998 – 4 January 1999, no. 87, p. 85 (repro. in colour)

This artwork is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity issued in Paris on 27 October 1993 and signed by Antoine Salomon. It will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work, currently in preparation by Dr. Mathias Chivot.

‘Ker-Xavier Roussel, le Nabi bucolique’, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pont-Aven, 28 May – 2 October 2011, cat. no. 32, pp. 86–87 (repro. in colour) ‘Japonismes / Impressionnismes’, Musée des impressionnismes, Giverny, 30 March – 15 July 2018, cat. no. 136, p. 180 (repro. in colour)

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PAUL SÉRUSIER

PAUL SÉRUSIER 1864–1927 The son of the director of the Houbigant perfume company, Paul Sérusier was a brilliant pupil at the Lycée Condorcet between 1876 and 1883, distinguishing himself with his fondness for philosophy. Joining the Académie Julian in 1885, he was appointed a massier (monitor) there from 1888 to 1890, and met Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Ranson, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Édouard Vuillard. He received a commendation at the 1887 Salon and went to Pont-Aven the following summer, where Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard introduced him to their approach to the use of colour, which they called synthetism. Fascinated, the young man returned to Paris with a small painting – Paysage au Bois d’Amour – he had made on the lid of a cigar box, to which the Nabis later gave the name ‘The Talisman’. It provided the group, which was being formed at the time, with a theoretical basis for their aesthetic. Sérusier returned to Brittany to see Gauguin in 1889 and 1890 and, following his mentor’s departure for Tahiti, became the leader of the Pont-Aven movement while continuing as a member of the Nabis. From 1891 to 1895 he exhibited with the dealer Le Barc de Boutteville and created masks and sets for the Théâtre de l’Art and the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, in particular for Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu roi in 1896. With Vuillard he provided illustrations for La Revue blanche from 1893, and was one of the Nabis exhibited by Ambroise Vollard in 1895 and 1898. He exhibited at Bernheim-Jeune in 1900 and Galerie Druet in 1903. Between 1895 and 1913, he contributed to the Salon des Indépendants, gradually adopting the aesthetic of the painter Desiderius Lenz, whom he had met at the Archabbey of Beuron in Germany. Beginning in 1908, Sérusier taught as a volunteer at the Académie Ranson and began to write his ABC de la peinture, a book that was published in 1921 and would be reissued several times. His work was included in the Exposition Internationale de l’Art Chrétien Moderne in 1911 and 1920 and he was given solo exhibitions at the Galerie Druet in 1909 and 1919. He died of a heart attack in 1927.

PAUL SÉRUSIER

BRETONNE ALLAITANT 1892 oil on canvas 28 3/4 × 21 5/8 in / 73 × 55 cm signed lower right ‘P. Sér.’ PROVENANCE Dr. Maurice Hepp Private collection, Lille Private collection, Geneva (acquired in 1994) Christie’s Paris: 31 March 2016 (lot no. 124) Galerie Hopkins Thomas, Paris (acquired from the above) Private collection LITERATURE

EXHIBITIONS

Marcel Guicheteau, Paul Sérusier (Paris: Éditions Side, 1976), no.62, p.209 (repro. in b&w)

‘L’Ecole de Pont-Aven et les Nabis’, Galerie Parvilée, Paris, 11 May – 11 June 1943, cat. no. 33 ‘Gauguin and his Friends’, Ordrupgaard, Denmark, 26 January – 1 May 2022, cat. no. 43, p. 91 (repro. in colour)

Caroline Boyle-Turner, Sérusier et la Bretagne (Douarnenez: Éditions Le ChasseMarée/ArMen, 1995), p. 136 (repro. in colour p. 137) [dated 1892]

‘Enfances rêvées, Bonnard, Les Nabis et l’enfance’, Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, 2 July – 6 November 2022, cat. no. 49, p. 147 (repro. in colour)

Bertrand Frélaut, La Merveilleuse Bretagne des Peintres (Geneva: Georges Naef, 2004), p.150 (repro. in colour p.151) This artwork is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity issued in Pont-Aven by the Comité Paul Sérusier on 4 March 2016.

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A PANORAMA OF REAL LIFE Sérusier accompanied his friend Gauguin to the Gare de Lyon as the latter departed on his first trip to Tahiti, he was aware of the role that would now be his: to carry forward and pass on the aesthetic revolution originated by Gauguin and Émile Bernard. In June that year, Sérusier left Paris to live in Huelgoat in Brittany, as if echoing his mentor’s reflections: ‘I let myself live in the silent contemplation of nature, entirely dedicated to my art. [...] You have adopted Parisian attitudes. And the countryside is mine. I love Brittany: there I find the wild, the primitive. When my clogs clump on the granite floor, I hear the muffled, dull, rugged tone I look for in painting.’2

The Nabi movement might never have come into being without Paul Sérusier: the massier at the Académie Julian – the student who organised the work sessions in the absence of the master; it was Sérusier who gathered around himself the first small group of painters: Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. Above all, it was Sérusier who, in Pont-Aven in the summer of 1888, painted a small landscape ‘at Gauguin’s dictation’, Paysage au Bois d’Amour, which soon came to be referred to as ‘The Talisman’ (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) and embodied the aesthetic on which the Nabi group was founded. From this time onwards, in his letters and in theoretical writings [1], Sérusier constantly imparted the teachings of his master Gauguin. In a letter written to Jan Verkade in 1892, he called Gauguin ‘the most senior member of the Nabis’.1

HUELGOAT: A HAVEN OF PEACE In search of a place untouched by modern society, in 1890 Sérusier sought somewhere less crowded than Pont-Aven. Since the mid1850s, France’s coastal towns had been attracting painters from various backgrounds (Americans, Canadians, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, etc.) and gradually became key stops in the burgeoning art tourism scene. As a result, Sérusier decided to settle in Huelgoat, in the Monts d’Arrée, some forty kilometres from the nearest coastline. Flowing through the village is the Rivière d’Argent, which rushes between jumbled rocks, tumbles down astonishing waterfalls, and served as a place where young women came to wash their clothes [2]. The conveniences of urban life were absent in Huelgoat: most people travelled on horseback [3] and the surrounding area boasted sites with evocative names such as La Grotte du Diable (The Devil’s Cave), La Pierre Tremblante (The Trembling Stone),

[1]

In the text he wrote about Sérusier’s life and work, Denis described his friend not only as the executor of Gauguin’s formal solutions, but also as the master’s successor. In the correspondence between Gauguin’s disciples once they had gone their separate ways, the Nabis kept each other informed of the progress they had made. When, on 4 April 1891,

[2]

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[3]

and Le Chaos du Moulin (The Mill Chaos). It was a land of rituals and ancestral legends: for example, the nearby forest was said to be inhabited by fairies, goblins and spirits, and home to figures such as Gargantua and King Arthur. Sérusier settled into the Hôtel Le Bihan, as confirmed by a letter written by his brother Henry, who joined him there. However, due to the difficulty of working in the summer heat, he later rented a room from Marie Guillou, which overlooked the lake. In Huelgoat, Sérusier set himself new artistic goals:

[4]

Musée d’Orsay), La Marchande d’étoffes (c. 1893) (Geneva, Musée du Petit Palais) and Bretonnes dans la Forêt de Huelgoat (1893) (Indianapolis Museum of Art) [5]. This last work also belonged to the prestigious Sam Josefowitz collection. In this series, Sérusier did not merely depict moments of local daily life but also sought to give them a symbolic dimension: the women in La Marchande d’étoffes represent the three ages of life, while here, Bretonne allaitant (1892) [p. 166], with its strongly hieratic quality, achieves the universality of the Old Masters’ depictions of the Mother and Child theme. Notably, several of the paintings in this series are almost identical in height, suggesting that Sérusier intended them to be hung as a continuous

If the design is simple and beautiful, if the colour is harmonious and expressive, isn’t that the greatest ambition an artist can have, isn’t that Art in a nutshell? [...] The Japanese attract me; I have copied their works. [...] As for colour, I have abandoned the search for delicate tones placed next to each other. They attract the eye to one corner of the painting but weaken the overall effect. Three or four wellchosen shades are enough and are expressive; additional colours only diminish the impact.3 A PANORAMA OF REAL LIFE During his time in Huelgoat, Sérusier painted a dazzling series of canvases, many of which are now held by major international museums. These include Jeune Bretonne à la Cruche (1892) (Quimper, Musée des BeauxArts), L’Averse (1893) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) [4], La Lutte Bretonne (c. 1893) (Paris,

[5]

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with the works displayed at the great exhibition of Far Eastern objects at the École des Beaux-Arts in the spring of 1890. According to several accounts, Sérusier hung not only his paintings but also Japanese prints on the walls of his bedroom-studio in Huelgoat. After a few experimental years in Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu, Sérusier achieved a kind of aesthetic plenitude, summarised by Denis as follows: ‘His originality was established in colour by his choice of limited tonal ranges interspersed with whites and blacks like joyful dissonances; in form, by a rapid, summary design inspired by the Japanese. [...] The years at Huelgoat – 1891, 1892, 1893 – were fruitful and decisive: he freed himself.’4 In 1895, Gauguin left for the South Pacific for a second time, making it difficult to view his latest paintings. Sérusier’s works thus became the primary vehicle for passing on Gauguin’s teachings to the next generation of artists. Sérusier’s importance has undoubtedly been underestimated. For instance, why has it not been recognised that the perfect balance between form and meaning seen in Sérusier’s paintings anticipates Picasso’s approach in his Mother and Child paintings of 1901–03? Picasso, captivated by the Parisian avant-garde of 1890–1900, shared a bold dealer with the Nabis: Ambroise Vollard.

[6]

decorative frieze. This comes as no surprise as 1893 was the year Sérusier created a large decorative piece (no longer extant) for the dining room in Georges Lacombe’s family home in Versailles. HUELGOAT: THE RADICAL YEARS What is striking about Bretonne allaitant is the radical nature of Sérusier’s aesthetic approach, beyond its symbolism. The artist employed only warm shades of colour, corresponding exactly with those on the colour wheel [7] included in his treatise on painting, ABC de la Peinture. By outlining his motifs with a strong black line, applying colours in flat tints, and playing with the rhythm of sinuous outlines, Sérusier realised Gauguin’s dream of an art that was both decorative and symbolist. Like his master, he skillfully merged the lessons of the Italian Primitives with Japanese prints, evident here in the frontal presentation of the figures. It’s worth recalling the enthusiasm with which the Nabis read Siegfried Bing’s review Le Japon Artistique (1888–91) and their fascination

A PRESTIGIOUS HISTORY The first collector of Sérusier’s painting was Maurice Hepp (1869–1951), a close friend of the Nabis, particularly Georges Lacombe, with whom he had attended the Lycée Hoche in Versailles. Born into a family from Strasbourg that relocated to Île-de-France after the war in 1870, Hepp became a doctor and later a surgeon. He was also a man of wide interests (in 1928, he published a book on Indochina) and an inventor (he created dyspepsin, a medicine to treat digestive problems). The subject of this painting – a maternity scene – may not be unrelated to Lacombe’s family history, as it was Hepp who delivered Lacombe’s two daughters and later recited a poem at his friend’s grave in 1916. Bretonne allaitant went on to gain historical prominence. Exhibited in 1943 at the Galerie Parvillée in Paris, it was accompanied by a

[7]

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preface by Denis, which traced the origins and development of the Nabis and highlighted the influence they had on the Fauves. Its historical significance likely attracted the great collector Sam Josefowitz (1922–2015), whose collection became a highlight of major international museums. He owned Paul Signac’s Portrait de Félix Fénéon (1890), now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Gauguin’s Les Enfants Luttant (1888), now in the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and above all, the world’s most outstanding collection of works by Gauguin and the École de Pont-Aven. REFERENCES 1. Letter from Paul Sérusier to Jan Verkade (21 January 1892), in Sérusier, ABC de la peinture, suivi d’une correspondance inédite (Paris: Librairie Floury, 1950), p. 57. 2. Letter from Paul Gauguin to Claude-Émile Schuffenecker (February–March 1888), quoted in Victor Merlhès, Correspondance de Paul Gauguin (Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1984), p. 172. 3. Letter from Sérusier to Verkade (summer 1892), in Sérusier, ABC de la peinture (op. cit.), pp. 61–62. 4. Maurice Denis, ‘Paul Sérusier, sa vie, son œuvre’, in Sérusier, ABC de la peinture (Paris: Librairie Floury, 1942), p. 69.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Paul Sérusier, cover of ABC de la peinture (Paris: Librairie Floury, 1942) [2 & 3]. Postcards, Huelgoat: Jeune femme à cheval (Young Woman on Horseback) and Les laveuses (Washerwomen) [4]. Sérusier, L’Averse (1893), oil on canvas, 73.5 × 60 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) [5]. Sérusier, Bretonnes dans la forêt de Huelgoat (1893), oil on canvas, 71 × 91 cm (Indianapolis Museum of Art) [6]. Sérusier, La Marchande d’étoffes (c. 1893), oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm (Geneva, Musée du Petit Palais) [7]. Sérusier, ABC de la peinture (Paris: Librairie Floury, 1942), colour wheel

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FÉLIX VALLOTTON 1865–1925 From Lausanne, Switzerland, Félix Vallotton arrived in Paris in 1882 where he attended the Académie Julian, studying under Gustave Boulanger (1824–1888) and Jules Lefebvre (1834–1912). About 1885 he experienced a difficult period during which he earned his keep by restoring paintings. After learning the art of woodcuts in 1891, he showed his prints at the Salon de la Rose + Croix the following year. Vallotton then linked up with the Nabis, exhibiting with them at Le Barc de Boutteville and the Salon des Indépendants in 1893, before officially joining them in 1897 as ‘the foreign Nabi’. Three years later he was given French citizenship. Vallotton became famous for his illustrations for Le Mercure de France, Le Cri de Paris and in particular for his series of detachable prints of ‘Crimes et châtiments’ that were published in L’Assiette au beurre in March 1902. With his fellow-Swiss Alexandre Steinlen, and Louis Anquetin and Lucien Pissarro, Vallotton, a dedicated anarchist, illustrated the escape of the militant anarchist Zo d’Axa in De Mazas à Jérusalem (1895), before painting fifteen portraits of former communards for La Revue blanche in 1897. He helped organise the raffles used to finance Jean Grave’s anarchist journal Les Temps nouveaux (notably an 1899 issue) and in 1902 contributed to the Album de lithographie des Temps nouveaux. Although Vallotton wrote his novel La Vie meurtrière in 1907–08, in which he explained the principles of his painting, it was not published until 1927. He had his first solo exhibition in 1909 in Zurich, followed in 1910 by an exhibition at the Galerie Druet in Paris. In 1913, he married the sister of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery owners. After refusing to accept the Légion d’honneur in 1912, Vallotton took part in the collective series La Grande Guerre vue par les artistes issued from 1914 to 1916, while personally financing the publication of his six famous engravings C’est la guerre! Vallotton died following an operation for cancer in 1925.

FÉLIX VALLOTTON

BAIGNEUSES AU CLAIR DE LUNE c. 1893 oil on canvas 10 5/8 × 8 1/2 in / 27 × 21.6 cm signed and dated lower right ‘F. Vallotton. 97’ PROVENANCE Succession Félix Vallotton, Paris J. Rodrigues-Henriques, Paris Private collection, France Private collection, France EXHIBITIONS ‘Nabis. Exhibition of works by MM. P. Bonnard, M. Denis, Ibels, G. Lacombe, Ranson, Rasetti, Roussel, P. Sérusier, Vallotton, Vuillard’, Galerie Vollard, Paris, 6–30 April 1897, no. 61 [titled ‘Baigneuses’] ‘Exhibition of unseen works by Félix Vallotton (1865–1925)’, Galerie Jacques Rodrigues-Henriques, Paris, 9–30 March 1928, cat. no. 7 [titled ‘Deux Baigneuses au clair de lune’] ‘Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard et son époque’, Galerie d’art Braun, Paris, 8–28 April 1932, no. 35 ‘Exposition des peintres de La Revue blanche’, Bolette Natanson (Les Cadres), Paris, 12–30 June 1936, no. 84

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LITERATURE Félix Vallotton, Livre de raison, no. 154 [listed as ‘Cinq petites toiles. Baigneuses’] Charles Fegdal, Vallotton (Paris: Éditions Rieder, 1931), p.12 (repro.) Georges Besson, La peinture française au XIXe siècle III (Paris: Braun et cie, 1934), p.34 (repro.) Rudolf Koella, Das Bild der Lanndschaft im Schaffen von Félix Vallotton (Zurich: Wesen Bedeutung Entwicklung, 1969), no. LK–42, p. 88 (repro.) Rudolf Koella, Félix Vallotton im Kunsthaus Zürich (Zurich: Kunsthaus, 1969), no. 11, p. 60 (repro. in b&w) George Mauner, The Nabis. Their History and their Art 1888-1896 (London: Garland, 1978), p. xii, fig.121 (repro. in b&w) Ashley Saint James, Félix Vallotton. The Nabi Years (London: Courtauld Institue of Art, 1982) no. 30, p. 228, p. 305 ‘Badende aus Félix Vallotton Werk’ in F. Vallotton und die Badenden, Susanne Brenner, 1987, p. 13 Marina Ducrey, Félix Vallotton. La Vie, la technique, l'oeuvre peint (Lausanne: Edita, 1989), p. 40 Marina Ducrey, Katia Poletti, Félix Vallotton (1865-1925). L'oeuvre peint, Catalogue raisonné vol. II (Milan/ Lausanne/Zurich: 5 Continents and Félix Vallotton Foundation, 2005) no. 149, p. 81 (repro.)

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BATHING IN MOONLIGHT freedom a recurrent motif in the canvases they painted around Paris between 1870 and 1875. Vallotton’s image is, however, very different from the atmosphere of Monet’s La Grenouillère (1869), particularly due to his decision to paint moonlight, which has always held special significance in art history: consider, for example, the ‘inhabited’ nightscapes of Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), as well as those of Symbolist painters Jean Delville (1867–1953) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944), notably the latter’s striking Moonlight (1895) (Oslo, National Gallery).

In June 1889, before joining his family in Lausanne, Vallotton spent three weeks in the village of Les Charbonnières, situated between Lac de Joux and Lac Brenet in the Jura mountains, in the Swiss region of Vaud. He brought back around ten paintings from this venture, including two lakeside views that, four years later, would provide the setting for Baigneuses au clair de lune (c. 1893) [p. 176]. As was his custom, Vallotton rooted his painting in reality, as evidenced by the houses in the background, which can be seen in postcards from the period. However, Vallotton used realism only to draw us into the universe of his imagination. If the viewer finds this canvas immediately appealing, it is primarily due to its radically steep perspective. By setting the horizon line very high, and thereby accentuating a slightly downward view, Vallotton constructed his composition by juxtaposing large flat areas of colour, characteristic of the years 1890–95, during which the Nabis were experimenting with lessons learned from Gauguin. Using a highly original visual artifice, Vallotton inverted the traditional order of earth, water, and sky. By devoting much of the image to the foreground, he creates a large mirror effect in the lower section of the painting, where we see clouds – though only their reflections.

Vallotton produced his series of Bathers, which he began in 1892 with small painted sketches, in both paintings and woodcuts. This is attested by an astounding set of ten small woodcuts produced in 1893, as well as Les Trois Baigneuses, which he engraved for the February 1894 issue of La Revue blanche. However, Baigneuses au clair de lune is in the same vein as the paintings of Munch, having an essentially Symbolist aesthetic that calls more upon the imagination than it relies on the description of reality. In La Baigneuse rose (c. 1893), recently acquired by the Musée d’Orsay, Vallotton used saturated colours to emphasise the unrealistic dimension of the nude young bather wearing make-up.

As in Clair de lune (c. 1895), held by the Musée d’Orsay, the clouds appear dynamic; they are no longer merely vapour but cotton balls forming a nest out of which a young woman emerges, like a modern Venus. These swelling clouds in the lower part of the painting also obscure our perception of the water’s surface, making it impossible to discern where the young woman’s body ends and her reflection begins, thus endowing her with a monumental quality. The point where her dress meets the water is indicated by no more than a barely perceptible white line.

Baigneuses au clair de lune exploits colour less than it relies on composition and iconography. These elements are closely related to Vallotton’s great Symbolist masterpiece of the 1890s, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1893, his famous Bain au soir d’été (1892–93) (Zurich Kunsthaus) [1, overleaf]. The bather in Baigneuses au clair de lune is, in fact, the reverse of the one seen on the far right in the Zurich painting. Decorative in the best sense of the word, our baigneuses are also a poetic evocation, an ode to femininity, a communion with nature; a shower of stars scattered across the surface of the lake surrounds the two young women like a celestial vault. In addition, the mysterious illuminated windows in the distance reiterate the warm light of the lunar disc. But what is their significance? Is it the house the bathers have just left, or one they will return to after their swim? Is their bathing the prelude to an

The motif of bathing was central to Vallotton’s work from the start of his career. From the 1860s onwards, bathing in the lakes and rivers of France became one aspect of the growing leisure activities of an entire social class. The Impressionist painters Claude Monet (1840–1926) and Auguste Renoir (1841– 1919) had even made this pursuit of personal 179

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adventure? Like a skilful novelist or photographer, Vallotton prefers to suggest rather than explain – it’s for viewers to imagine their own story. ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Félix Vallotton, Bain au soir d’été (1892–93) (Zurich Kunsthaus)

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ÉDOUARD VUILLARD 1868–1940 Wishing to follow his father’s example, Édouard Vuillard studied at the Lycée Condorcet as preparation for the competition to enter the Saint-Cyr military school. However, he changed his mind and decided to join his best friend Ker-Xavier Roussel in the studio of the painter Diogène Maillart (1840–1926) at Les Gobelins. He then failed the exam to enter the École des Beaux-Arts for the first time. In 1886, Vuillard attended the courses at the Académie Julian with Roussel and Maurice Denis, before being admitted to the Beaux-Arts – on the fourth attempt – in June 1887 to study in the class of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). With his two friends and Pierre Bonnard, Paul Ranson and József Rippl-Rónai, their fellow students at the Académie Julian, the Nabi group was formed around 1888; Vuillard was given the nickname ‘the Zouave’. He exhibited at the Salon the following year – the only occasion – and in 1891 was given his first solo show at La Revue blanche, the review founded by the Natanson brothers in 1889, to which he contributed regularly as an illustrator. In 1891 and 1892, Vuillard exhibited at Le Barc de Boutteville and received the commission to decorate the home of Paul Desmarais. This was followed by decorations he created for Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Œuvre (1893) and the dining room of Alexandre Natanson in 1894. In the period 1896–99, he created his album of lithographs Paysages et Intérieurs for the gallerist Ambroise Vollard. He also exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants from 1901, the Salon d’Automne as from 1903 and at Bernheim-Jeune’s until 1914. During the First World War, Vuillard became a line guard at Versailles and then an army artist, but he also exhibited in Hamburg with Bonnard in 1913. Elected to the Institut des Beaux-Arts in 1937, Vuillard’s work was celebrated in a retrospective show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs the following year. In June 1940, when Vuillard was seriously ill and German troops were approaching, the artist’s patrons Jos and Lucy Hessel, to whom he had been introduced by Félix Vallotton in 1900, took Vuillard to La Baule on the Atlantic coast. He died there the same year, aged seventy-two.

ÉDOUARD VUILLARD

FEMME LISANT c. 1895 oil on board 13 3/4 × 12 5/8 in / 35 × 32 cm stamped lower left ‘E Vuillard’ PROVENANCE The artist’s estate Castellucho, Paris Arthur Goldschmidt, Paris M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York (acquired from the above 26 February 1951) Mrs John Barry Ryan, New York & London (acquired from the above 25 April 1951); thence by descent Christie’s London: 7 March 2025 (lot no.439) Private collection LITERATURE Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I (Milan/Paris: Skira and Wildenstein Institute, 2003), no.IV–210, p.340 (repro. in colour)

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LA CHAMBRE VERTE, RUE TRUFFAUT c.1900–01 oil on board 17 5/8 × 17 1/8 in / 44.7 × 43.5 cm stamped lower right ‘E Vuillard’ PROVENANCE Paul Vallotton, Lausanne (directly from the artist) Ladislas de Weck, Fribourg, Switzerland Galerie Kornfeld, Bern: 26 June 1981 (lot no.31) Galerie Beyeler, Basel Private collection, Stockholm (from the above) Sotheby’s, London: 30 June 1992 (lot no.21) Private collection, Saint-Cloud, France Galerie Hopkins Thomas Custot, Paris Roger and Laura Meier, Portland (acquired from the above in 1998) Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Édouard Vuillard’, Kunsthalle, Basel, 26 March–1 May 1949, no.135 [titled Intérieur vert] ‘Tresors des collections romandes’, Musée Rath, Geneva, 23 June–October 1954, no.134

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‘Faces and Figures – Portraits et Figures – Gesichter und Gestalten’, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, February–April 1982, no.103 ‘Paris to Portland: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masters from Portland Collections’, Portland Art Museum, 25 January–28 March 2003 (p.47 in catalogue and repro. in colour p.35) ‘Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris 1889–1900’, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1 July–19 September 2021; touring to the Portland Art Museum, 23 October 2021–23 January 2022

LITERATURE Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I (Milan/Paris: Skira and Wildenstein Institute, 2003), no.VII–174 (repro. in colour p.632)

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LA CHAMBRE VERTE well have been sitting on when he captured this scene, which would explain the slightly low viewpoint he adopted. For Vuillard, the first apartments he lived in were quickly transformed into studios, and a delicate but rewarding dialogue developed between their interiors and his works. For example, the apartment in Rue Truffaut also had a ‘white room’, seen in a large monochrome work that he called Les Premiers pas (1901) (Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art). And the dining-room walls were lined with wallpaper decorated with an elegant stylised motif.

Green, blue, black, grey, orange, a dash of red, flat tints and a speckling of colour – the first impression that strikes the viewer encountering this painting imbued with a radical aesthetic, is precisely what Maurice Denis described in his famous aphorism that underpinned the Nabi movement: a ‘painting – before being a warhorse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of any kind – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours, assembled in a certain order’.1 The idea expressed by Denis, with whom Vuillard and Bonnard shared a studio in 1891 at 28 Rue Pigalle, is that the first emotion felt before a painting is independent of the work’s iconography and any rational elucidation on the part of the viewer; the initial response is retinal, physical, generated by the sensuality of the colours, the texture of the brushstrokes, the chromatic harmony, and the almost musical rhythms given by the motifs in the space.

The maturation of an artist’s aesthetic is never straightforward, but made up of advances and retreats, and by experimentation prompted as much by new discoveries as by past experiences. The juxtaposed touches of colour with which Vuillard executed the decoration for Thadée Natanson in 1895, and for Dr Vaquez in 1896, might have suggested that he was about to embrace a technique derived from Impressionism. In fact, on several occasions between 1898 and 1902, he remained faithful to the founding principles of the Nabi movement, as the Chambre verte attests. After the initial visual jolt, the viewer gradually comprehends the scene. The motifs can be identified, the coloured masses take their place in a narrative in which a woman approaches a child with a garment in her hands. The child is probably Annette, born on 30 November 1898, the daughter of Marie – Vuillard’s sister – and her husband, the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel. Thrilled by her arrival in the family circle, Vuillard made her the subject of many paintings, but also of photographs once he had bought his first camera. On the right and left, two black forms make their presence felt. Their significance is uncertain: are we supposed to see a woman on the left, as the barely sketched orange face suggests? If that is the case, what is she doing? Should we consider her as a motif or as a symbol? We know how much Vuillard – actively involved in the productions of Symbolist avant‑garde theatres – enjoyed devising paintings with hidden meanings, deftly disseminating clues that enhanced their significance. Considered from this angle, the chromatic contrast between the dark forms at the sides and the light-coloured centre might

Yet, as the painter Jean Bazaine (1904–2001) commented with regard to Bonnard’s works, ‘We must not confuse the abstract with the unreal’.2 Vuillard’s interior, La Chambre verte, rue Truffaut (c.1900–01) [p.188], no matter how ‘synthetist’ (to use a term coined by the Pont-Aven School), it is still very precisely situated: set in the apartment occupied by Édouard Vuillard and his mother at 28 Rue Truffaut (Paris, 17th arrondissement) from March 1899. Vuillard and his mother had just moved out of their apartment on Rue des Batignolles, where they had lived in 1898, for this new address between Place de Clichy and Square des Batignolles, in the building where Paul Verlaine and his family had lived in 1857. Vuillard and his mother would remain there until October 1904, when they moved into a larger apartment at 123 Rue de La Tour. Photographs of their new home were taken by Vuillard himself. In one of them, just as in this Chambre verte, a high shelf can be seen on which the artist used to keep his painting equipment and drawing cardstock. Other photographs show us canvases and drawings hung on the walls, as we see on the left side of the painting. The canvas Madame Vuillard remplissant une carafe (1900–01) (Fitchburg, Mass., Fitchburg Art Museum) depicts the other side of the green room: a bed occupies the rear of the room, which Vuillard may 191

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be interpreted as a celebration of budding life. Similarly, the undefined faces – Maurice Denis called them ‘figures of the soul’ in his own paintings – are as much the result of a return to the aesthetic radicalism of the Nabi years as they are abstractions with a universal value. In Vuillard’s work, even the slightest details, such as the framing of the scene, contribute to a narrative. The grey door over the puzzling black form on the left offers no visual escape. Conversely, the woman and child are shown before a window, which the artist depicted using delicate touches. Like his friend Bonnard, Vuillard liked to work from memory, based on a quick sketch that he made there and then, so as to strip away all surrounding trivia and reach the essence, the scene’s deepest meaning. To be aesthetically Nabi, that is to say a prophet of art in the making, required that a painter should also look at the world with a poetic and even philosophical gaze. REFERENCES 1. Maurice Denis, “Définition du néo-traditionnisme”, Art et Critique (23 and 30 August 1890). 2. Jean Bazaine, “Bonnard et la réalité”, Formes et Couleurs, no.2 (1944), p.45.

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COQUELIN CADET DANS “LE MALADE IMAGINAIRE” c. 1890 watercolour on paper affixed to panel 9 1/2 × 18 7/8 in / 24 × 48 cm signed lower left ‘E Vuillard’; inscribed on the reverse of the backing board ‘L’aquarelle représenté ci-contre provient de ma collection particuliere. J. Roussel’ [The watercolour shown on the reverse comes from my private collection. J. Roussel] PROVENANCE Jacques Roussel (son of Ker-Xavier Roussel) Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, Paris Sam Salz, New York Sam Salz Inc., New York Nathan L. Halpern, New York (1960); thence by descent Christie’s, New York: 3 November 2004 (lot no. 20) Private collection, Paris Private collection This artwork is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity from the Archives Vuillard, dated 16 April 2025, and signed in Paris by Mathias Chivot on behalf of the Comité Vuillard.

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THE THEATRE: A NEW AESTHETIC THE THEATRE: THE CRADLE OF A NEW AESTHETIC Occurring alongside the avant-garde movements in painting, the renewal of the theatre introduced by theorists, playwrights and directors at the end of the 19th century brought radical change. Their aim was to move away from the stereotypical performances of certain actors, eliminate the stage effects that the public expected and avoid overly realistic stage scenery. In short, their goal was to distil the essence of drama through symbolism and near abstraction. The convergence of these two artistic revolutions was of great interest to the Nabis, who had already been introduced to the theatrical world by Aurélien Lugné-Poe, their fellow pupil at the Lycée Condorcet. They all shared a studio at 28 Rue Pigalle in Paris, which Lugné-Poe later referred to: Sérusier, Percheron, Gauguin, Coquelin Cadet, Ibels, Ranson, Père Barc de Boutteville, Mauclair [...] sat in this studio [...] It was there that the Nabis began, those chaste prophets of painting who stood out like a new branch on the proud tree: Signac, Seurat, and Pissarro [...] My friends painted while I bored them stiff with theatre, with my scenes from the Conservatoire that I was rehearsing, with a lesson that I was giving.1

Vuillard quickly understood how much his painting would be enriched by this new world. We know from his Journal that he visited Paris’s avant-garde theatres, such as the Divan Japonais and Le Chat Noir, and that he soon played an active role in set design and staging. The drawings he made at the end of performances demonstrate his fascination with actresses like Yvette Guilbert, Jane Avril, and Biana Duhamel [p. 204] and actors like Coquelin Cadet [1], whom he met at the Comédie-Française. AN UNFORGETTABLE ACTOR Ernest Coquelin (1848–1909), nicknamed ‘Cadet’ (‘the Younger’) to distinguish him from his brother Constant, who was also an actor, was a highly talented comedian. He won first prize for acting at the Paris Conservatoire in 1867, made his professional debut at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, achieved early successes in vaudeville at the Théâtre des Variétés and became a member of the Comédie-Française in 1879. Although primarily known as a comic actor, he did not hesitate to tackle more experimental roles, such as those at the Petit Théâtre des Marionnettes, founded by Henri Signoret, whose shows were held at the Galerie Vivienne in Paris. Some of the stage sets were painted by Aristide Maillol. Coquelin’s greatest triumphs were his performances in Molière’s plays at the Comédie-Française: Les Fourberies de Scapin, Le Mariage de Figaro, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac [2] and, as illustrated here by Vuillard, Le Malade imaginaire. A specialist in monologues,2 a subject on which he wrote a book in 1881, Coquelin did not, however, make a name for himself for the modernity of his acting. As Jules Clarétie commented, in the preface to the catalogue of the sale of Coquelin’s art collection in 1909: He had [...] a prodigious sense and gift for laughter. It was enough for him to show himself for people to laugh! He would stand in front of an audience, look at them with an ironic expression, peer into the corners of the house with his mischievous questioning eye, his

[1]

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work, Vuillard gives free rein to his brimming imagination, flirting with caricature while remaining rooted in radical modernity. In another version [3], less colourful than this one and tightly framed on the left, Vuillard plays with flat tints and outlines that seem to be drawn with an unbroken stroke of the pen. In Coquelin Cadet dans “Le Malade imaginaire”, Vuillard has used rapid brushstrokes that sometimes exceed the outlines. His bubbling creativity is also evident in the runs of black ink he applied too quickly, prompted by an emotion he wanted to capture as swiftly as possible. The same kind of overrun can be seen in some of Alexander Calder’s watercolours. Thanks to an article on the ‘cabinets’ of ‘various Parisian celebrities’, published in L’Éclair in 1892, we know how much Coquelin Cadet admired Vuillard’s watercolours, which he hung on the walls of his dressing room. When questioned, Coquelin:

head forward, his arms open, already initiating a sort of dialogue between himself and the audience with this amusing pantomime. Yes, for him, a monologue became a kind of dialogue; his gestures were questioning, his smile demanded an answer. Coquelin was marvellous in these ‘soliloquies,’ of which he was a triumphant interpreter.3

Very frankly declared his strong liking for a young painter till now known only by those who keep an eye on the most progressive artistic movement: M. Édouard Vuillard [...] We observe, in certain intimate studies, a very powerful and very original use of colour, and in caricatures of Coquelin Cadet in arabesques, an altogether decorative and new flight of fancy.5

[2]

A RADICAL MODERN STYLE Between 1890 and 1892, Vuillard created an extraordinary series of watercolours of Coquelin Cadet, one of which is Coquelin Cadet dans “Le Malade imaginaire” (c. 1890) [p. 196]. Unquestionably one of Molière’s most famous plays, this satire on medicine revolves above all around personal pride. Fascinated by the actor, Vuillard condenses the actor’s pose into an astonishing arc, and his face into an outline that seems to express the very essence of the text being spoken. In this

[3]

The memorabilia and works collected by Coquelin Cadet, who died in 1909, were sold in Paris at the Hôtel Drouot on 26 May of the same year. The catalogue was prefaced by the critic and collector Jules Clarétie.

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REFERENCES

A LEGENDARY PEDIGREE Coquelin Cadet dans “Le Malade imaginaire”, which probably remained in Vuillard’s collection, was later acquired by Jacques Roussel (as noted in a handwritten inscription on the back of the mount), an actor and the son of the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, Vuillard’s brother-in-law. The work then passed into the collection of Sam Salz (1894–1981), whose story is inspiring. Born near Kraków in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Satz studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Paris in the early 1920s, where he met two of the city’s most influential art dealers, Gaston Bernheim-Jeune and Ambroise Vollard. He then opened his own gallery in Cologne, where he exhibited the works of Marc Chagall and Georges Braque. He followed this with other galleries between 1926 and 1930 in Brussels, London and finally Paris. The photograph by August Sander [4, right] dates from this period. As World War II loomed, Salz took refuge in New York, where he became an ardent defender of French painting from Impressionism to Fauvism. His clients included some of the most famous people of the time: Albert Barnes, Paul Mellon, Robert Lehman, David Rockefeller, Greta Garbo, Orson Welles and Billy Wilder. Salz was not only one of the most successful art dealers of the first half of the 20th century, he was also a close friend of artists, including Vuillard, whom he met in 1938 through Jos Hessel, and who painted his portrait in 1939 [5]. Shortly afterwards, Salz became Vuillard’s exclusive dealer in the United States. Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Diego Rivera were also among his artist friends, as is evidenced by a photograph dated 1940 of the dealer alongside Rivera and the actor Edward G. Robinson.

1. Aurélien Lugné Poe, La Parade, Le Sot du tremplin, Souvenirs et impressions de théâtre, théâtre (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1930), pp.190–191. 2. Coquelin Cadet, Le Monologue Moderne, illustrations by Luigi Loir (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1881). 3. René Coursaget and Maximilien Gauhier, Cent ans de théâtre par la photographie, Comédiens et comédiennes d’hier (Paris: Editions L’Image, 1947), p.60. 4. “Les Collectionneurs / M. Coquelin Cadet amateur de peinture”, L’Éclair, no. 1333 (21 July 1892).

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Antoine Bourdelle, Coquelin Cadet en mascarille (1891), terracotta (Montauban, Musée Ingres-Bourdelle) [2]. Postcard, Coquelin Cadet dans “Monsieur de Pourceaugnac” (c. 1900) [3]. Édouard Vuillard, Coquelin Cadet dans “Le Malade imaginaire” (c. 1890), crayon, pen and ink, watercolour on paper, 21 × 34.5 cm (Melanie Kahane Collection) [4]. August Sander (1876–1964), Le Marchand d’art Sam Salz (1927), silver gelatin print, 29 × 20.6 cm (Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, inv. aM 1979-184) [5]. Vuillard, Portrait de Sam Salz (1939), pastel on paper, 51 × 34 cm (private collection)

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[4]

[5]

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BIANA DUHAMEL AU RÔLE DE “MISS HELYETT” c. 1891 pastel on paper 16 1/8 × 7 3/8 in / 41 × 18.5 cm signed lower centre ‘E Vuillard’ PROVENANCE Private collection Hopkins Gallery, Paris Private collection, Singapore Private collection LITERATURE Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I (Milan/Paris: Skira and Wildenstein Institute, 2003), no. iI–2, p. 165 (repro. in b&w) This painting is accompanied by a photocertificate of authenticity dated 7 June 2004 and signed by Antoine Salomon.

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MISS HELYETT A large pastel with a radical aesthetic, Biana Duhamel au rôle de “Miss Helyett” (c. 1891) [p. 204] is unarguably one of the most beautiful works produced by Vuillard during the 1890s, and the fruit of a surprising history that merits the telling for a full appreciation. ARTISTS’ ENTRANCE The operetta Miss Helyett was staged at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens in the heart of Paris, located between Passage Choiseul and Rue de Monsigny in the 2nd arrondissement [1]. Wanting a more comfortable venue than the one he had occupied on the ChampsÉlysées, Jacques Offenbach moved there in 1855 and enlarged the auditorium for the occasion. With productions of Orpheus in the Underworld and La Belle Hélène, he made the theatre one of the most popular in Paris. When Biana Duhamel (1870–1910) performed at the Bouffes Parisiens at the age of twenty, she was already an established actress. Born in Rouen to actor parents, she had played children’s roles from the age of four, most notably in Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris and Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir. She made her Paris debut in Le Petit Poucet, adapted from the tale by Charles Perrault, at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in 1885. After spending two years at the Conservatoire (1886–88), she performed at the Odéon, then at the Bouffes Parisiens in 1890, where she played Phrynette in L’Enfant Prodigue, a pantomime by Carré fils and Wormser. This role was later taken up, again at the Bouffes Parisiens, by Félicia Mallet, whose performance, although fairly conventional, so impressed Vuillard that he depicted it in a series of drawings. This experience probably marked the point of departure for what he would shortly imagine for Miss Helyett. A three-act operetta by Maxime Boucheron and Edmond Audran that opened at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens on 12 November 1890, Miss Helyett enjoyed immediate success. It was performed 800 times to no fewer than 500,000 theatre-goers, including on provincial tours.

[1]

In 1892, Georges Launey devoted a lengthy article to the play in the Revue encyclopédique, in which he recounted the plot, set in a holiday resort in the Pyrenees. Miss Helyett, a young American raised in a strict manner by her father – a pastor – is courted by a young man, whose advances she regularly defers. She is determined to remain faithful to her father’s principles, which are written in a small notebook kept in a purse that hangs from her belt. This type of purse can be seen in a contemporary photograph taken by Van Bosch [2]. In a series of plot complications, the two authors mischievously contrast the young woman’s puritanical attitude with the light-hearted outlook of other young women frequenting the resort. The plot takes a turn when Miss Helyett meets Paul, a French painter who sketches her, as shown in another photograph by Van Bosch. After various twists and turns, Miss Helyett becomes aware of Paul’s love for her, and her discovery of his sketch finally leads her to accept his proposal of marriage. Audran’s duets were a huge hit with audiences, who almost every night sang along to Ah, Le Superbe Point de Vue.

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[2]

The show’s success quickly attracted companies wanting to promote their products: Lefèvre-Utile included Biana Duhamel’s image in a series of adverts for their biscuits [3], and Maison de la Crème Simon used her to advertise their ointment. These corollary developments should not obscure the fact that, as Georges Launey himself pointed out, the show’s ‘success rather exceeds the true scope of the work.’ VUILLARD’S ICONIC IMAGE The modernity of Vuillard’s portrayal is in stark contrast to the light-hearted atmosphere of the operetta, which is very much in the tradition of Offenbach. The way Vuillard transposes Biana Duhamel’s melodramatic acting and conventional gestures into a ‘dynamic calligraphy’ – to use the term Guy Cogeval employs in the Critical Catalogue1 of the artist’s work – is nothing short of miraculous, unless we consider the influence of his exposure to avant-garde theatres on

[3]

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the blossoming of his radical aesthetic. The figure Vuillard cast like a silhouette against a plain background is evocative of the shadow puppets admired by the audience at Le Chat Noir, the cabaret run by Rodolphe Salis on the Butte Montmartre. The figure’s exaggerated movements also suggest characters with contorted bodies drawn on glass plates and projected by magic lanterns and praxinoscopes, the proto-cinema of the years 1880–95. Vuillard’s sinuous lines and frozen expression immediately call to mind figures in Japanese prints, which the Nabis collected, such as Kitao Masayoshi’s Dancers.2 The image is also reminiscent of the way in which Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Art Nouveau designers would later portray Loïe Fuller.

REFERENCES 1. Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I (Milan/Paris: Skira and Wildenstein Institute, 2003), no. III–1 & no. III–2, pp. 164–165. 2. Ursula Perucchi-Petri, Die Nabis und Japan (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1976, 1976, pp. 119–120.

ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Poster for Miss Helyett at the Théâtre des Bouffes [2]. Photograph of Biana Duhamel as Miss Helyett by Van Bosch [3]. Image of Miss Helyett used in advertising for ‘LefèvreUtile Biscuits LU’

These sources and formal affinities neither explain nor exhaust the somewhat mysterious richness of this pastel, beginning with the expressiveness of the face and the radical, severe quality of the lines and colours, which so anticipated the practices of the Fauves and even the German Expressionists. Did Vuillard, who in 1890 was a young bachelor, identify with the character of Paul, the painter who sketched Miss Helyett? His interest in this operetta raises questions, especially as his friend Romain Coolus had criticised it in the pages of La Revue blanche. At the time, it was only defended by academic critics like Francisque Sarcey. The almost organic logic of the forms and tones seems too much like the formal representation of an ‘inner necessity’, to use a term coined by Kandinsky, to be the result of mere chance. For Vuillard, theatre would in many ways become a place of Revelation in the strongest sense of the word, although the reason why remains concealed.

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MARIE AU JARDIN 1893 oil on canvas 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in / 27 × 35 cm artist’s stamp lower left ‘Vuillard’ PROVENANCE Hector Brame, Paris, 1947 Matthiesen Gallery, London and New York David B. Findlay, New Cannan, CT; thence by descent Christie’s, New York: 5 May 2004 (lot no. 254) Private collection, USa Private collection, Paris Private collection EXHIBITIONS ‘Peintures de Vuillard’, Espace Bonnard: Jardins du Tivoli, Le Cannet, 3 June – 17 September 2006, cat. no. 10, p. 29 (repro. in colour) LITERATURE Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I (Milan/Paris: Skira and Wildenstein Institute, 2003), no. IC–103, p. 284 (repro. in b&w)

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MARIE THE NABI ZOUAVE’S PRANKS

Édouard Vuillard’s work from 1892 to 1895 features numerous genre scenes with titles as colourful as they are enigmatic: Le Caraco orange (1890–91), Femme en peignoir bleu (c. 1892), Demoiselle en rouge (1893), Dame en noir assise (1893), Dame en rouge (1895–98), and others. Among the women he painted, we occasionally see his mother, sometimes workers from the dressmaking workshop she ran on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, and, at other times, young women whose identities remain unknown. However, his most frequent subject during these years was his sister, Marie.

Like a photographer composing a photographic essay, Vuillard unstintingly followed Marie, portraying her engaged in many occupations of her daily life, even the most trivial. In La Manche bleue (1893) [2], we see her employed in the family workroom. Surprised, she turns towards the artist, gazing too at the viewer. As in the works of Diego Velázquez, whom Vuillard admired so much, here the painting looks at us. Often, it is difficult to understand what Marie is actually doing; in Marie en robe bleue, assise de profil (1894) [p. 219], is she sewing, reading a magazine, finishing her lunch? No detail is given that allows us to reach a conclusion. It is as though Vuillard enjoyed teasingly blurring the picture. And what is she doing in Marie au jardin (1893) [p. 212]? Is she taking a walk? Is she going to meet someone? And where is the scene taking place? Is this the garden of her Aunt Saurel in Creteil? Is it a real setting or a partly invented reconstitution? And what are we to make of the oddly static pose he gives her? What does it signify? These uncertainties should not lead us to think that Vuillard painted his works all in one go, that what we see is a snapshot in paint.

[1]

Affectionately called “Mimi” by Vuillard, she and his mother were undoubtedly the central figures in the young artist’s emotional world. Vuillard portrayed his sister consistently from 1888 to 1895. After this period, as he became more involved with the La Revue blanche circle, Misia, the wife of Thadée Natanson, took over as his favourite model. These earlier domestic scenes, far from trivial, played a crucial role in the development of Vuillard’s artistic style. By repeatedly focusing on the same subjects, he experimented with various approaches to representation: academic in 1888, synthesised and hieratic in 1890 [1], and adopting Japanesque influences with outlined flat tints from 1890–91.

[2]

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Analysis of his sketchbooks, especially the one for 1893 (in the Vuillard archives), reveals that he prepared his compositions with the greatest care, making many small preparatory sketches in pencil. When Vuillard bought himself a camera in 1897, he continued to take endless snaps of Marie [3, 4], who had now become the wife of the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel; his photographs now played the role that his sketches had, that of memory aids to help prepare his paintings.

[4]

through the filter of Ibsen’s theatre? Vuillard was too sophisticated to make an unambiguous comment. He always left it up to the viewers, and historians too, to imagine the story being played out before them. MOTIF, SCENERY, TEXTURE: VUILLARD’S UNCONVENTIONALITY Looking at the restrained nature of Vuillard’s genre scenes, it is hard to imagine that his friends referred to him as the ‘Nabi Zouave’. However, there was an unconventional and modern Vuillard who followed previously unexplored paths that art history had long ago put to one side to define him as a painter of intimate middle-class scenes.

[3]

We know that Vuillard shared certain personality traits with Marie, starting with shyness and a lack of physical presence that often led them both to avoid the limelight. However, this shyness does not fully explain the immobile image with which he represents his sister in Marie au jardin. Her fixed pose should perhaps be understood as the legacy of his collaboration with avant-garde theatres, in particular the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, founded in 1893 by Aurélien Lugné-Poe, his old schoolmate at the Lycée Condorcet. Vuillard contributed to creating the sets for Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, as well as for plays by Henrik Ibsen, in other words, in dramas in which the characters are unable to free themselves from the conventions that fetter them. Is Vuillard presenting Marie, whose early years of marriage were often painful,

While, like his friends, Vuillard took an interest in Japanese art, the conclusions he drew from it often differed from theirs. It is true that, like them, he was an avid reader of Siegfried Bing’s Le Japon artistique, and sometimes even acquired Japanese prints directly, such as Eizan’s Three Courtesans beneath the Cherry Blossom [5, overleaf], but where Bonnard and Ranson took inspiration from Utamaro and Hokusai to invent a graphic vocabulary featuring arabesques characteristic of Art Nouveau, Vuillard, more than any other, explored the possibilities offered by this new syntax. In Marie en robe bleue, assise de profil, the viewer’s eye is invited to focus not on whatever action she is 215

MARIE AU JARDIN & MARIE EN ROBE BLEUE, ASSISE DE PROFIL

are rooted in a reality that in turn interacts with us. This theme would structure many of Vuillard’s future decorative works, for example, Les Jardins publics (1894) [6]. Later on, echoes of it can be found in the foliage of Sam Szafran (1934–2019) and the embroidery of Éva Jospin (b. 1975).

engaged in, but on the motif of her blue dress, patterned with squares by rapidly executed white lines, which occupies the foreground. The pattern of the dress becomes the element that structures the composition. The contracted perspective in association with the support left visible at the bottom of the painting – en reserve as Toulouse-Lautrec used to do – accentuates the texture of the work rather than its narrative. The viewer’s relationship with the painting is tactile, without losing any of its power of appeal.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, THE REVERED POET Whereas Bonnard empathised with the sensual and even erotic world of Paul Verlaine, as demonstrated by his illustrations for Parallèlement, Vuillard’s aesthetic leaned towards Mallarmé. In fact, a recent detailed analysis of his Journal shows that he made numerous references to the poet’s writings (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut). What Vuillard drew from Mallarmé is marvellously expressed in Marie au jardin; our gaze is first drawn to the proliferation of bushes depicted in a range of greens embellished here and there with red and yellow touches. But the diagonal path does not lead to a visual outlet, and our eye is once again lost in the shower of colours with which Vuillard has sprinkled the space. What Vuillard was in fact doing is that he was touching on the moment when painting ceases to be comprehensible, decipherable, in order to tell us a different and parallel story where words, as in Mallarmé’s writings, no longer have the power of description. Vuillard appropriates Mallarmé’s principle that pointing something out is tantamount to concealing its profound truth: suggestion – that is the means by which one arrives at the quintessence of the world. In his descriptions of the paintings for the first Catalogue raisonné of Vuillard’s works, André Chastel (1912–90) described Marie au jardin with great sensitivity: ‘Evening. Dark green and blue flowerbeds with patches of yellow, white and pink flowers. A lady in a blue dress appears on the right, holding her arms loosely in front of her. Blue sky with white clouds. One of the artist’s earliest “polyphonic” garden studies’. An international specialist in Italian Renaissance painting, this historian of exceptional curiosity, culture and sensitivity had understood, before anyone else, how much Vuillard’s painting is a delicate and infinite melody of tones.

[5]

But Vuillard went even further in Marie au jardin. By contrasting surfaces painted in solid colours (Marie’s dress, the walls and roofs of the houses, the sky) with areas created by skilfully applied and stippled colours, Vuillard invites us to lose ourselves visually in the bushes. He no longer considers his painting as being a window looking onto the world but as a continuum of decorative textures that the eye traverses laterally. Another idea still in its inception in this painting is the visual relationship between immobile figures and an irrepressibly burgeoning expanse of vegetation. Not simply a formal relationship, this contrast stems from a poetic and almost philosophical conception of the world: we 216

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ILLUSTRATIONS [1]. Édouard Vuillard, Portrait schématique de Marie Vuillard (1890), oil on canvas, 92 × 73.5 cm (private collection) [2]. Vuillard, La Manche bleue (1893), oil on card, 26.6 × 22.3 cm (New York, collection Malcolm Wiener) [3 & 4]. Vuillard, Marie Roussel dans un fauteuil de la salle à manger, rue Truffaut (c. 1900), original photograph, 9 × 9 cm (private collection) & Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Marie et Annette Roussel à Levallois (1898), original photograph, 8.8 × 7.7 cm (private collection) [5]. Kikugawa Eisen, Three Courtesans Beneath the Cherry Blossom, 38.4 × 25 cm (private collection) [6]. Vuillard, Les Jardins publics, Fillettes jouant (1894), oil on canvas, 214.5 × 88 cm (Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

[6]

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MARIE EN ROBE BLEUE, ASSISE DE PROFIL 1894 oil on card 9 7/8 × 5 1/8 in / 25 × 13 cm signed lower right ‘E Vuillard’ PROVENANCE Olivier Sainsère, Paris Private collection Private collection Private collection, France EXHIBITIONS ‘Édouard Vuillard’, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, May–July 1938, no. 57 LITERATURE Édouard Vuillard. Catalogue critique des peintres et pastels, volume I, Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Skira and Wildenstein Institute, Paris, 2003, no. IV–151 (repro. in b&w p. 314)

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ETEL ADNAN

ETEL ADNAN 1925–2021 Born in Beirut in 1925, Etel Adnan’s diverse practice encompassed poetry, tapestry, ceramic, painting and Leporello: printed material folded into a pleated accordion-like structure. Renowned for her vibrantly coloured, abstracted renditions of mountains, oceans and sky, Adnan uses writing and art to access her personal experience with war, loss and displacement, finding remedy in the natural beauty of landscape. After studying philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, Adnan moved to America in 1955, where she attended the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. She began to paint at the age of 34 while teaching at Dominican College in San Rafael, California. Using a palette knife, Adnan developed vivid blocks of colour into distilled landscapes, her spirit moved by memorable sites, such Mount Tamalpais in California, where she taught, and visions of her native Lebanon. Following her participation in Documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012, Adnan’s work gained significant international visibility. In 2014, she was invited to take part in the Whitney Biennial in New York. That same year, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha presented a major retrospective of her work, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Since then, numerous institutions have dedicated solo exhibitions to her, including museums in Bern, Luxembourg, San Francisco, Aspen and Lille. Her work is now held in leading public collections worldwide, among them MNAM Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mathaf, Doha; Musuem of Modern Art, New York; M+, Hong Kong; Royal Jordanian Museum, Amman; MACAM, Tunis, as well as the British Museum and Tate, both in London.

ETEL ADNAN

UNTITLED 2014 oil on canvas 9 5/8 × 11 7/8 in / 24.5 × 30 cm signed and dated on the reverse PROVENANCE Galerie Lelong, Paris Massimo De Carlo, Milan Private collection, USA

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ETEL ADNAN

UNTITLED 2010 oil on canvas 8 × 10 in / 20.5 × 25.5 cm signed and dated on the reverse PROVENANCE Private collection, France (acquired directly from the artist)

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BEN ARPÉA

BEN ARPÉA b.1989 Ben Arpéa’s work draws on his travels, where suspended moments of experience become lasting points of reference. The Mediterranean, in particular, is a constant source of inspiration, appearing frequently in his work in the form of everyday environments, such as the arches and tiles of familiar interiors. Colour plays a central role in his paintings: vivid, bold hues and subtly textured surfaces shape distilled, almost idealised landscapes that prompt reflection on our relationship with the surrounding world. Through the study of colour and matter, Arpéa’s practice mirrors the thoughtful approach to colour pioneered by Pierre Bonnard. A manual and sensory approach is fundamental to his practice. Arpéa stretches his own canvases and incorporates mineral elements – sand and pebbles – into his paint, giving the surface a tangible presence. His compositions begin as sketches and are then developed on a larger scale, where the simplicity of his motifs meets the breadth of the format. Beyond their immediate visual clarity, his works retain an element of enigma. They evoke traces of human passage, places once inhabited, now marked by absence. Born into a family of art lovers and collectors, Arpéa has been immersed in a rich artistic universe since childhood. In his work, he questions centuries-old canons of classical landscape and still life, reinterpreting them through a contemporary lens. He gained recognition in 2020 through a series of paintings foregrounding flat areas of colour and textured surfaces, oscillating between semi-figurative and abstract approaches. Since then, his work has been exhibited internationally, notably in Hong Kong, Dubai, Mexico, Los Angeles, New York, Geneva, Brussels, Venice and Paris. Ben Arpéa lives and works in Paris.

BEN APRÉA

INTÉRIEUR AU SOLEIL ROUGE 2026 acrylic, oil and sand on plywood panel and linen canvas 40 1/4 × 30 3/8 in / 102 × 77 cm signed and dated on the reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ

MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ b.1992 For the Catalan painter Marcel·la Barceló, a connection to the living world, particularly the sea and mountains of her childhood in Mallorca, lies at the heart of her practice. Her work is informed by a geographically and culturally diverse trajectory, spanning the Balearic Islands, Paris and Japan. Barceló privileges an embodied experience of place, adopting a process-led approach and working without preparatory sketches. Moving fluidly between materials, including oil, acrylic and pencil, as well as nail varnish and natural pigments, she creates tactile, immersive pictorial fields. These are environments of constant flux: landscapes caught in states of transformation. Water, a recurring element, becomes both a conceptual and spatial force, a medium of change and metamorphosis. Through submerged islands, aquatic forests and dreamlike reefs, the viewer is drawn into intimate amorphous spaces. These spaces echo the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Barbara Grenfell Fairhead, the phenomenological reflections of Gaston Bachelard, and the shifting myths of Metamorphoses by Ovid. They also enter into quiet dialogue with the moonlit scenes of Félix Vallotton, the emotional intensity of Edvard Munch and the unsettled logic of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Barceló’s visual language brings together fragility and turbulence, often resolved in iridescent, lightsensitive surfaces. Across these gestural compositions, young girls appear as recurring figures. Often androgynous and translucent, they seem both present and dissolving, inhabiting an ambiguous in-between state. Rather than fixed protagonists, they are figures in transition, identities still forming. Barceló also draws on the spectral imagery of Japanese folklore, particularly its understanding of spirits among the living and the dead. Her paintings do not unfold as narratives; instead, they operate as rituals or inner landscapes, filtering myth and legend through an intimate lens. Marcel·la Barceló lives and works in Paris.

MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ

KUZUNOHA 2025 acrylic on canvas 59 × 59 in / 150 × 150 cm signed on the reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ

ALTRE LLOC 2025 acrylic on canvas 31 1/2 × 31 1/2 in / 80 × 80 cm signed on the reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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IAN DAVENPORT

IAN DAVENPORT b.1966 Ian Davenport gained recognition after participating in ‘Freeze’, a student-organised exhibition held in London’s Docklands in 1988, which showcased the work of Goldsmiths students who would later become known as the Young British Artists. Since then, Davenport has experimented with the use of everyday tools such as watering cans, electric fans and nails to manipulate paint, driven by a desire to explore the paradox between control and chance. For Davenport, the act of painting is a subject itself – in his words, ‘how to paint becomes what to paint.’ Davenport’s first solo exhibition was held at Waddington Galleries, London in 1990. That same year, his work was included in the British Art Show, which toured Leeds City Art Gallery and the Hayward Gallery in London. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991 and, in 1999, received the John Moores Painting Prize. Since then, Davenport has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide, including solo museum exhibitions at Tate Liverpool in 2000, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 2004, and a retrospective at Dallas Contemporary in 2018. Using syringes to pour household paint, Davenport’s paintings present complex colour compositions. In 2008, he observed how these instruments allowed paint to spread across the floor, creating a visual contradiction between the controlled, precise lines and their eventual merging. In recent years, he has extended his painting practice from two to three dimensions through sitespecific installations. In 2006, Southwark Council commissioned a 48-metre-long painting, Poured Lines: Southwark Street. In 2019, Dior commissioned a largescale installation, titled Cascade, for its Toronto flagship store. For the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, Davenport was invited by the Swatch Pavilion to create the installation Giardini Colourfall. In 2022, he installed a poured staircase at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, and the following year, in 2023, his poured staircase Tide was unveiled on the Greenwich Peninsula in London. Ian Davenport lives and works in London.

IAN DAVENPORT

NOTATION CHROMATIC 2026 acrylic on aluminium mounted onto aluminium panel 23 5/8 × 19 3/4 in / 60 × 50 cm signed, titled and dated on reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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MARCEL DZAMA

MARCEL DZAMA b.1974 Drawing from folk vernacular, art-historical and contemporary influences, Marcel Dzama’s work visualises a universe of childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairy tales. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, he received his BFA in 1997 from the University of Manitoba and rose to prominence in the late 1990s. His work captivates with a steady rhythm of pattern and colour, merging polka dots, sinuous lines and floral motifs. Bats, owls, cats and hybrid creatures are anthropomorphised, and masked men and women permeate his compositions. At times playful, at times menacing, these expressive figures are a means for Dzama to investigate human action and motivation and the blurred relationship between the real and the subconscious. Drawn to a broad range of art forms, over his career Dzama has collaborated with artists such as Raymond Pettibon and filmmaker Spike Jonze. In the 1990s, he co-founded The Royal Art Lodge, a Winnipeg collective known for collaborative drawings. In 2016, Dzama created the costume and stage design for New York City Ballet’s The Most Incredible Thing, a performance based on the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen, as well as an installation in the Promenade of their David H. Koch Theatre. Engaging deeply with performance and choreography, Dzama’s practice recalls the Nabis’ sustained involvement with theatre, set design and music, as seen in the work of Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. Dzama has exhibited widely throughout North America, Europe and China, including at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario (2023), which travelled to Alberta and Winnipeg in 2025. Dzama’s work is held in important public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Art Institute of Chicago; MNAM Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London. Marcel Dzama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

MARCEL DZAMA

THE DAY THE WATER BROKE 2025 pearlescent acrylic ink, watercolour, and graphite on paper 30 × 22 1/2 in / 76.2 × 57.1 cm titled lower left ‘THE DAY THE WATER BROKE’ and signed lower right ‘marcel DZAMA’; signed, titled and dated on the reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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PIERRE KNOP

PIERRE KNOP b.1982 From intimate interiors to grandiose landscapes, Pierre Knop’s vibrant paintings are nourished by images drawn from his personal archives. Whether intimate photographs or fragments of art history, these small images are transmuted into vast panoramas. Knop’s process allows him to work on several canvases simultaneously, giving rise to ensembles that share a common palette and atmosphere. Rooted in the European tradition of landscape painting, Knop references figures such as Nicolas Poussin, Caspar David Friedrich and Pierre Bonnard, as well as contemporary photography. Small or monumental figures often populate his compositions, and architecture plays a central role, from houses with vertiginous alpine views to isolated cabins or hotels dwarfed by the majesty of the mountains. Often tinged with subtle humor and a latent sense of threat, the compositions suggest that a turning point is imminent. A tree becomes almost abstract, a tsunami emerges to engulf passersby, a plume of smoke unfurls in the sky like a monumental arabesque. Oscillating between lightness and the sublime, Knop’s work draws the viewer into a playful and ambiguous journey. Knop trained at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 2008 and 2013 under Andreas Schulze and Katharina Grosse. He has received several residencies and distinctions, notably at CCA Andratx in Mallorca, the La Brea Residency in Los Angeles and the Friedrich Schneider Scholarship in Düsseldorf, and has also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in London, New York, Seoul, Copenhagen, Cologne, Naples and Aarhus and has been presented in major group exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Pierre Knop lives and works in Cologne.

PIERRE KNOP

UNTITLED 2026 ink, crayon, oil pastel and oil on canvas 61 × 53 1/8 in / 155 × 135 cm signed and dated on the reverse PROVENANCE The artist

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FRANÇOIS RÉAU

FRANÇOIS RÉAU b.1978 François Réau’s work takes the space of the landscape and its processes of transformation as a starting point. Drawing on his fascination with nature, his work examines the relationship between human beings and natural forms. Across drawing and installation Réau draws out the connections between mental and physical landscapes, as well as notions of scale, perception and the ways in which forms emerge and dissolve within materials. The landscape becomes a site of projection and passage, as well as a space of desire. In his words, ‘the landscape is always, in a certain way, the expression of lack, because the space of the landscape is also the very space of our own desire.’ Réau seeks to push the boundaries of drawing through immersive devices, allowing the medium to escape its traditional support and occupy space, turning it into a place for the experience of visual thought. His installations create a dialogue between dream and reality, becoming at times poetic metaphors or refuges of an intimate, sensory experience, offering the viewer the potential for re-enchantment. In 2021, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire invited Réau to experiment with very large formats, resulting in Nuages, a drawing measuring over fifteen meters in length. That same year, in collaboration with the Fondation Bullukian for the 15th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, he produced a monumental textile work stretching 60 meters. He has participated in various international events and has exhibited widely, with recent solo exhibitions at Musée Saint-Roch, Issoudun; Fondation Bullukian, Lyon; Domaine de Kerguéhennec, the Drawing Lab, Paris; Centre des Monuments Nationaux, the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, Saumur; the Eleven Steens Art Center, Brussels and the Alliance Française, Melbourne. Réau’s works are held in several public collections, including FRAC Alsace, SMAK Ghent and the Musée Jenisch, Vevey. From September 2025 to July 2026, Réau participated in the prestigious artistic residency at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. François Réau lives and works in Paris.

FRANÇOIS RÉAU

LAS LANZAS 2025 lead pencil on paper mounted on canvas 36 1/2 × 49 1/2 in / 92.5 × 125.5 cm signed lower right ‘F. RÉAU’

PROVENANCE The artist

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ANNE ROTHENSTEIN

ANNE ROTHENSTEIN b.1949 As the daughter of English painters Michael Rothenstein and Duffy Ayres, Anne Rothenstein was born into a vibrant and distinguished community of artists in the village of Great Bardfield, Essex. In the mid-1960s, she completed a foundation course at Camberwell School of Art, although acting consumed the next decade of her life, postponing her development as a painter. Over the years, Rothenstein gradually returned to painting, building a practice that was largely self-taught. Rothenstein’s paintings are enigmatic, with mysterious figures inhabiting flattened landscapes and interior spaces. Drawing inspiration from found images, personal experience and memory, she works instinctively. Her compositions cultivate atmosphere and psychological tension, depicted with sinuous lines, lending her work a dreamlike quality that recalls the painting of Félix Vallotton and Maurice Denis. Rothenstein often paints directly onto wooden panels, building colour through thin layers of oil paint while allowing the grain of the material to remain visible, merging with both figure and landscape. In Rothenstein’s words, her intentions for painting ‘are quite mysterious.’ She explains that: The spark always comes from an existing image, a photograph or another painting, and I often only discover why this image caught my attention, or what I am really exploring, once the work is finished. Sometimes I never discover it. Everything is almost entirely intuitive. Finding a rhythm, seeking balance, staying alert to missteps, to what is happening, to changes of direction. Most of the time I tell myself a story and ask questions: who is this, where are we, what is happening? This is what I call the noise of a painting. And of course, what I try to reach is silence. Anne Rothenstein lives and works in London.

ANNE ROTHENSTEIN

BLACK LAKE 2026 oil on wood panel 47 5/8 × 47 5/8 in / 121 × 121 cm initialled on the front ‘AR’; signed, titled and dated on the reverse

PROVENANCE The artist

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CHRISTINE SAFA

CHRISTINE SAFA b.1994 In her painting, Christine Safa develops moments and places charged with emotion, recalled from memory. Landscapes, figures and portraits are captured in a warm palette that acknowledges Safa’s Mediterranean origins, paying homage to her homeland of Lebanon, where she has spent a significant part of her life. During her studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Safa was drawn to the writings of Etel Adnan, which led her to reflect more truthfully on her experience of Lebanon. In 2021, she was invited by Adnan to participate in a group exhibition at Levy Gorvy Gallery in Paris. Since then, her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at FRAC Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand in 2023 and at the ICA, Milan in 2022, as well as group exhibitions in France at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen and MNAM Centre Pompidou, Paris to name a few. In June 2024, Safa was awarded the 13th Contemporary Painting Prize of the Jean-François Prat Foundation. In Safa’s lyrical compositions, land and body intertwine, connecting faces with mountains and silhouettes with horizons. Landscapes that Safa has seen first-hand are frozen in recollection: I approach my paintings as tributes, as fragments of memories, as what remains. ‘It is what remains that I paint [...] I generate the outline, the form of ruins of memories that both welcome and endure time.’ Employing light to transform memories into emotional states, Safa’s approach echoes the masterful illumination of Édouard Vuillard's paintings; Vuillard of course also worked from memory. Equally atmospheric and powerful, her works meditate on intimate interior landscapes. Christine Safa lives and works in France.

CHRISTINE SAFA

NATHAN ET VIGNE II 2026 oil on canvas 21 5/8 × 15 in / 55 × 38 cm signed and dated on the reverse ‘Christine Safa 2026 ’

PROVENANCE The artist

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FABIENNE VERDIER

FABIENNE VERDIER b.1962 In 1984, as a young graduate of l’École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, Fabienne Verdier was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to study at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in China. She left France to immerse herself in calligraphy, studying with some of the last great Chinese painters who had survived the Cultural Revolution. Over almost a decade in China, Verdier abandoned easel painting while learning the principles of traditional Eastern art. This immersive experience was later recounted in her 2003 autobiography, Passagère du silence, which explores how introspection, silence and inner rigour became the aesthetic pillars of her work. Verdier paints with self-made tools and enormous brushes suspended from the studio ceiling. She invented the monumental pendulum brush in 2006, transforming her studio into a laboratory of forces. Through her wave- and particle-based study of matter, Verdier’s approach is an exploration of human movement, gravitational and sonic energies and a deep consideration of natural landscapes. Verdier has been widely recognised with major commissions and retrospectives. In 2009, she completed four monumental paintings for the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome, and in 2013, the Groeninge Museum in Bruges showcased Verdier’s work in dialogue with Flemish Primitives such as Van Eyck and Memling. In 2014, in residency at the Juilliard School in New York, Verdier visualised sound and pictorial waves. Between 2015 and 2017, she collaborated with Alain Rey on the 50th anniversary edition of the Petit Robert French Dictionary. In 2018, she set up a nomadic studio on Montagne Sainte-Victoire, famously depicted in over 30 paintings by Paul Cézanne. This series was exhibited alongside Cézanne’s works in her celebrated 2019 retrospective at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence. Solo exhibitions also took place at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar (2022), Château Lynch-Bages, Pauillac (2023) and Domaine de Chaumont-Sur-Loire (2025). Verdier’s landmark exhibition ‘Mute’ was presented in the medieval architecture gallery at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris (2025–26). Fabienne Verdier lives and works near Paris .

FABIENNE VERDIER

VERS UNE ÎLE 2025 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 12 5/8 × 17 3/4 in / 32 × 45 cm signed, titled and dated on reverse ‘Vers une île, 2025, Fabienne Verdier’ PROVENANCE The artist

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FABIENNE VERDIER

SUR LES ROUTES DE LA MER 2025 acrylic and mixed media on canvas 6 3/8 × 9 1/4 in / 16 × 23.5 cm signed, titled and dated on reverse ‘Sur les routes de la mer, 2025, Fabienne Verdier’ PROVENANCE The artist

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GABRIEL-ALBERT AURIER 1865–1892 Dying at the age of just 27, Gabriel-Albert Aurier was another of those meteors of history, like Théodore Géricault, Georges Seurat and Arthur Rimbaud. The ephemeral existence of this brilliant, lucid writer was known for his daring art criticism. Born in Châteauroux, he went to Paris in 1883 to study law, which he completed only to satisfy his father. After being admitted to the Paris Court of Appeal as a lawyer, he turned away from the Bar to take up journalism, publishing his first articles in Le Grillon and, in 1886, in Anatole Baju’s Le Décadent. His meeting with Stéphane Mallarmé, and in 1887 with the painter Émile Bernard in Saint-Briac, on the way to Pont-Aven, confirmed his support for young artists. As editor-in-chief of the short-lived illustrated review Le Moderniste, from April to September 1889, he demonstrated boldness and originality, publishing articles, as well as his own poems, on the avant-gardes of the moment: in the issue of 27 April, an article by Charles Morice on Richard Wagner, and in those of 4 and 13 July, notes by Paul Gauguin on the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The 17 August issue featured a reproduction of Claude-Émile Schuffenecker’s drawing for the Volpini exhibition, which enabled Parisians to learn about the painting of the Pont-Aven School. His work for other magazines was no less intense, and the articles he published there were of major importance for many artists: ‘Les Isolés: Vincent van Gogh’, Mercure de France, January 1890; ‘Le symbolisme en peinture: Paul Gauguin’, Mercure de France, March 1891; ‘Les Symbolistes’, Revue encyclopédique, 1 April 1892. He was also Mercure de France’s official art critic from 1890 to 1892. An indefatigable defender of Vincent van Gogh’s work, he was invited by the painter’s brother Theo to write a posthumous monograph. Sadly, this project never came to fruition, Aurier died prematurely in 1892. His Œuvres posthumes, prefaced by his friend Rémy de Gourmont, was published by

Mercure de France in 1893. As for Aurier, art was always a measure of commitment; the critic was also a daring collector of works by Bonnard and others.

OLIVIER SAINSÈRE 1852–1923 Born on 9 September 1852 in Bar-le-Duc, Olivier Sainsère was descended from ancient Danish nobility that went into exile in the 16th century and settled near Caen, in Normandy. In the early 18th century, a branch of the family became established in Vaucouleurs (Meuse) where its members flourished as horse dealers. In Bar-le-Duc, close to Vaucouleurs, one of their descendants, Louis Sainsère (1811–60), became the local mayor. His son Olivier studied in the town, where he became friends with Raymond Poincaré, also from Bar-leDuc, who would later become Président du Conseil (Prime Minister). Olivier Sainsère soon entered the senior ranks of the French administration, making him an important figure in the political life of the Third Republic. Appointed Sous-Préfet (responsible for ensuring state decisions are implemented) seven times, he became Préfet for Loir-et-Cher in 1889, and then achieved high honour in being appointed a Conseiller d’État (a senior member of the Council of State) and lastly Secrétaire général de la Présidence de la République from 1915 to 1920. After marrying Anne Marie Henry in 1881, who came from a Lorraine family of industrialists specialising in dyeing, Sainsère enjoyed a financial affluence that allowed him to indulge in his other great passion – supporting artists and collecting their works. Immediately enthused by the paintings of Pablo Picasso, whom he discovered in the gallery belonging to Berthe Weill, one of the first to exhibit the Spaniard, he decided to help the young artist. Consequently, through Sainsère’s assistance, Picasso found it easier to have his residence permits legalised in France and received protection during the police investigations into the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. A lover of fine books, Sainsère was also a founder member of the ‘Cent Bibliophiles’ with Louis Barthou, another important political figure.

On Sainsère’s death in 1923, the Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, whose principal editors and often main article writers were Félix Fénéon and Adolphe Tabarant, paid tribute to him as follows: Olivier Sainsère was the quintessential art lover. For this ingenious mind, art was not a laborious occupation alien to his everyday life: art provided him with a natural response to his intellectual needs [...] he was a member of the council of national museums and the committee of historical monuments, to which he brought his informed wisdom and strong convictions. His love of art was not purely theoretical. He surrounded himself with masterpieces chosen with infallible taste. In his home, Monets hung alongside Seurats, the Henri-Edmond Crosses with the Pierre Bonnards, the Gauguins with the Pissarros, the Signacs with the Maurice Denis, the K.-X. Roussels with the Derains, the Degas with the Vuillards.1 REFERENCES 1. ‘Les disparus’, Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, Year 4, no. 18 (15 September 1923), p. 386.

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AUGUSTE CAZALIS 1859–1930 Unjustly forgotten today, Auguste Ferdinand Cazalis [1] played an essential role in the formation of the Nabi group of painters. The fact that Pierre Bonnard and his friends took the word nabi as a generic name for their pictorial movement was due to Cazalis studying under the Orientalist archaeologist Eugène Ledrain (1844–1910). Cazalis was introduced to the Semitic languages by this specialist in Aramaic and Assyrian epigraphy, and it was these languages that he later introduced to his friends. Their interest in ancient cultures was not simply a bit of student light-heartedness, but part of their ambition to form an artistic brotherhood and to break away from naturalism in painting. Wishing to announce a new era, Paul Sérusier and his friends became, through Cazalis, the Nabis, the ‘prophets’ of a pictorial revolution pioneered by Paul Gauguin. We should not forget Maurice Denis’ notebook in which recorded his progress in Hebrew, held today by his family. Nor that Paul Ranson signed several of his paintings in Arabic characters. It was in 1890 in the restaurant L’Os à Moelle – named because the place had its key attached to a large bone – located in the Passage Brady, near to the Porte Saint-Martin (Paris, 10th arrondissement), that the Nabis got into the habit of meeting up with Cazalis. The story goes that, in order to stimulate their fervent discussions on painting and philosophy, each participant showed one of his works. Soon, Cazalis had fun making up a nickname for each of his friends: Pierre Bonnard became the ‘Nabi japonard’, Paul Ranson the ‘Nabi plus japonard que le nabi japonard’, Paul Sérusier the ‘Nabi à la barbe rutilante’, Vuillard the ‘Nabi zouave’, Maurice Denis the ‘Nabi aux belles icônes’, Georges Lacombe the ‘Nabi sculpteur’, Félix Vallotton the ‘Nabi Suisse’, József Rippl-Rónai the ‘Nabi hongrois’, and Jan Verkade the ‘Nabi obéliscal’ (owing to his height). In return, his painter friends dubbed him the ‘Nabi Ben Kallyre’, meaning ‘with hesitant speech’ on account of his stammer.

Cazalis was also a collector and at times an artist. Among the works he was given by his friends, besides L’Hippogriffe, was a wonderful Sérusier, Quatre jeunes bretonnes dans la forêt (1892). Although there is a superb photograph showing Cazalis painting [2], very few of his works are known today, and the precious watercolour Le Chemin (1892) [3] is the only one in a public collection. It was Jan Verkade who gave the most endearing portrait of Cazalis: These six young men – Sérusier, Denis, Vuillard, Bonnard, Roussel and Ranson – formed the core of this little circle, which included a few other members [...]. Cazalis had already tried several careers but had abandoned them one after the other. There was one point, however, on which he was steadfast: friendship. He had made it his mission to be of service to others. Anyone in need of anything would go and see Cazalis, who would deal with it straight away. A devoted son, he lived with his mother on a small annuity his father had left him.1 REFERENCES 1. Dom Willibrord Verkade [Jan Verkade], Le Tourment de Dieu, Étapes d'un moine peintre, Louis Rouart et Jacques Watelin, Paris, 1923, p.82.

GILLES GENTY An art historian, formerly a lecturer at the École du Louvre and a former director of the Musée du Petit Palais in Geneva, Gilles Genty has co-curated many international exhibitions on Post-Impressionism, including: ‘Maurice Denis’ (Lyon, 1994–95), ‘The Time of the Nabis’ (Florence and Montreal, 1998), ‘Impressionism from Corot to Renoir’ (Brescia, 1998), ‘Da Pont-Aven ai Nabis. Le stagioni del simbolismo francese’ (Brescia, 1999), ‘De Caillebotte à Picasso’ (Paris, Rotterdam and Quebec, 2002–03), ‘Paul Ranson’ (Valence, 2004), ‘De Gauguin aux Nabis, le droit de tout oser’ (Lodève, 2010), ‘Les Univers de Georges Lacombe (1868–1916)’ (Versailles, 2012), ‘ToulouseLautrec Illustrates the Belle Époque’ (Montreal, 2016), ‘Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism: Signac and the Indépendants’ (Montreal, 2020), ‘Vallotton en noir et en couleur’ (Le Cannet, 2022), ‘Toulouse-Lautrec tête d’affiche’ (Le Cannet, 2024). He is also the author of the main introductory texts for the following exhibitions: ‘Lyonel Feininger, la ville et la mer’ (Vevey, 2021), and ‘La Belle Époque de l’Art Nouveau’ (Pully, 2022). He is also a co-author of the Catalogue raisonné of Paul Ranson (1861–1909) (Somogy, 2000) and Pierre Bonnard, inédits (Cercle d’Art, 2006).

THE NABI SHOCK 9 April – 6 June 2026 Waddington Custot, 36 Rue de Seine, 75006, Paris 19 June – 12 September 2026 Waddington Custot, 11-12 Cork Street, W1S 3LT, London

FORENAME SURNAME

Credits Etel Adnan, courtesy of Anthony Meier Gallery, photo by Chris Gunder; Ben Arpéa, courtesy of the artist and 193 Gallery; Marcel•la Barceló, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Dina Vierny, photo by Jean-Louis Losi; Ian Davenport, courtesy of the artist; Maurice Denis, photo by Jean-Louis Losi; © Marcel Dzama courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, photo by Chase Barnes; Pierre Knop, courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, photo by Mareike Tocha; François Réau, courtesy of the artist; Anne Rothenstein, courtesy of the artist; Christine Safa, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, photo by Nicolas Brasseur; Fabienne Verdier, courtesy of the artist. Image credits on relevant essay pages, with additional artwork images courtesy of Prudence Cuming. Text © Gilles Genty Translation Timothy Stroud Proofreading Elisabeth Stroud Editing Louise Malcolm Print Gomer Press Official copyright © 2026 Waddington Custot, London, Paris, Dubai

FORENAME SURNAME xxxx–xxxx

ÉMILE BERNARD Biography Text from here

ETEL ADNAN

PIERRE BONNARD

BEN ARPÉA

MAURICE DENIS

MARCEL•LA BARCELÓ

CHARLES FILIGER

IAN DAVENPORT

PAUL RANSON

MARCEL DZAMA

JÓZSEF RIPPL-RÓNAI

PIERRE KNOP

KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL

FRANÇOIS RÉAU

PAUL SÉRUSIER

ANNE ROTHENSTEIN

FÉLIX VALLOTTON

CHRISTINE SAFA

ÉDOUARD VUILLARD

FABIENNE VERDIER