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Artist or Maker: Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940)
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Provenance: Dr. and Mme Prosper-Emile Weil, Paris (commissioned from the artist).
By descent from the above to the present owner.
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Exhibited: Paris, Petit Palais, Les maîtres de l'art indépendant, 1895-1937, June-October 1937, no. 11.
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Edouard Vuillard, May-July 1938, no. 173 (titled Madame P.E. Weil et ses enfants).
Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, Edouard Vuillard, May-September 1968, no. 164 (illustrated, p. 260).
Paris, Luc Bellier Galleries; and New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., Edouard Vuillard: Le silence me garde, November 2002-March 2003, pp. 73-77, no. 29 (illustrated in color, p. 77).
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais; and London, Royal Academy of Arts, Edouard Vuillard, January 2003-April 2004, pp. 382-383, no. 316 (illustrated in color, p. 382).
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Literature: J. Salomon, Vuillard, catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, Paris, 1945, p. 70 (illustrated, p. 123).
C. Roger-Marx, Vuillard et son temps, Paris, 1946, p. 93.
A. Salomon and G. Cogeval, Vuillard, catalogue critique des peintures et pastels, Paris, 2003, vol. III, p. 1348, no. XI-103 (illustrated in color, p. 1349).
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Notes: Property from the Family of the Sitter
Madame Weil et ses enfants has been described as the most successful of Vuillard's series of group portraits with children (exh. cat., Edouard Vuillard, Washington, 2003, pp. 382-383). An intimate and nostalgic portrait of Vuillard's close friend Juliette Weil with her children Claudie and Alain, the latter is now the owner of the present painting. The success of Madame Weil et ses enfants can be in large part ascribed to this close friendship between the sitters and Vuillard himself, who fondly captures his friends in their domestic ease. "Around the time this portrait was painted, she [Juliette Weil] had begun playing the muse, cultivating with Vuillard the friendly but demanding relations revealed by her letters (Salomon Archives) and becoming for a while Lucy Hessel's rival. Here she poses in her apartment at 24bis, avenue du Président-Wilson, with her children Claudie and Alain. The trio reading Le Petit Poucet together is consigned to the left-hand side of the canvas, and of Claudie, rather than her features, we see nothing but the absorbed pose of a well behaved little girl. The whole painting is in fact entirely dedicated to the sweet gravity of childhood, to the seriousness it can accord to all kinds of learning, including as here reading and games. The markedly off-center composition is reminiscent of another painting devoted to childhood, Claude Bernheim de Villers (Cogeval and Salomon no. VII-391), suggesting that this kind of apparently impromptu, dynamic framing--actually captured in this case with some precision in a photograph (fig. 1)--struck the artist as most appropriate to the subject" (ibid. p. 382). Two other paintings in this series are Madame Jean Trarieux et ses deux filles, 1912 (C. and S. IX-197; Private collection) and Madame Olga Wormser et ses enfants, 1926-1927 (C. and S. XI-255; National Gallery, London).
(fig. 1) Photograph by Vuillard of Madame Weil and her children, circa 1922-1923. Private collection. Barcode 12936748
