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Lot Essay
Painted in 1893, Intérieur, trois femmes en conversation dates from an important period of Vuillard's association with the Nabi circle, during which he produced the most challenging, sophisticated, and affirmatively modern work of his long career. The Nabi group, which took its name from a Hebrew word meaning prophet, was founded by a band of young artists—Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Pierre Bonnard and Henri-Gabriel Ibels foremost among them—who objected to the conservative curriculum at the Académie Julien in Paris, where they had met. Denis, the most vocal proponent of Nabi ideas, dated the inception of the movement to the summer of 1888, when Paul Sérusier brought back from Pont-Aven a small landscape painted under Paul Gauguin's tutelage. Dubbed Le Talisman, the canvas used pure, unmixed colors to communicate the artist's emotions and sensations before the motif, rather than to transcribe the actual appearance of nature.
Vuillard met Denis and his compatriots at the Académie Julien in 1889 and began his most intense experimentation with Nabi theories the following year, which he described in his journal as “the Sérusier year” (quoted in G.L. Groom, op. cit., p. 9). In a journal entry dated to the fall of 1890, he avidly proclaimed his adherence to the new movement: “What I should really be concerned with: the consolidation of an idea as a work of art, of which the existence would be the product of an idea (sensation and methodology). Let's be clear: I must imagine the lines and colors I apply and do nothing haphazardly; that's perfectly true. I must think about all my combinations. But even to attempt this work I must have a methodology in which I have faith” (quoted in ibid., p. 9).
The present work depicts three women in conversation—two standing with their hands on their hips, while the third enters the frame from the left, barely recognizable as a figure. While the figures’ identities remain undisclosed, it has been suggested that the women may be seamstresses or dressmakers, and the painting has often been referred to as Les Couturières. Vuillard explored the theme of the seamstress many times throughout the 1890s—in the majority of these works, the seamstresses are seen at work with tools in hand, but in the present scene, the viewer catches the women in a moment of leisure, during a short break from the working day.
The painting is noteworthy for its sense of profound absorption, reminiscent of interior scenes by Johannes Vermeer and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, which the artist would have surely studied at the Louvre. The two standing women are depicted immersed in conversation, their heads angled towards one another and shoulders slightly hunched. The insistent flatness of the image, moreover, renders the two women inseparable from their environment; they seem not so much to inhabit the space as to merge with it. Elizabeth Easton has written: “The paintings of women sewing stand out in Vuillard's oeuvre for their decorative beauty, their complex construction, and their sense of intimacy. [They] are icons of the inwardness that informed Vuillard's personal approach to Symbolism...These pictures also serve as metaphors for Vuillard's concept of himself as a painter. In depicting women conjoined with their surroundings much like the patterns of the objects they sew, Vuillard in some way reflects the union between the artist and the work he creates...The colours, lines, and patterns that Vuillard used to describe these women stand not only for the decorative nature of the product they were making but also for the harmony of the work of art, Vuillard's creation” (The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1989, pp. 39 and 55).
With its radical pictorial and spatial experiments, Intérieur, trois femmes en conversation heralds many of the most important artistic developments of the early twentieth century. Regarding the work of the Nabis, Claire Frèches-Thory has written: “The bold apposition of violent colors announces the Fauves; the juxtaposition of planes, seen from different angles, prefigures the geometric constructions of the Cubists; the forms are sometimes distorted to the point of being virtually Expressionist; details take on the force of emblems and blazons branded onto the surface of the painting...like a sort of collage. [The Nabis'] numerous inventions, discoveries, reflections and premonitions were extraordinary when we evaluate them in the context of the 1890s” (The Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard, and their Circle, New York, 1990, p. 27).
The present work was previously in the collection of sculptor Henry Moore, whose daughter Mary Danowski recalled: "He was the most tremendous teacher. He would use a Vuillard or a piece of African sculpture to make a visual point" (quoted in Independent, 15 May 1997).
Vuillard met Denis and his compatriots at the Académie Julien in 1889 and began his most intense experimentation with Nabi theories the following year, which he described in his journal as “the Sérusier year” (quoted in G.L. Groom, op. cit., p. 9). In a journal entry dated to the fall of 1890, he avidly proclaimed his adherence to the new movement: “What I should really be concerned with: the consolidation of an idea as a work of art, of which the existence would be the product of an idea (sensation and methodology). Let's be clear: I must imagine the lines and colors I apply and do nothing haphazardly; that's perfectly true. I must think about all my combinations. But even to attempt this work I must have a methodology in which I have faith” (quoted in ibid., p. 9).
The present work depicts three women in conversation—two standing with their hands on their hips, while the third enters the frame from the left, barely recognizable as a figure. While the figures’ identities remain undisclosed, it has been suggested that the women may be seamstresses or dressmakers, and the painting has often been referred to as Les Couturières. Vuillard explored the theme of the seamstress many times throughout the 1890s—in the majority of these works, the seamstresses are seen at work with tools in hand, but in the present scene, the viewer catches the women in a moment of leisure, during a short break from the working day.
The painting is noteworthy for its sense of profound absorption, reminiscent of interior scenes by Johannes Vermeer and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, which the artist would have surely studied at the Louvre. The two standing women are depicted immersed in conversation, their heads angled towards one another and shoulders slightly hunched. The insistent flatness of the image, moreover, renders the two women inseparable from their environment; they seem not so much to inhabit the space as to merge with it. Elizabeth Easton has written: “The paintings of women sewing stand out in Vuillard's oeuvre for their decorative beauty, their complex construction, and their sense of intimacy. [They] are icons of the inwardness that informed Vuillard's personal approach to Symbolism...These pictures also serve as metaphors for Vuillard's concept of himself as a painter. In depicting women conjoined with their surroundings much like the patterns of the objects they sew, Vuillard in some way reflects the union between the artist and the work he creates...The colours, lines, and patterns that Vuillard used to describe these women stand not only for the decorative nature of the product they were making but also for the harmony of the work of art, Vuillard's creation” (The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1989, pp. 39 and 55).
With its radical pictorial and spatial experiments, Intérieur, trois femmes en conversation heralds many of the most important artistic developments of the early twentieth century. Regarding the work of the Nabis, Claire Frèches-Thory has written: “The bold apposition of violent colors announces the Fauves; the juxtaposition of planes, seen from different angles, prefigures the geometric constructions of the Cubists; the forms are sometimes distorted to the point of being virtually Expressionist; details take on the force of emblems and blazons branded onto the surface of the painting...like a sort of collage. [The Nabis'] numerous inventions, discoveries, reflections and premonitions were extraordinary when we evaluate them in the context of the 1890s” (The Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard, and their Circle, New York, 1990, p. 27).
The present work was previously in the collection of sculptor Henry Moore, whose daughter Mary Danowski recalled: "He was the most tremendous teacher. He would use a Vuillard or a piece of African sculpture to make a visual point" (quoted in Independent, 15 May 1997).