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Ensayo del lote
Drawn in 1907, Lucie Hessel à Amfréville belongs to one of the most intimate chapters of Édouard Vuillard’s career. During these years the artist regularly joined Jos and Lucie Hessel at Amfréville on the Normandy coast, where the rhythms of summer life provided him with a rich repertoire of subjects. Here, Lucie sits absorbed before an easel beneath the broad canopy of a tree, her pale figure almost dissolving into the surrounding landscape. Worked in delicate, closely modulated strokes of pastel, the composition transforms an apparently incidental moment into a remarkably atmospheric study of light, color and texture. Vuillard’s photographs from the summer of 1907 similarly record the artist and the Hessels at Amfréville, revealing how closely such works grew from the private world they shared.
Vuillard had met Lucie Hessel (1869–1941) and her husband, the dealer Jos Hessel, around 1900, and she soon became one of the defining figures of his life and art. Muse and confidante, Lucie appeared repeatedly in his work over the following decades; Vuillard described her as his “guiding light” and remained deeply attached to her until his death. The present pastel also has an unusually personal early history: Princess Olga Stourdza acquired it directly from Vuillard, through Jean-Louis Forain, before presenting it in 1907 to Marie Argyropoulo. Its passage almost immediately from the artist into this closely connected circle is particularly fitting for a work whose quiet immediacy evokes the private, cultivated milieu at the heart of Vuillard’s art.
The work was later owned by Hermann Goldschmidt (1912-2016), later Herman Goldsmith, art dealer and partner in this business with his uncle Jacob Goldschmidt (1896-1976). Both left Germany as a result of the National Socialists persecutory measures, settling first in France, where their apartment would later be seized by the occupying forces in 1943, and then later, from 1939 and 1942 respectively, in the United States, where they were able to reestablish their places in the art market.
Vuillard had met Lucie Hessel (1869–1941) and her husband, the dealer Jos Hessel, around 1900, and she soon became one of the defining figures of his life and art. Muse and confidante, Lucie appeared repeatedly in his work over the following decades; Vuillard described her as his “guiding light” and remained deeply attached to her until his death. The present pastel also has an unusually personal early history: Princess Olga Stourdza acquired it directly from Vuillard, through Jean-Louis Forain, before presenting it in 1907 to Marie Argyropoulo. Its passage almost immediately from the artist into this closely connected circle is particularly fitting for a work whose quiet immediacy evokes the private, cultivated milieu at the heart of Vuillard’s art.
The work was later owned by Hermann Goldschmidt (1912-2016), later Herman Goldsmith, art dealer and partner in this business with his uncle Jacob Goldschmidt (1896-1976). Both left Germany as a result of the National Socialists persecutory measures, settling first in France, where their apartment would later be seized by the occupying forces in 1943, and then later, from 1939 and 1942 respectively, in the United States, where they were able to reestablish their places in the art market.