Edouard Vuillard
, French, 1868-1940
Title
The Hessel's Apartment, rue de Rivoli, ParisDate1903
MediumGouache on cardboard
Dimensions
41 x 53.9 cm
Credit LinePresented, Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1948
Object numberNGI.3017
DescriptionIn 1900 Vuillard embarked on a close friendship with Lucy Hessel, the wife of Jos Hessel, his new art-dealer at the Bernheim-jeune Gallery. Their intimate relationship lasted until the artist’s death some forty years later. It gave Vuillard’s art a new impetus and Mme Hessel assumed a muse-like role, featuring frequently in his interior scenes. This sketch depicts Lucy in her dressing room in the Hessel’s apartment on the rue de Rivoli. She is seated with her back to the viewer in the presence of a man thought to be either her husband or the writer Romain Coolus. This work is one of several preliminary studies of the dressing room that informed Vuillard’s painting Interior at Night, the Hessels in their Dressing Room, rue de Rivoli (1903, Private Collection). Between 1900 and 1908, Vuillard visited the Hessel’s apartment so regularly that their servants came to call him the ‘house painter’.Janet McLean, Impressionist Interiors, National Gallery of Ireland, 2008
Exhibition HistoryImpressionist Interiors, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 10 May - 10 August 2008