The French artist Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), a well-kept secret
It just so happens that I have an American sister-in-law who writes artists' biographies: Julia Frey. As an art historian myself, I am proud of that since she’s was already doing this long before I became seriously involved in the field. Having studied French literature she became among other things, a professor of French and Art History at the University of Colorado in the United States and specialised in nineteenth- and twentieth-century artistic culture in France, where she now lives. According to my brother-in-law, she is highly skilled at reading old French texts and her previous excursion into the Paris archives resulted in a weighty biography of Toulouse Lautrec in 1994 (revised 2006 reprint). This immediately made her the expert on Lautrec. Now fresh off the press comes another ground-breaking book about the hitherto - I believe also in the Netherlands - relatively unknown Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), entitled Venus Betrayed, The Private World of Édouard Vuillard. I was given a review copy in case I felt like sharing it with my Dutch readers and I did. So here goes.
The book is beautifully presented with 422 pages and no fewer than 260 (mostly in color) illustrations. With its flowing prose it is a joy to read and I am not just saying that because of the family connection. There are 45 'journals' - diaries including two sketchbooks - by Vuillard in storage at the Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France in Paris. Julia Frey uses these, supplemented by photos, reports by contemporaries, letters, drawings and especially his paintings, to tell her story. The book is emphatically a biography and not an artist monograph. The images of his work are therefore not in chronological order but are introduced to support the biographical story. To fully appreciate Vuillard's stylistic development, you need to browse through the many images in the book.
Fig. 2 (5) Mealtime, c. 1889, oil on canvas, 71,8 x 92,2 cm, New York, Museum of Modern Art*
Fig. 3 (54) The Dress with the Vine Leaves Motif, 1891, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, Sao Paolo, Musee d'Arte
Vuillard's career as an artist covers the late nineteenth century and the first forty years of the twentieth century; a fascinating period of industrial development and emerging socialism, of secular political unrest and (the run-up to) wars. The old order is shaken to its foundations, the new one has yet to emerge. At age eleven, he wins a scholarship to the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. Former students - such as Jean Cocteau and Marcel Proust (writers), Thadée Natanson (art collector and critic) and Toulouse Lautrec (painter) - are all major influences on his artistic development.
Vuillard is rejected three times by the École des Beaux Arts but does not give up. He takes lessons at the private Académie Julian where he befriends the artists Pierre Bonnard, Paul Ranson and Félix Vallotton. He is finally admitted to the École but leaves after a few years to return to the Académie Julian. He initially joins the post-impressionist Nabis movement (link) working in that style, but gradually he develops a signature approach of his own.
Looking through his portfolio you could say that he has two styles: a more fluid, less defined style for the more intimate subjects, especially at the beginning of his artistic career, and a very precise style for his portrait commissions and public subjects in his later work. Some of the many influential people he meets, publishers, gallery owners and clients, become close friends.
Later in his career he became famous in France and in 1938, two years before his death, was elected a member of the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died on 21 June 1940, the first year of World War II, at the age of 72, leaving behind an enormous body of work that can be seen in museums all over the world. However, much of his work remains in private collections. This makes this book with its many illustrations so valuable; it is like an exhibition that will never be shown in its entirety.
Fig. 4 (49) The Seamstresses, 1891, oil on canvas, 147,5 x 57,5 cm, private collection
Fig. 5 (115) Mother and Daughter at the Table, 1891-92, oil on panel, 37,5 x 27 cm, private collection
Fig. 6 (97) The Apprentice Seamstress, 1891-92, oil on cardboard, 21,3 x 19,4 cm, private collection
Fig. 7 (114) Madame Vuillard's Sewing Studio, 1892, oil on canvas, 24 x 34 cm, private collection
Fig. 8 (56) The Dressmaker's Shop (panel 2 of the Demarais decorations, also known as Fitting the Dress), 1892, oil on canvas, 48 x 117 cm, private collection
Fig. 9 (141) The Lady in Blue (At the Ransons'), 1895, oil on cardboard, 49 x 58 cm, private collection
From the age of nine Vuillard grows up in Paris as one of three children in a Catholic family. A pivotal event in his life is the early death of his father when Vuillard is fifteen. His brother no longer lives at home, making Édouard the only man in a house full of women: his mother, his sister, his grandmother and the many Parisian ladies who are customers in his mother's corsetry sewing workshop. According to Julia Frey, the experience of all those women's visits - to have corsets measured and fitted - are, perhaps subconsciously, an important influence in his work.
Because he is surrounded by women, they become his subjects. Frey therefore calls his work highly autobiographical and she quotes Vuillard as relying strongly on his memories for inspiration. He portrayed his own private and personal world: his activities, his friends and family, the places where he lived, loved and played. As a boy with budding sexuality, he saw much within the four walls of the house as a spy and from behind a folding screen as a voyeur. This atmosphere is reflected in his work. His mother, sister and grandmother and the seamstresses and customers often figured in his work, especially in the early days. These scenes therefore have an intimate and occasionally claustrophobic mood.
According to Frey, that voyeurism was integral to his personality. He was often out at night, wandering in the city, gazing through windows, looking for romantic pleasure and distraction. This was not a man of firm decisions and choices. This troubled him and resulted in a frustrated entry in his diary. Throughout his life he continued to live with his mother but with side trips sometimes lasting several weeks; to the country estate of one of his mistresses for example, who was maybe also his patron. He was never able to commit to marriage. A happy man? From his diaries it appears not. However, and here I speak for myself, what a gifted artist and what an enormous progression in his work, living in interesting times and with interesting people!
Fig. 10 (193) Jos and Lucie Hessel in the Small Drawing Room, Rue de Rivoli, c. 1903, oil on cardboard, 34 x 60 cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Hessels couple introduced him to the circles of the rich, Lucie became his mistress)
Fig. 11 (204) Marcelle Aron (Madame Tristan Bernard), 1913/1914, glue on canvas, 181,3 x 156,5 cm, Museum of fine art Houston
Fig. 12 (232) Madeleine Descorps and her Son Bernard, 1920, glue paint on paper, 110 x 70 cm, private collection
Fig. 13 (227) Countess Lanskoy, 1934-35, oil on canvas, 81 x 88 cm, private collection
The many women, especially those in his earlier work, are not always depicted at their best or fulfilling the ideal of the goddess of beauty, Venus, an ideal that has been striven for in painting from the Renaissance onwards. This is the origin of the title of Frey's book. Is Vuillard betraying Venus or is Venus betraying Vuillard, she wonders. In answering this question, she examines work and sources with a critical eye. With this book she reveals the person behind the artist Édouard Vuillard.
Julia Frey, Venus Betrayed. The private World of Édouard Vuillard, London, Reaktion Books, 2019, 422 p, 260 ill., 188 in color.
*the images shown here are in chronological order referenced by number in brackets to those in the book.
Article in Dutch by Mélanie Struik, June 2020, Leidschendam, the Netherlands
Translated in English by Jenny Newton, April 2022, Beaconsfield, England
Postscript:
On April 12th 2022, from 19.30-20.30, author Julia Frey was interviewed about her book Venus Betrayed: The Private World of Édouard Vuillard by art historian Beverly Held in the series Evenings with an Author (in-person and online) in discussion, an initiative of the American Library in France, located in Paris. You can watch the interview here.About the speakers:
Julia Frey, PhD in French literature and culture, is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. A biographer and novelist, she is the author of Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, which received a Pen Nonfiction Literary Award, and a finalist for an NBCC award in biography. Her most recent book is Balcony View: A 9/11 Diary (2021). She currently resides in France.
Beverly Held, PhD in History of Art, was the founding director of San Francisco Arts & Humanities Seminars, a non-profit educational organization. Held now writes a weekly newsletter on art exhibitions, collectors, and collections in and around Paris where she spends most of her time running from one exhibition to another.
