Édouard Vuillard

Jacques Salomon, Vuillard, Témoignage, Paris, 1945, pp. 70 & 135
Antoine Salomon & Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, Milan, 2003, vol. III, no. XI-230, illustrated in colour p. 1425

Jean Laroche, a Parisian banker and collector, first became friendly with Vuillard during the First World War, and it was at the suggestion of his son Jacques that Vuillard painted a portrait of his father. The rich and pictorially complex interior reflects the eclectic decorative style that was dominant at the turn of the century, and the room's walls are hung with a profusion of objets d'art, including two works by Renoir (figs. I & 2). The intimate interiors of this period reveal Vuillard's artistic sensibility at its most refined, and his rendering of the sumptuous upholstery and chinoiserie is both an exquisite historical document and a brilliant evocation of the atmosphere of the Parisian salon.

Yet this work is also a portrait, and the psychological scrutiny to which Vuillard subjects his sitter reflects an almost Proustian interest in the operations of the self bounded by its social context. As one of the founding members of the Nabi group, an influential offshoot of the Symbolist movement, Vuillard shares the desire to render subjective states of intuition and imagination that lay at the centre of the Symoblist aesthetic. Thus Vuillard's interiors are a projection of the nuanced sensibility of this introspective artist as well as a fascinatingly detailed glimpse of the intimate life of the Parisian bourgeouisie in the early years of the 20^th century.