Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

Garden at Vaucresson by Édouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard · 1923-01-01

Garden at Vaucresson, painted by Édouard Vuillard in 1923, is a portrait of a private world. Vuillard spent decades painting the homes and gardens of his close friends, the Hessel family, and this work captures their suburban retreat just a few years after the First World War ended.

Look at the woman in pink on the right. Her dress is the exact same color as the hollyhocks beside her, and her face is left indistinct. She is not the subject; she is an inhabitant of the garden, woven into its fabric. The foreground is a deliberate tangle, Vuillard rejected the tidy, manicured gardens of academic painting in favor of something that feels lived-in and a little wild.

Vuillard used distemper, a matte, chalky paint that dries without any gloss. That technical choice matters here: the dark tree canopy on the left becomes almost velvet, and the red roof glows softly rather than shining. The whole surface feels absorbent, quiet, private, exactly the mood of a hidden garden.

This is what postwar tranquility looked like for one circle of people: a house with a red roof, a wall of flowers, and the world kept at a distance.

Details

This garden in Vaucresson is a kind of sanctuary.
This garden in Vaucresson is a kind of sanctuary.
A woman in pink is nearly swallowed by the flowers.
A woman in pink is nearly swallowed by the flowers.
Her dress and the hollyhocks share the same pink.
Her dress and the hollyhocks share the same pink.
This is distemper, a matte, velvety paint with no shine.
This is distemper, a matte, velvety paint with no shine.
The family who lived here were the artist's patrons and friends.
The family who lived here were the artist's patrons and friends.
Transcript

1923. France is rebuilding itself after the Great War. This garden in Vaucresson is a kind of sanctuary. A woman in pink is nearly swallowed by the flowers. Her dress and the hollyhocks share the same pink. This is distemper, a matte, velvety paint with no shine. The family who lived here were the artist's patrons and friends. He painted their private world for forty years.