This charming small painting depicts a young girl dwarfed by her architectural setting but made prominent by the brilliance of her pink dress and hair ribbon as seen against the more neutral whites and browns of her environment. The girl is Annette Roussel, the artist’s niece, who was born in 1895 and whom Édouard Vuillard painted many times, especially at the Roussels’ rue de Calais apartment in Paris. In this painting, the playful Annette has gotten under the white curtain of the closed casement windows and is peeking out, being somewhat obscured by the protective wrought iron grille. As Elizabeth Easton has written, “The sense of privacy that is central to [Vuillard’s] paintings of his family and closest friends found its pictorial expression in the tightly woven spaces and patterns of the interior.”

When Vuillard’s father died in 1883, his mother went into the corset- and dressmaking trade to support her children, and this may account for Vuillard’s artistic interest in sensuous patterns and constructive shapes as exemplified in the Dumbarton Oaks painting. He lived with his mother until her death in 1928. In 1886, Vuillard studied painting at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts under the academic Jean-Léon Gérome. Two years later he was working with Maurice Denis, his lifelong friend Pierre Bonnard, and Paul Serusier at the Académie Julian, where they formed a group called the Nabis, after the Hebrew for Prophets, and rejected naturalism and impressionism in favor of pure design and color. Vuillard’s art thereafter incorporated more decorative elements, producing colorful surfaces without the illusion of depth.

J. Carder

Musée des arts décoratifs (France). Le Décor De La Vie Sous Le Iiie République De 1870 À 1900: [Exposition Au Musée Des Arts Décoratifs] Avril-Juillet 1933. Pavillon De Marsan 1933, p. 43, no. 346.

Dugdale, James. The Masters, 97: Vuillard. Paulton, 1967, 14, pl. 14.

Vuillard Édouard et al. Vuillard the Inexhaustible Glance : Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. 1st ed. Skira ; Wildenstein Institute ; Distributed in North America and Latin America by Rizzoli International Publications through St. Martin's Press 2003, vol. II, p. 34, no. VII-38.

Bühl, Gudrun, editor. Dumbarton Oaks, The Collections. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (distributed by Harvard University Press), 2008, 368f, ill.

Easton, Elizabeth W. "Edouard Vuillard's Photography and the Limitations of Truth" in Snapshot, Painters and Photography 1888-1915. Elizabeth W. Easton, ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011, 216, cat. 206.

Bocquillon, Marina Ferretti. Japonismes Impressionnismes. Giverny: Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny, 2018, 176, no. 132, ill.

Chapin, Mary Weaver and Heather Lemonedes Brown. Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, p. 237, no. 141.

"Le Décor de la vie sous la IIIe République de 1870 à 1900," Musée du Louvre, Pavilion de Marsan, Paris, 4/1933-7/1933, cat. no. 346.

"11th Exhibition of Watercolors and Pastels," Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 2/14/1934-3/11/1934, no catalogue.

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1/25/1935-2/8/1935

"Paintings and Sculptures Owned in Washington," Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C., 4/15/1937-30/1937, cat. no. 34.

"Portraits of Children," The Museum of Modern Art Gallery, 17th and H Streets, NW, Washington, D.C., 2/22/1938-3/20/1938.

"Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Prints by Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard," Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 12/15/1938-1/15/1939, cat. no. 38.

"La Vie Francaise: Paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard," Institute of Modern Art, Boston, Massachusetts, 10/6/1944-11/11/1944, cat. no. 39.

Julius Lowy, New York, New York, 9/11/1945-9/27/1945.

"E. Vuillard (1865-1940): His Dynamic Early Period," Jacques Seligmann & Co., New York, New York, 11/5/1948-27/1948, cat. no. 12, ill.

City Tavern, Washington, D.C., 1/29/1963-2/28/1963.

"Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, 11/17/1989-1/28/1990, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2/17/1990-4/29/1990, Brooklyn Museum, New York, New York, 5/17/1990-7/30/1990, cat no. 77.

"French Paintings at Dumbarton Oaks, 1850-1910: Collecting the Unexpected," Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., 11/25/2008-3/28/2009.

"Snapshot. Schilders en fotografie, 1888-1915 / Snapshot. Painters and Photography, 1888-1915, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 10/14/2011-1/8/2012; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2/4-5/6/2012; and Indianapolis Museum of Art, 6/8/2012-9/2/2012, cat. 206.

"Japonismes Impressionnismes," Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny, 3/30/2018-7/15/2018, no. 132.

"Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris,1889–1900," Cleveland Museum of Art, 7/1/2021-9/19/2021; Portland Art Museum, 10/23/2021-1/23/2022.

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC. "Contemporaries: Twentieth-Century Painting at Dumbarton Oaks." 9 May 2023 - 17 December 2023.

Collection of Joseph "Jos" Hessel (1859-1942) by 1930;[1]

Purchased from the dealer Jacques Seligmann et Fils, Paris as "Fillette à la fenêtre," stock no. M3459 by Mildred Barnes and Robert Woods Bliss, April 9, 1936;[2]

Collection of Mildred Barnes and Robert Woods Bliss, Washington, D.C., April 4, 1936 until November 29, 1940;

Gift to Harvard University, November 29, 1940;

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, House Collection, Washington, D.C.


Notes:
[1] Documentation in the Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, 1904-1978, bulk 1913-1974. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution indicates that the painting was loaned to Seligmann by Hessel in 1930 for an exhibition of Bonnard, Vuillard, and Roussel; see Box 46, Folder 15.
[2] Bill of sale in object file