Detail of the Garden at Vaucresson by Vuillard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2018

Title: Garden at Vaucresson

Artist: Edouard Vuillard (French, Cuiseaux 1868–1940 La Baule)

Date: 1920; reworked 1926, 1935, 1936

Medium: Distemper on canvas

Dimensions: 59 1/2 × 43 5/8 in. (151.1 × 110.8 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1952

Accession Number: 52.183

This painting was begun in 1920 at Vaucresson, a residential suburb west of Paris, where Vuillard’s friends Lucy and Josse (Jos) Hessel had recently purchased the house depicted in the background. Jos, a partner in the art firm of Bernheim-Jeune, had become Vuillard's dealer in 1912. His wife was one of Vuillard's great loves; their relationship spanned more than three decades, until the artist's death in 1940. The woman in a housedress standing at right is Lucy's cousin Marcelle Aron. Lucy kneels across from her, at left, camouflaged by one of the large rosebushes that serve as a decorative screen in the foreground.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488693