(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 828 – Modern & Contemporary Art Collection. Notes of July 18, 2013)

Re. Garden at Vaucresson by Edouard Vuillard: There is so much in this painting that fascinates. The sense of density and build-up, of thickness and tangle, which must surely result, in part, from the actual working technique, merges in a sense with the imagery itself. The high summer growth and quiet sunny heat of a private garden is brought forward and presses against the eye with an almost tapestry-like effect. Vuillard effectively cuts the sharpness of his high-keyed, modern palette by applying color over color, allowing the ground and subsequent paint layers to lend themselves, in total, to a more subdued effect. What, on its own, would be a rather acidic yellow-green is, instead, an intricate web of brushwork of muddy yellows, lime greens, and raw siennas, and in the right quarter of the image, a soft (nickel titanium?) butter yellow, quieted down and controlled with dull pinks and browns. Elsewhere, the effect of dappled sunlight and strong, cool shadows give definition to space and forms.

There’s a trick, of sorts, to this. The broken, rough edges of forms and shimmering touches of color all transmit the sense of sunshine and warmth. The plant growth in the foreground is formed with larger, bolder shapes and brushwork, bringing these forms closer to us. The lilac hedge that vertically divides the bottom half of the picture plane is a dense network of cool and warm violets, almost dusty purple in the shadows, and rising to grays that touch upon bluish-green in the sunlight. Getting up close to it, there is an almost disorienting handling of the brush here, like crewel-work.

^ Garden at Vaucresson. Tempera (distemper) on canvas. 1920, reworked in 1926, 1935, 1936. Edouard Vuillard (French, b.1868-d.1940)