Excerpt: Bonnard to Vuillard, The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life

katherine kuenzli

Meier-Graefe and the Nabis The Making of a Modern Aesthetic

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Plates

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Maurice Denis, Mother and Child, 1898. Oil on canvas, 15 × 18 in. (38.1 × 45.7 cm)

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Maurice Denis, View of Mayenne, 1904. Oil on cardboard, 10 5/8 × 14 7/8 in. (27 × 37.6 cm)

Édouard Vuillard, At La Divette, Cabourg: Annette Natanson, Lucy Hessel and Miche Savoir at Breakfast, 1913–34. Glue-based distemper on canvas, 72 ½ × 42 7/8 in. (184 × 109 cm)

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Pierre Bonnard, The Stork and the Four Frogs, c. 1889. Distemper on fine canvas, three-paneled screen, 62 ¾ × 64 ½ in. (159.5 × 163.8 cm)

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Édouard Vuillard, Woman with a Green Plaid Shawl, c. 1895. Oil on cardboard, 12 3/8 × 4 ¾ in. (31.5 × 12 cm)

Pierre Bonnard, A Scene with Red Rooftops, 1895. Oil on board, 22 5/8 × 15 ¼ in. (57.5 × 38.7 cm)

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Pierre Bonnard, Afternoon in the Garden, 1891. Oil and pen and black ink over pencil on canvas, 14 ¾ × 17 ¾ in. (37.5 × 45.1 cm)

Henri Jacques Edouard Evenepoel, In the Square, 1897. Colored lithograph, 13 × 9 in. (33 × 23 cm)

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Aristide Maillol, The Herb Picker, 1925. Bronze, 6 × 4 × 7 ¼ in. (15.2 × 10.1 × 18.4 cm)

Maillol, The Herb Picker, 1925

The mid-1920s was a period of critical recognition for Maillol, when he received a number of large-scale public commissions. At the same time, he continued to produce sculpture on a smaller scale, such as the bronze The Herb Picker, 1925, and other intimist works that reveal his lifelong ties to aspects of rural life in his hometown of Banyuls-sur-Mer. The motif of a woman crouching or leaning over in Maillol’s earlier work—for example, Washerwoman, 1896 (pl. x); Woman with Crab, c. 1900–04 (_____); Woman with Thorn, 1923 (Marlborough Fine Art London); and Woman Holding Her Foot, 1920 (fig. 6)—anticipates his conceptualization of The Herb Picker. Innumerable variations on a particular theme are typical of the artist, who worked through ideas repeatedly to arrive at a perfectly balanced harmony. Maillol’s “exquisite, instinctive, spontaneous sense of form” earned him the praise of his Nabis colleague Maurice Denis.1 From the curve of the head and back to the conjoined hands, the graceful contours of The Herb Picker convey simplicity and serenity. As Maillol later explained, “We seek forms in nature, but we draw from these a composition in order to arrive at beauty.”2 Maillol, Washerwoman, XXXX

1. Maurice Denis, “Aristide Maillol,” L’Occident (November 1905), cited in Maurice Denis, Théories, 1890–1910: Du symbolisme et de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique (Paris: L. Rouart & J. Watelin, 1920), 240. 2. “Sayings of Maillol,” selections from an interview with Judith Cladel, published in Judith Cladel, Aristide Maillol: Sa vie, Son oeuvre, Ses idées (Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1937), ch. 9. Translated by Katharine B. Neilson, in Aristide Maillol: With an Introduction and Survey of the Artist’s Work in American Collections, ed. Andrew C. Ritchie (1945; Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 31.

fig. 6 Aristide Maillol, Woman Holding Her Foot, 1920, Bronze, Edition of 6, Cast no. 6, 8 in. (20.3 cm), Norton Simon Art Foundation.

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Édouard Vuillard, Interior with Red Bed or The Bridal Chamber, c. 1893. Oil on board mounted on cradled panel, 12 ¾ × 20 7/8 in. (32.5 × 53 cm)

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Édouard Vuillard, The Red Roofs, 1890. Oil on cardboard mounted on cradled panel, 9 ½ × 11 7/8 in. (24.3 × 30 cm)

Pierre Bonnard, Landscape Near Grand Lemps in Isère, 1889-90. Oil on board mounted on panel, 8 ¾ × 10 ½ in. (21.9 × 26.7 cm)

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Édouard Vuillard, Young Woman Reading a Letter, c. 1893. Watercolor on paper, 8 × 5 ¼ in. (20.5 × 13.3 cm)

Paul Ranson, Planter, 1896. Ceramic, 13 ¾ × 26 ¾ in. (34.9 × 67.9 cm)

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Édouard Vuillard, Madame Vuillard with a Pink Cup, ca. 1893. Oil on tempera on board laid down on cradled panel, 8 5/8 × 8 7/8 in. (22 × 22.4 cm)

Pierre Bonnard, Interior with Screen, c. 1906. Oil on paper laid down on canvas, 18 ¾ × 24 ¾ in. (47.8 × 62.9 cm)

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Ker-Xavier Roussel, The Garden, 1894, executed by Tiffany and Co. in 1895. Marbled and stained glass, 48 7/8 × 36 5/8 in. (124 × 93 cm)

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