Portrait of a pal

Édourd Vuillard

b.1848 Cuiseaux,France

d.1940 Baule,France

 

At the Revue Blanche (Portrait of Félix) Fénéon)

1901

oil on paperboard

Movement-Post Expressionism

 

Vuillard portrayed his friend Félix Fénéon bent over a stack of papers at his desk at the Paris office of the anarchist literary and artistic journal,La revue blanche with which Pierre Bonnard,Vuillard,and other artists were closely associated.Fénéon worked there from 1894 to 1903.Vuillard compressed the space of his office and left his subject with an expressionless visage yet determined posture.Fénéon would later serve as an art dealer,but most significantly for the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation,he was a long time mentor to founding director Hilla Rebay.Rebay arranged for Guggenheim to purchase what she viewed as precursors to nonobjectivity from Fénéon's personal collection in the 1930s,including Vuillard painting and work by Amedeo Mogdigliani.Although Rebay decided to add Fénéon's name to the list of patrons when Guggenheim's Museum of Nonobjective Painting opened in 1939,but such acknowledgment was never realized.

Done