Foliage—Oak Tree and Fruit Seller

1918

Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940)

This large, tapestry-like canvas depicts the lush view from the second-story window of the artist’s vacation home near Versailles, France. Using a limited palette of greens and yellows with pops of lavender, Vuillard achieved a remarkable range of textures and tonalities, from the sunlit tree bark to the velvety foliage deep in the shadows. The visually dense composition vibrates in the eye and envelops the viewer. In order to enhance the painting’s decorative qualities, Vuillard mixed dry pigment with melted glue, a technique called distemper. This creates a tactile, tufted surface that differs greatly from the slick aesthetic of traditional oil painting.

Status: On View, Gallery 244
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Édouard Jean Vuillard
Title: Foliage—Oak Tree and Fruit Seller
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1918
Medium: Distemper on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed lower right: E Vuillard
Dimensions: 193 × 283.2 cm (76 × 111 1/2 in.); Framed: 205.8 × 294.7 cm (81 × 116 in.)
Credit Line: A Millennium Gift of Sara Lee Corporation
Reference Number: 1999.373
Copyright: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Jean Messelet, “L’exposition Vuillard au musée des Arts décoratifs,” Bulletin des musées de France 10, no. 4, May 1938, p. 67.
Consolidated Foods Corporation, Consolidated Foods Corporation’s Nathan Cummings Collection, Chicago: Consolidated Foods Corporation, 1983, p. 10, fig. 4.
Belinda Thomson, Vuillard, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1988, p. 122, col. pl. 108.
Bretell, An Impressionist Legacy: The Collection of Sara Lee, New York Abbeville Press, 1986, 1987, 1993, 1997, pp. 70–73, 173 (ill.).
Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, Vuillard: The Inexhaustible Glance Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, vol. 3 (Milan: Skira; Paris Wildenstein Institute, 2003), cat. XI-1 (color ill.), as Greenery.

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Pierre Bonnard. Édouard Vuillard, May 29 – July 3, 1932, cat. 171 (as Grand Paysage).
Paris, Les Cardres (Bolette Natanson), Peintres de La Revue Blanche, June 12–30, 1936, cat. 72.
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Exposition E. Vuillard, May–July 1938: no. 163.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 1968.
Paris, American Embassy, December 1969–May 1970.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Selections from the Nathan Cummings Collection, June 29–September 11, 1970, no. 25 (as Public Garden).
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Selections from the Nathan Cummings Collection, July 1–September 7, 1971, no. 25.
Washington, D.C., Federal Reserve Board, on loan May 11, 1972–August 12, 1981.
Laren, The Netherlands, Singer Museum, The Sara Lee Collection: An Impressionist Legacy, October 18, 1997–February 15, 1998.
Monet to Moore: The Millennium Gift of the Sara Lee Corporation, April 1–May 30, 1999, no. 52; traveled to Singapore, Museum of Art; Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, June 11–August 22, 1999; Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, September 10–November 7, 1999; Oregon, Portland Art Museum, November 19, 1999–January 25, 1999; Chicago, Art Institute, March 15–May 28, 2000.
Chicago, Art Institute, Beyond the Easel: Decorative Paintings by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel, 1890–1930, February 21–May 16, 2001, cat. 84; traveled to New York, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, June 15–September 9, 2001.

Commissioned from the artist by Georges Bernheim, Paris, 1918; Roger Darnetal, Paris; Daniel Varenne, Geneva; Nathan Cummings, New York, on loan to the US Embassy in Paris from December 1969 to May 1970; on loan to the Federal Reserve Board, Washington D.C., from 11May 1972 to 12 August 1981; Sara Lee Corporation, Chicago, 1981; Millennium Gift of the Sara Lee Corporation to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1999.

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