A peek through Vuillard’s window
Édouard Vuillard takes the great impressionist experiment close to the abstract frontier with “The Conversation”. Sotheby’s is selling this painting next month in New York as “La Conversation”, but gives no date in the catalogue — or any other clue how this fits into the disintegration of Vuillard’s decorative vision.
This oil on panel is a telling contrast to his much better known “The Conversation” from 1891, shown below, which is endlessly copied from the original at the US National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Interestingly, the auction house is expecting only $25,000 to $35,000 for the undated oil, which I think by far is the more evocative of the two. The low price certainly attests to what Peter Schjeldahl wrote in the New Yorker, reviewing a 2003 exhibition:
“I have often thought that Vuillard is absurdly underrated. The density of emotion, the subtle beauty, and the excruciating sense of the eros of private life in his paintings can make other twentieth-century artists seem like louts.” See the rest.
