Madame Arthur Fontaine (Marie Escudier Fontaine) in a Pink Shawl
<p>Marie Escudier Fontaine appears to be enjoying a quiet moment at home in this portrait, one of many that Edouard Vuillard painted of her. Vuillard emphasized the intimacy of the scene through his compression of space, achieved by the unusual viewpoint from above and behind, and through his use of flat patches of color and pattern. The artist first developed a friendship with Marie and her husband Arthur Fontaine, and maintained his close relationship with Marie following her divorce from Fontaine in 1905. A pianist herself, she socialized within a circle of prominent artists, musicians, writers, and patrons, including Post-Impressionists like Vuillard.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1904
- Dimensions
- 50.2 × 43.8 cm (19 3/4 × 17 1/4 in.); Framed: 69.9 × 63.5 × 11.5 cm (27 1/2 × 25 × 4 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Édouard Jean Vuillard
Artist
Printmaking
Édouard Jean Vuillard was a French printmaker and painter whose intimate domestic interiors and portraits defined the Nabis movement at the turn of the twentieth century. Working primarily in lithography, he created densely patterned compositions where flattened perspective and decorative surface dissolve the boundary between figure and ornament. His prints and paintings capture the quiet psychology of bourgeois life, rendering parlors, bedrooms, and gardens as spaces of psychological rather than spatial depth. The muted palette of ochres, greens, and grays, applied in delicate layers, gives his work a distinctive luminosity despite its apparent restraint.
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More by Édouard Jean Vuillard
Vuillard's Room at the Château des Clayes
1928 · Distemper on paper, mounted on canvas
Mme Hessel, Chateau de Clayes
1915 · Graphite on cream wove paper
The Dressing Room, Madame Hessel Reading at Amfreville
1906 · Oil and tempera on cardboard
Guelder Roses and the Venus of Milo
1905 · Oil on cardboard
Woman in Interior
1901 · Gouache with pastel, watercolor, and charcoal on tan wove paper, laid down on canvas, wrapped around a stretcher
The Garden in Front of the Studio
1901 · Color lithograph on grayish-ivory China paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Édouard Jean Vuillard
- Year
- 1904
- Dimensions
- 50.2 × 43.8 cm (19 3/4 × 17 1/4 in.); Framed: 69.9 × 63.5 × 11.5 cm (27 1/2 × 25 × 4 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1904-136150
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified