Edouard Vuillard

Louis-Alfred (Athis) Natanson, Paris

Denise Tabah (née Natanson), Rueil-Malmaison (acquired by descent from the above)

(possibly) Florence Seminario, Paris

Henri Tabah, Rueil-Malmaison

Sale: Sotheby's London, 12 April 1972, lot 25 (consigned by the above)

E.V Thaw & Co., New York

Art Council Establishment, Vaduz

Josefowitz Collection (acquired in 1984)

Sale: Christie's New York, 8 May 2002, lot 218 (consigned by the above)

Estate of William J. Levy

Cécile Guy, "Le Barc de Bouteville," L'Oeil, no. 124, 1965, p. 37 (illustrated in colour)

Exh. Cat.,  Galerie Maeght, ed., “Derrière le Miroir”, La Revue Blanche,no. 158-59, 1966, no. 58, p. 27

George L. Mauner, The Nabis: Their History and Their Art, 1888- 1896, Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1978, pp. 235 (illustrated p.302, fig. 88)

Anne Georges, Symbolisme et décor, Vuillard, 1888-1905, Doctoral dissertation, Université Paris I, 1982, p. 42

Émilie Daniel, Vuillard, l'espace de l'intimité, Doctoral dissertation, Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, 1984, p. 389 (illustrated, fig. 141)

Patricia Ciaffa, The Portraits of Edouard Vuillard, Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1985, pp. 192-94 (illustrated, fig. 77)

Elizabeth Wynne Easton, Edouard Vuillard's Interiors of the 1890s, Doctoral disseration, Yale University, 1989, pp. 26 and 36

Arthur Ellridge, Gauguin et les Nabis, Paris 1993, p. 90 (illustrated in colour)

Antoine Salomon and Guy Cogeval, “Vuillard: The Inexhaustible Glance”, Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, vol. I, Paris, 2003, p. 232, no. IV-11 (illustrated in colour)

Paris, Les Cadres (Bolette Natanson), Peintres de La Revue blanche, 1936, no. 52 (titled La Raccommodeuse)

Vevey, Musée Jenisch, Paris 1900, 1954, no. 213

Paris, Galerie Maeght, La Revue Blanche, 1966, no. 58, p. 27

Munich, Haus der Kunst, Edouard Vuillard - K.-X. Roussel, 1968, no. 11

Houston, Museum of Fine Arts; Washington, D.C., Phillips Collection and Brooklyn Museum, The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, 1989-1990, no. 10 (titled Woman Mending)

Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Edouard Vuillard, La Porte entrebâillée, 2000-2001, p. 171, no. 10

The earliest of the three Vuillard paintings in the Levy collection, La Ravaudeuse dates from the period in which he produced some of his most original and sophisticated work, establishing the intricate patterning and subtle tonal harmonies that came to define the Nabi movement. His seamstress paintings of the 1890s are considered among the finest and most innovative expressions of the Nabi aesthetic.

The central character is Marie Justine Alexandrine Michaud Vuillard, the painter’s mother, whom he called his muse. Vuillard was eleven years old when she became a corsetière, not a dressmaker as many have assumed, and for the next twenty years until she retired, the center of Vuillard’s world were the rooms in which she worked alongside a pair of seamstresses and her daughter Marie. As early as November 1888, Vuillard filled a page of his journal with scenes of women working by lamplight around a table, and although they were not worked up into paintings until a few years later they nonetheless were a compelling inspiration for him from early on. Tellingly, these journal sketches are accompanied by references to Jan Steen, Chardin and Vermeer, artists whose humble subject matter transcended their Spartan surroundings to a realm of emotional truth that is beyond a specific time or place.