“You begin a portrait without knowing the sitter. When you’ve finished, you know the sitter, but the portrait is no longer a likeness”

Edouard Vuillard

From 1905, in the last decades of his career, Vuillard focused upon elegant portraits of the Parisian bourgeoisie. These domestic paintings were perfect for Vuillard to merge his talent for capturing the essence of a sitter, with his love of decorative interiors. At this time Vuillard was at the height of fame and success: a fruitful relationship with renowned Parisian dealership Galerie Berheim-Jeune, elected to the Institut in 1938, and a stream of commissions from society’s elite.

Germaine Rosengart, the subject of this drawing, was a keen supporter of Vuillard’s art. She held a number of the artist’s works in her collection, which remained there until her death in the 1980s. Germaine was the first wife of the car manufacturing magnate Lucien Rosengart, who commissioned a 1930 portrait (‘Lucien Rosengart at His Desk’, Musée des Beaux Arts Jules Chéret, Nice) considered to be one of Vuillard’s greatest late works. However, Vuillard was not fond of Lucien, with the artist retaining the portrait in his studio after Lucien ungraciously tried to haggle over the price.

‘Étude pour Madame Germaine Rosengart (La Parisienne)’ is the most complete of three studies for the commissioned oil painting of the same name. Vuillard would use these studies to slowly build his psychological understanding of the sitter. Vuillard created precise, detailed, scale versions in charcoal before turning to paint; it is likely this is the final preparatory work before he began the oil. These larger scale studies hold the same quiet intimacy as his smaller paintings, with Vuillard once describing how “I don’t paint portraits, I paint people in their homes”.