Associated with the Nabi, Ker-Xavier Roussel’s paintings reflect the intimacy and idyllic sentiments of those of his fellow painters, Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis. This painting was one of three small studies made for a decorative mural cycle for the city hall of Bagnolet, a suburb of Paris. Fashionably dressed women inhabit the public spaces of the Tuileries garden in a modern tribute to traditional allegorical murals that decorated important civic spaces. The geometric gray forms in the lower portion of the composition mark the location of doors and windows in the city hall. In the end, Roussel was not awarded the commission, and the studies stayed in his family’s collection until the 1970s.
Details
- Artist Name: Ker-Xavier Roussel (French, 1867-1944)
- Title: Reunion des Dames
- Date: c. 1893
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 17-7/8 x 29-1/2 in. (45.4 x 75 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1977.03.2.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
Jacques Salomon (son-in-law of artist), Paris, presumably by inheritance 1944, but certainly by 1955;
Antoine Salomon (grandson of artist), Paris, by 1968.
[Galerie La Cave, Paris; offered 1976 and subsequently sold 1977 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
K.-X. Roussel
- Paris, Galerie Maratier, 1944 to 1944
Paris in the Nineties
- Wildenstein & Co. (London, England), 1954 to 1954
Paris 1900
- Vevey, Musee Jenish, 1954 to 1954
K.-X. Roussel
- Wildenstein & Co. (London, England), 1964 to 1964
Ker-Xavier Roussel
- Kunstalle, 1965 to 1965
Edouard Vuillard Xavier Roussel
- Munich, Haus der Kunst, 1968-03-16 to 1968-05-12
- Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, 1968-05-28 to 1968-09-16
Bonnard, Vuillard et les Nabis (1888-1903)
- Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, 1955-06-02 to 1955-10-02
The Nabis
- Norton Simon Museum, 1992-09-24 to 1993-07-18
By Day & By Night: Paris in the Belle Époque
- Norton Simon Museum, 2019-10-04 to 2020-03-02
Reinstallation of South Wing
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-10-07 to 1995-08-13
- Alexandre, Arsène, Eclair, 1893, p. 3
- Salomon, Jacques, Projet pour la decoration d'une mairie, 1967, p. 39
- The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 1978, nos. 107-108, fig. 176 pp. 169-170
- Le Tiomphe des mairies: Grand Décors républicains à Paris, 1870-1914, 1986,
- Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, 1989, p. 172
- Au temps des Nabis, 1990, under no. 79
- Frèches-Thory, Clare; and Antoine Terrasse, Les Nabis, 1990, p. 107
- Frèches-Thory; and Ursula Perucchi-Petri, Nabis, 1888-1900, 1993, under no. 97
- Groom, Gloria, Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Roussel, 1890-1930, 2001, under no. 28, fig. 1 pp. 112-113, color ill. (no. 28, fig. 1)
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1404 p. 403
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