Avenue

Prince Emmanuel Bibesco ordered this large panel from Vuillard in November 1907, and a year later it was number one in the catalogue of the painter's show at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris. By 1918 it was back in the artist's own hands, and he kept at it. The museum records that he reworked it around 1938 and again in 1940, the year he died. At its centre a woman in a pink dress and a straw hat sits on a green bench under the trees, holding a bunch of white flowers, and a big brown and white dog stands across the path in front of her. The canvas is more than two metres high. He had left it to the state by word of mouth, and his sister and brother-in-law saw the gift through in 1941. That winter, in occupied Paris, it was number one again, in the Orangerie's exhibition of his bequest.