Claude Bernheim de Villers

In 1906 this portrait of a small boy went on show three times in the same year. It hung in London at the New Gallery, in Paris at an exhibition of the painter's work held by the dealers Bernheim-Jeune, and that autumn at the Salon d'Automne. The dealers had a personal stake. The child is Claude, son of Gaston Bernheim de Villers, who ran the firm with his brother Josse, and Vuillard painted him at his parents' home on the avenue Henri-Martin in Paris. The boy sits in white on a long sofa covered in tapestry, its woven figures and garlands almost as busy as he is still, and a band of pink pattern closes off the picture at one edge. It is oil on paper, later laid down on plywood, and in 1908 Vuillard took it up again and reworked it.