Public Gardens: Little Girls Playing

On 16 May 1929 the collection of Alexandre Natanson, who had ordered this panel from Vuillard in 1894, was sold at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, and the picture went for 30,000 francs. In February 1934 it came up at the same auction house again and fetched 11,250, well under half. Its companion from the same set, The Questioning, sold that day for exactly the same sum. Between the two sales came the Wall Street crash of October 1929 and the long slump that followed it. In the picture it is high summer. A dark tree trunk runs straight up the middle and splits it in two. Behind it a girl in a yellow blouse and a long wine-red skirt leans against a green chair. Further back, children in bright blue and red run across the sandy path under the leaves.