Self-portrait, face study

Vuillard was about 21 when he painted this, around 1889, and the museum's title calls it exactly what it is, a study of a face. The effort all went into the head. The broad forehead, the eyes and the reddish beard are worked up with care, the collar is a single stroke of white, and the rest of the little canvas, under 25 centimetres high, is left as a rough olive ground. It belonged to Jos Hessel, the art dealer who was also one of the painter's closest friends. In 1938 it hung in the large retrospective of his work at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, two years before the painter's death. In 1942, with the city under German occupation, Hessel gave the picture to the national museum of modern art. The signature, E. Vuillard, is written small in the lower right corner.