On June 22, Christie's in New York will hold an auction of items from the private collection of Joan Rivers. Many pieces of jewelry will be up for bid, as well as formal evening gowns, 18th-century European furniture and modern facsimiles thereof, porcelain vases, glass stemware, and many other items that filled her home.
Any artwork accompanying these lots, I assumed, would be equally overwrought in style--a late Renoir nude, perhaps. But to my surprise, the painting above, Édouard Vuillard's Dans l'atelier from 1915, is part of the sale at Christie's. Vuillard's loose, casual brushstrokes and muted palette, along with the modestly-attired woman, seem the antithesis of the loud, sometimes crass, and overly-groomed Rivers. And the shabbiness of the studio depicted in the painting must have seemed a bit out of place hanging in her gilded home.
Dans l'atelier retains much of the style of Vuillard's work from the late 1800s and the first years of the 20th century–he has not yet arrived at the more tightly rendered paintings that characterize Vuillard's output in his later years. And although the deep, rich earth tones and simplified figures from that earlier time are absent, I find Dans l'atelier and other Vuillard works from its period equally engaging and satisfying as his paintings from the turn of the 20th century.
Collectors apparently do not. Similarly sized and even much smaller earlier pieces by Vuillard have sold in the high-six and low-seven figures, significantly more than the $120,000-180,000 estimate for Dans l'atelier; a disparity that I doubt can be explained solely by a difference in physical condition.
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