Jos and Lucie Hessel in the Small Salon, Rue de Rivoli

Painted around 1900, this work records Jos Hessel and his wife Lucie in their apartment on the rue de Rivoli — one of Vuillard's most important private patronage relationships. Jos Hessel was an art dealer at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery who became Vuillard's agent and close friend from around 1900, eventually providing the artist with a social world that replaced the Revue Blanche circle after that journal's closure in 1903. The Hessels' apartments and country houses became subjects for numerous Vuillard works across several decades, the relationship between intimiste painter and patron-subject producing some of his most richly observed environmental portraits.

The small salon is rendered with characteristic richness: patterned wallcovering, upholstery, and objects create a dense, layered surface within which the two figures are placed with informal ease. The palette is warm and ochre-dominated.