232 - The Kapferer Children

The Kapferer Children Pencil on paper 31.4 x 25.5 cm Round stamp with the monogram “MAUD” in the lower left corner This drawing is a preparatory study for the painting *Portrait of the Kapferer Children* or *Tea Time*, created in 1919. Now housed at the Petit Palais Museum in Geneva, this work was originally commissioned by Marcel Kapferer from Maurice Denis. Provenance: Maurice Denis Collection Private collection “An engineer and businessman, Marcel Kapferer was also a great art lover who commissioned several important works from Vuillard and greatly admired Maurice Denis. The painter’s love for his children and his talent as a portraitist are well known. It was therefore only natural that Kapferer turned to him to paint the portrait of his two daughters, Yvette and Alice. Several preparatory studies preceded the creation of *The Afternoon Snack*, which depicts the two sisters playing in their parents’ opulent home. Alice, the younger of the two, is still a baby, and Denis delights in focusing on her. Her expression of a happy child is keenly observed by the artist, who captures it faithfully from the very first sketches. He knows how to give her young face an authentic expression that bears a striking resemblance to her. An overall sketch for the composition of the final painting shows the two little girls dwarfed by the large armchair in the living room, on which Yvette is leaning. It reveals the painter’s sensitivity, as he subtly perceives the disparity between the two girls’ childlike world and the family setting in which they live.” Agnès Delannoy, Maurice Denis: The Draftsman. L’Œuvre dévoilé, Paris, Somogy Editions d’art, 2006, page 202. Related work: Maurice Denis, Portrait of the Kapferer Children or Tea Time, 1919, Geneva, Musée du Petit Palais.