32. Edouard Vuillard
(1868-1940)
Programme pour le Théâtre de l’Oeuvre : Solnes, le Constructeur (The Master Builder)

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Vuillard: Solnes, le Constructeur

Programme pour le Théâtre de l’Oeuvre : Solnes, le Constructeur (The Master Builder)

Lithograph, 1894, 320 x 240 mm., Roger Marx 21, Aitken 63, Boyer 61. Unusually fine impression on thin, brownish wove paper with narrow margins outside the subject ; two small repaired edge tears. Ibsen’s great drama was produced in Paris, in French translation, in 1894 at the Salle des Bouffes du Nord, for which representation Vuillard was commissioned to design the program. It is one of several he did for the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre as well as a lithograph of a rehearsal on stage there. Interestingly, the scene depicted by Vuillard does not actually occur in the play, being a compilation of the re-meeting of Solnes with a young lady who has idolized him since childhood and a vision, in the background, of the church he built ten years before in her home town.