English: The Yellow Dress / La Robe jaune

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La Robe jaune is a monumental family portrait of the artist, together with his wife, Jacqueline, their daughter, Solange, peeking out behind her mother’s shoulder, and their son, Phillippe, standing on his mother’s lap. La Touche painted this tender family scene in 1896 in the magnificent garden Jacqueline created at their home in Saint-Cloud, where the painting hung in the drawing room, as seen in a photograph published by The Studio in 1899 (The Studio, 1899, vol. 16, p. 79.).

The painting’s title is taken from Jacqueline’s voluminous fur-trimmed yellow dress, with billowing sleeves and lilac ribbons. Solange rests her head on her mother’s shoulder and the artist, seen at right, leans into the group, balancing the composition. This exuberant celebration of family exemplifies the artist’s extraordinary synthesis of solid compositional structure with flying gestural brushstrokes that enliven the Belle Époque aesthetic for which he was universally praised.

Though not strictly portraits, La Touche had posed his family some years earlier, in Les Philos and Les Pivoines, both painted at Saint-Cloud and shown at the inaugural exhibition of the Societe Nationale de Beaux Arts in 1890, of which he was a founding member, where Les Phlox was purchased by the French state.