“I wanted to paint in a way that didn’t take things too seriously. Bonnard’s subjects are mundane. He is modest. But out of that he makes spectacular paintings. That’s what interests me: the possibility that people looking at the painting can identify with it. Intimacy, pain, love […] Archaic subjects”
—Nathanaëlle Herbelin

Representing Franco-Israeli artist Nathanaëlle Herbelin’s auction debut, Max is a profoundly sensitive and introspective painting, each subtle brushstroke inviting us to engage deeply with the domestic everyday. Emerging from the canvas in dreamy planes of cool, tonal blues, Herbelin’s subject leans back against a flatly rendered sofa, his body embraced by the richly textured indigo fabric behind him. His pose relaxed and open, the titular Max gazes softly out towards the viewer here, inviting them into this interior scene and establishing a sense of comfortable familiarity between the sitter and his audience. With the scattered ephemera of contemporary life - bananas, a mug, toast, eggs, yoghurt, a paperclip, and an iPhone – arranged atop a wood grained table, the composition combines elements from multiple pictorial conventions from portraiture, still life, and the domestic interior. It is these quiet interiors, decorated with furniture, personalised items and elements of design for which the artist is best known, and that Anaël Piaget has aptly described as the arrangement of ‘objects that form landscapes.’ⁱ Here, Herbelin tenderly depicts an intimate breakfast scene, the very essence of the habitual. Transforming the familiar into something remarkable, the artist asks us to think more deeply about how we see and perceive the everyday. Beautiful in its simplicity, the artist captures the subtleties that make these unguarded moments so precious and profound.

An ‘Heiress to the Nabis’

 

Born in 1989 in Tel Aviv to an Israeli mother and a French father, Herbelin has perpetually walked the line between two distinct cultures. The artist grew up in Zoran, a small village in central Israel, yet throughout her childhood, she regularly visited her bohemian grandmother in Paris. Herbelin eventually moved to the French capital at the age of 23, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts from the École des Beaux-Arts in 2016. Throughout her studies, Herbelin frequented the Musée d’Orsay ‘to steal ideas from the Nabis,’ a group of late 19^th century French artists who illustrated everyday domestic scenes in flat, bold passages of colour, radically simplifying their forms.ⁱⁱ Perceiving themselves to be the prophets of a new and resolutely modern art, the group was spearheaded by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, and in their attempts to revitalise the very foundations of European art they enthusiastically embraced non-western stylistic influences, notably those of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, echoed too in Herbelin’s compositional arrangement here.
 

Towards the close of the 19^th century, Paris had been gripped by a craze for all things Japonaise, the woodblock ukiyo-e prints presented at the École des Beux-Arts in Paris during the spring of 1899 having a particularly profound effect on this group of artists. Characterised by a shallow sense of pictorial space achieved through combined perspectives and flattened blocks of colour stacked close to the picture plane, these woodblock prints with their emphasis on sinuous line and pattern, cen certainly be traced in the foreshortened angles, vertiginous perspectives, and flattened areas of bold colour and pattern evident in these Nabi works.
 

While these stylistic legacies make themselves known in Herbelin’s compositional arrangement here, the artist has also expressed a deep admiration for Bonnard and Vuillard’s ability to spectacularise the mundane. She poetically describes her encounters with Bonnard’s work as eliciting ‘the same joy that I get when I’m reunited with someone I love.’ⁱⁱⁱ Certainly, Herbelin’s paintings recall similar motifs and techniques from the Nabis, yet her approach is markedly contemporary. Her 2020 painting Elené dans la baignoire explicitly references Bonnard’s multiple and radiant portraits of his muse and partner Marthe floating in her bathtub, updating this iconic image and speaking to a distinctly modern understanding of femininity.

  

In the present work can locate significant parallels between Herbelin’s monumental painting of Max and the intimate interior scenes of both Bonnard and Vuillard at the turn of the twentieth century. Vuillard’s 1898 Madame Vuillard au bol depicts his mother, seemingly unaware of her son’s presence, gazing pensively to the side, beyond the confines of the canvas. She holds a bowl to her mouth, pausing amid her morning meal to indulge in stillness. As with Herbelin’s Max, Vuillard’s breakfast scene unfolds in a thoughtful still life; his skilful application of paint and use of colour and light elevate an otherwise typical occurrence.
 

Affectionately described as ‘an heiress to the Nabis,’^iv Herbelin was honoured with her first institutional solo exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in 2024. Her paintings blended seamlessly amongst the likes of Bonnard and Denis, elegantly entering into a dialogue which began over 130 years ago.
 

Watch: Nathanaëlle Herbelin and curator Nicolas Gausserand discuss the hanging of her forthcoming exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 2024

 

While her technique derives from a deep engagement with art history, Herbelin’s markedly current depiction of Max transcends stereotypical notions of masculinity, accomplishing a sensitive portrait that projects vulnerability and softness. The artist’s practice extends the legacy of Intimism, a term first coined by French art critics in 1883 to describe the subdued domestic scenes rendered by the Nabis. Herbelin’s Max conveys a quiet sort of intimacy which is achieved only in the presence of someone or something familiar. The painting perfectly encapsulates the artist’s desire to distil simple moments—profound and beautiful in their simplicity—that her audience, any audience, can connect to. Max is a spectacular and thoughtful painting by the young and already incredibly accomplished Herbelin.

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• Born in 1989, Herbelin has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at the French Institute of Tel Aviv (2022); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2024); and a forthcoming exhibition at He Art Museum in Shunde, China (2025). She has also participated in group shows at Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade (2024); BOZAR, Brussels (2024); and the Musée Guimet, Paris (2022).
   

• Herbelin’s paintings recall the work of the Nabis, a group of post-impressionist French painters including Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis who depict intimate genre scenes. She exhibited amongst these post-modern masters in her 2024 exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay.
   

• Herbelin’s work was included in a group exhibition at Michael Werner gallery in 2023 curated by Florian Krewer, an artist whose Untitled painting (2015) is being offered as lot 3 in this sale.

 

 

ⁱ Anaël Piaget, Catherine Bennett, trans., ‘Nathanaëlle Herbelin: Paris, the desert, and daily life’, Art Basel, 5 March 2024, online. 

ⁱⁱ Herbelin quoted in Judith Benhamouhuet, ‘Nathanaëlle Herbelin at the Musée d’Orsay: a marriage of love between the young artist and the Nabis paintings’, JB Reports, 2024.

ⁱⁱⁱ Herbelin quoted in an interview with Nicolas Gausserand and Leïla Jarbouai, ‘Where is the here in Être ici est une splendeur [Being Here is Everything]?’, Nathanaëlle Herbelin: Être ici est une splendeur, exh. brochure, 12 March-30 June 2024, p. 16.

^iv Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, exh. announcement, 12 March-30 June 2024, online.