VUILLARD, Édouard

An almost greater role than the children of the title, the dark red patch of carpet, or the Japanese screen is played by the landscape beyond the balcony. The floorboards bleached by the light form a sort of continuation, after a brief interval of shadow, and force the modest interior painted in the most general terms to open up under the intensity of the Normandy noon.

This canvas is an intimate painting. Because the Nabis artists had a penchant for subjects such as this, their style was also known as Intimism. Vuillard places his painting under the primacy of two-dimensionality, far more so than his role model Bernard or fellow combatant Bonnard. The bed, figure, and wall are transformed to create an interplay between the surfaces. Vuillard restricts the colour palette to gray, ochre, and brown in order to maximize the decorative effect.

The restrained palette of this typical early interior by Vuillard is constructed around a few closely related tones. Although it may seem excessively impoverished, those hues - gray-green, yellow ochre, and brownish black - make up the painting’s main protagonist: a tantalizing half-shadow that reigns in this spacious room illuminated only slightly by bright light from the windows. The unexpected bouquet in the foreground is far more important for the work’s characteristics of colour, scent, and feelings than the barely indicated, insignificant figures sitting at the table.

This canvas was part of the decoration in the library of Dr. Vaquez.

Throughout his career, Vuillard executed a number of large-scale decorative panels, commissioned by his friends and patrons. His early Nabi decorations, dating from the 1890s, reflect the artist’s obsession with patterns. Dr. Louis-Henri Vaquez was a well-known and celebrated cardiologist and a professor of clinical medicine in Paris. A life-long friend and patron of Vuillard, he commissioned a number of works from the artist in 1896. To decorate the library of Dr. Vaquez’s apartment, Vuillard painted four decorative panels on the theme of women and flowers in interiors, which were later bequeathed to the Mus�e du Petit Palais in Paris.

This painting has also been entitled The Actress taking her Bow. In this small pastel Vuillard’s conceptual intention is to reproduce three-dimensionality in a markedly two-dimensional way, creating curving, linear forms and using harmonious colour combinations.