One wonders just what Vuillard's contemporaries thought of such a revo- lutionary kind of interior with figures as this one, so ingenious, deUberate, and, for all its whimsicality, so in touch with reality. The answer is that they saw the point and were impressed. "Vuillard is a painter," wrote the critic Gustave Geffroy in 1893, "whose understanding gives me great delight. He accentuates his vision of the world; he penetrates the whole of life; he looks closely at those aspects of it which it pleases him to evoke. ... It is furniture that he cares for, and carpets, and a fine bed-cover, and the ordinary equipment of the table; and the stuffs of which inexpensive dresses are made3ƒ4dark, it may be, or brightly colored, or striped, or spotted like a guinea-fowl's feathers." To his natural intimist sensitivity Vuillard added influences from without. The contorted pose of his sister Marie, pushing herself away from the wall to avoid being absorbed into the conflict of pronounced patterns, can be attributed to Japanese prints, and the artifice of the whole composition, perhaps to his work in the theater. One feels that the couple is "on stage." And certainly Vuillard's early years spent in and about his mother's workroom sharpened his eye for small things, for colors, materials, patterns, and for human oddities.

Provenance:

Gift of Mrs. Saidie A. May

Object number:

141.1934