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Lot Essay
In 1897 Vuillard purchased a Kodak camera, and in 1899 he moved to the modest rue Truffaut apartment where he lived with his mother until 1904. His first photographs were devoted to capturing Mme Vuillard and a handful of friends in the small apartment with its low ceilings on rue Truffaut. These photographs often depict the group gathered around the very dining table seen in the present work, and also show the ornate wallpaper that appears in the background.
Vuillard's camera purchase marked an important development in his work. He used these candid images to document fleeting moments, the spirit of a place and the many people he met, and for the rest of his career he would reference these small photographs in conjunction with his journal entries and sketches to recreate the sensation of a place. Elizabeth Easton has written, "Through photographs we can identify various elements of Vuillard's actual interiors in his work. From this we can conclude that the specific objects themselves do not create the claustrophobic atmosphere of the paintings. His lush combinations of pigment and pattern vividly evoke late nineteenth-century Parisian life in paintings that depict the crowded rooms of fin-de-siècle France. Because they express more what the rooms felt like than how they appeared, however, Vuillard's interiors are most effective as metaphors, speaking for the relationships between the people who occupy them, as well as for Vuillard himself and for the feelings he wanted to convey" (in The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1990, p. 76).
Vuillard employed the dining table as his most frequent mise en scène for domestic dramas. He frequently depicted friends and close family gathered around to share a meal. Indeed, sketches of these scenes are found in his journal as early as 1888. As in his seamstress series (see lot 68), the artist's treatment of this subject enabled him to portray the intimate and complex relationships and tensions that dominated the daily interactions of family life in the Vuillard household. The present work depicts the family dining room, devoid of figures, in which the table has been set for breakfast. Covered with a richly patterned cloth, it fills the center of the scene, as if it were the stage set for the likely drama that is about to occur. A bright red bread basket and elaborately decorated cushion stand out in contrast to the muted tones of the scene, and the slanted floor boards with the patterned wallpaper communicate the stage-like feeling of the interior space.
The original invoice for the present work. BARCODE 23662254
Vuillard's camera purchase marked an important development in his work. He used these candid images to document fleeting moments, the spirit of a place and the many people he met, and for the rest of his career he would reference these small photographs in conjunction with his journal entries and sketches to recreate the sensation of a place. Elizabeth Easton has written, "Through photographs we can identify various elements of Vuillard's actual interiors in his work. From this we can conclude that the specific objects themselves do not create the claustrophobic atmosphere of the paintings. His lush combinations of pigment and pattern vividly evoke late nineteenth-century Parisian life in paintings that depict the crowded rooms of fin-de-siècle France. Because they express more what the rooms felt like than how they appeared, however, Vuillard's interiors are most effective as metaphors, speaking for the relationships between the people who occupy them, as well as for Vuillard himself and for the feelings he wanted to convey" (in The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1990, p. 76).
Vuillard employed the dining table as his most frequent mise en scène for domestic dramas. He frequently depicted friends and close family gathered around to share a meal. Indeed, sketches of these scenes are found in his journal as early as 1888. As in his seamstress series (see lot 68), the artist's treatment of this subject enabled him to portray the intimate and complex relationships and tensions that dominated the daily interactions of family life in the Vuillard household. The present work depicts the family dining room, devoid of figures, in which the table has been set for breakfast. Covered with a richly patterned cloth, it fills the center of the scene, as if it were the stage set for the likely drama that is about to occur. A bright red bread basket and elaborately decorated cushion stand out in contrast to the muted tones of the scene, and the slanted floor boards with the patterned wallpaper communicate the stage-like feeling of the interior space.
The original invoice for the present work. BARCODE 23662254