Edouard Vuillard
(1868 – 1940)

French

La Fenêtre ouverte (The Open Window), about 1902 – 03

Oil on millboard

This room is part of the apartment Vuillard shared with his mother at 28 rue Truffaut, Paris. The woman seen on the left of this painting is the artist's mother, who ran a corset-making business from home. Vuillard's painting is a study of the relationship between indoor and outdoor light. Much like the Impressionist painters who worked some years prior to the date of this painting, Vuillard was particularly interested on the effect of light on colour.

Presented by Sir Alexander Maitland in memory of his wife, Rosalind, 1960 (GMA 2933)

Edouard Vuillard

1868-1940

French

La Chambre Rose (the Pink Room)
c.1910-11

Oil on canvas

Until the age of sixty, Vuillard lived with his mother, who ran a corset and dress-making business in Paris. His paintings reveal an obsession with pattern, texture and colour, which developed from his familiarity with fabrics. The revolutionary aspect of Vuillard's work is that his paintings hardly have a subject at all: instead he focuses on the mundane aspects of daily life. Here a child (probably his nephew) is tucked almost out of sight while the flowers in the foreground are barely sketched in. Vuillard often left areas of canvas unpainted, and does so here to great effect.

Presented by Mrs Isabel M Traill, 1979 (GMA 2936)