Garçon lisant le journal (1893)

Vuillard, Édouard (1868-1940)

Garçon lisant le journal (Reading the Newspaper)
1893
Essence on board, 26.7 x 26.7 cm
Wadsworth AtheneumHartford

This boy gently leaning over a newspaper is a typical subject for Vuillard, who specialized in depicting middle class people engaged in everyday activities. The artist’s work of the 1890s often shows intimate interiors painted with a muted palette to express tranquil, private moments in simplified and flattened forms. With their attention to decorative motifs and patterns, Vuillard’s small-scale paintings reveal the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch interiors as well as Japanese prints. Vuillard joined “Les Nabis” (Hebrew for Prophets), an influential group of artists, who believed that they introduced modernist design practices into art through reconciliation between art and design. (WA)