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Interior, mother and sister of the artist
Jean Edouard Vuillard • Painting, 1893, 46.3×56.5 cm
Description of the artwork «Interior, mother and sister of the artist»
Interior, Mother and Sister is one of the most daring works of Vuillard. When looking at the reproduction, it is very easy to confuse it with color lithography because the face-masks and hands are of the same tone, a patterned background, a solid black spot of the dress. Vuillard’s passion for Japanese art is obvious when he brings visual effects of colour printing to this painting. He still maintains the texture of the oil strokes in other parts of the picture, giving us no chance to make a mistake from a second glance at the work. This painting is subtle.
But the Vuillard's audacity is not even in the technical elegance. This little work is so intimate, it reveals personal connections, thoughts, and relationships. It can cause a feeling of unease and anxiety, as if you overheard a quarrel or a confession that was not meant for your ears.
Women in this strange double portrait are the artist's mother, Madame Vuillard and his sister Marie. They are put in a space that can bring anyone to claustrophobia. If Mary would unbend, she would have to hit a picture frame. The effect of tightness is strengthened by the falling chest of drawers and table. Certainly, only a lower part of the room appeared on the canvas, but the figure of Marie makes clear that the ceiling is also somewhere nearby, it is falling and hanging just above her head.
Marie feels uncomfortable in this space, the wallpaper blends with the pattern on her dress and the walls absorb her figure, she is lost here, she is only part of the interior. This is a world which is dominated by the mother, who feels relaxed and confident.
Madame Vuillard was 27 years younger than her husband, a retired military. She was soon left a widow without means of subsistence and with two children. She opened a tailoring shop where she worked with her hired assistants. Vuillard would paint his mother again and again: at work, with her clients, her scissors, her patterns on fabrics. He lived with his mother until her death (Vuillard was 60 when his mother died), and those couture decorations were the interior of his own adult life.
Modern art critics find these small personal works of Vuillard not only frank, but also socially sharp. Dramatic changes in society of that time contributed to the search for such meanings. That was the era when women began to work and get out of the kitchen, when gender and social models were changing rapidly. In another Vuillard’s work, Interior with Desk, Marie seems to loom out of the wall of the workshop – the pattern of her dress is repeated in several elements of the surrounding space. She is just what she's doing in these walls: a monotonous, quiet, repetitive work, endless patterns, from which one feels dizzy.
Written by Anna Sidelnikova
But the Vuillard's audacity is not even in the technical elegance. This little work is so intimate, it reveals personal connections, thoughts, and relationships. It can cause a feeling of unease and anxiety, as if you overheard a quarrel or a confession that was not meant for your ears.
Women in this strange double portrait are the artist's mother, Madame Vuillard and his sister Marie. They are put in a space that can bring anyone to claustrophobia. If Mary would unbend, she would have to hit a picture frame. The effect of tightness is strengthened by the falling chest of drawers and table. Certainly, only a lower part of the room appeared on the canvas, but the figure of Marie makes clear that the ceiling is also somewhere nearby, it is falling and hanging just above her head.
Marie feels uncomfortable in this space, the wallpaper blends with the pattern on her dress and the walls absorb her figure, she is lost here, she is only part of the interior. This is a world which is dominated by the mother, who feels relaxed and confident.
Madame Vuillard was 27 years younger than her husband, a retired military. She was soon left a widow without means of subsistence and with two children. She opened a tailoring shop where she worked with her hired assistants. Vuillard would paint his mother again and again: at work, with her clients, her scissors, her patterns on fabrics. He lived with his mother until her death (Vuillard was 60 when his mother died), and those couture decorations were the interior of his own adult life.
Modern art critics find these small personal works of Vuillard not only frank, but also socially sharp. Dramatic changes in society of that time contributed to the search for such meanings. That was the era when women began to work and get out of the kitchen, when gender and social models were changing rapidly. In another Vuillard’s work, Interior with Desk, Marie seems to loom out of the wall of the workshop – the pattern of her dress is repeated in several elements of the surrounding space. She is just what she's doing in these walls: a monotonous, quiet, repetitive work, endless patterns, from which one feels dizzy.
Written by Anna Sidelnikova
