The Sunny Room represents Vuillard's youthful style and life, the “old life of café discussions, literary inspiration and the close germinal atmosphere of his own private existence at home.”¹ As Vuillard's dealer urged him to move in society, the range of his work gradually encompassed the salons and figures of fashionable Paris. Our painting indicated something of Vuillard's forthcoming expansiveness but little of the concern for detail which he was to develop.Vuillard's “object, like Puvis (de Chavannes) and like the Japanese prints, or the flower decorated wallpaper that was the fashion in the 90s, is to achieve a juxtaposition of flat areas of mat colors which will deploy themselves evenly over a two-dimensional wall surface.”² This effect is augmented by his broad handling of the paint that does not render sharp outlines, but blurs and blends one pattern into another. In this, as in all his paintings, his intent was primarily decorative.Endnotes

1. Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, Vuillard, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1954, p. 24.
2. Ibid., p. 20.

Referenced Work of Art

1. Jean Edouard Vuillard, French, 1868-1940. The Sunny Room, 1908. Oil on canvas, 18 1/4” x 21”. Signed lower right: E. Vuillard. Accession 61.36.19.CollectionsEdouard Vuillard, Paris; Sam Salz, New York; P. D. McMillan, Minneapolis, 19 December, 1957; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Bequest of Putnam Dana McMillan, 15 November, 1961.ExhibitedParis, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, 1922
   Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Vuillard, 1936