Madame Vuillard Sewing

Vuillard, along with Bonnard and Denis amongst others, formed the Nabis group in the 1880s to 1890s. He created works that were both harmonious and boldly rendered. All of their paintings are fundamentally symbolic in nature, while including elements of the decorative based on Japonisme, the paintings revealed a consistent trend towards a gentle "intimisme" that focused on those things, people and events nearby.While small in scale, this work fully reveals the characteristics of Vuillard's paintings. The model is the artist's mother, who frequently appears in his works. In addition to his oil painting images of his mother sewing or doing housework, he also frequently created such images in print form. This painting presents a moment in a 19th-century Parisian bourgeois home, indeed, like the home where Vuillard himself was born. This portrait of the painter's mother is infused with his intimate affection for her. (Source: Masterpieces of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 2009, cat. no. 105)