Oil on canvas
This work depicts three female figures—two of whom are barely discernible—quietly concentrating on their handiwork amid a profusion of fabrics and yarns. The diffused surface of the painting merges every detail of this muffled setting, creating a tapestry-like effect. Vuillard’s nuanced manipulation of color and texture was internalized from observation of his mother and sister, who ran a small dressmaking business out of the family apartment.
October 21, 2019–Spring 2020
Provenance Research Project
This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.
Thadée Natanson, Paris. Until 1908
Sale, Collection Thadée Natanson, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 13, 1908
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris. Purchased from Natanson sale, June 1908
Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942), Paris
Paris art market
John Hay Whitney, New York. By 1961 - 1983
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Estate of John Hay Whitney, 1983
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Édouard Vuillard
French, 1868–1940 40 works onlineIf it was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who indelibly captured the spectacle of public life in the cafés and cabarets of Paris in the 1890s, it was Édouard Vuillard who conjured the muffled quiet and richly patterned textures of private life inside the city’s bourgeois homes and gardens.
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French Landscapes and Interiors
Gallery 501The late 19th century in France was an era of rapid change: the emergence of mass media, new and faster forms of transportation, urban expansion of cities like Paris, and developments in industry.
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