Vuillard · Théâtres intimes

In Le Déjeuner en famille, Édouard Vuillard depicts a meal at the Hessel household. The arrangement of the guests, the table, and the motifs surrounding them are as significant as the faces. A few years later, La Visite chez Madame Hessel returns to the same circle for a scene of a different kind. At the Musée d’Orsay, these two interiors open up a path for looking at Vuillard’s painting: how does an artist who spends his evenings at the theatre bring the stage into a small-format painting?

In the 1890s, Vuillard frequented both cafés-concerts and the rooms where Symbolist plays were performed. He works backstage, designs programs and imagines sets. This practice gives him very tangible means of guiding the viewer’s gaze. In a painted room, a piece of furniture can obstruct the view, a fabric pattern can bring a figure closer to the wall, a character can almost disappear into the decor. When we view these paintings as constructed spaces, we understand how Vuillard can inject tension into a scene where little happens.

The portraits of theatre people extend this backstage acquaintance into the boulevard years. Then painting changes scale: Vuillard painted for the foyer of the Petite Comédie des Champs-Élysées, then for the Théâtre de Chaillot. This time he works for places where the audience moves about, with paintings that stay in place when the performances change. These decors and the small paintings in the Hessel circle respond to one another through a shared attention to the spectator’s place. Whether one looks from the threshold of a drawing-room or from the theatre’s foyer, the point of view is part of the scene.

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