Flowers On A Stool c. 1903 - 1904

Édouard Vuillard made this painting of flowers on a stool with oil on cardboard; a fleeting scene of domestic life, still and silent. It’s funny, the way he’s built up the surface with all these separate little strokes, like he’s knitting the image together. I imagine Vuillard, squinting, trying to capture the way the light hits the petals, the way the fabric drapes. He’s not trying to be precise; he’s after something more ephemeral, more felt. Look at the legs of the stool, how they dissolve into the background. It's less about the flowers themselves and more about the act of seeing, of translating a sensory experience into paint. Vuillard was part of a group called the Nabis, who were all about flattening space and playing with pattern. You can see that here, in the way the background merges with the foreground, creating this all-over, decorative effect. He was clearly in conversation with other painters of his time. Painting, in the end, is always a conversation across time.