Woman in Front of the Fireplace 1915

Édouard Vuillard made this painting, Woman in Front of the Fireplace, with oil on cardboard. The painting feels like a memory, doesn’t it? Brown, umber, gray, and a touch of warm orange make up most of the colors. There’s this woman, right, and she’s kind of dissolving into the wall. I can almost feel the artist building the image up, bit by bit, with small brushstrokes and then wiping away parts, rethinking it as he goes along. I wonder if Vuillard was thinking about intimacy when he made this. The way the figure is consumed into the scene, it’s like he's showing us how close we can get to our surroundings. There's something about the light that feels both warm and melancholic, like a fire that’s slowly dying out. Painters are always talking to each other, even across time. Vuillard probably learned something from the Impressionists, but then he twisted it, made it his own. This painting reminds us that, in art, there are no final answers, just more questions.