Place Vintimille 1911

Édouard Vuillard made Place Vintimille with oil on canvas, and it’s got this incredible surface. The colors are muted, kind of mossy and leafy, but then he's got these dashes of brighter yellows and greens to create light. You can almost feel the breeze through the trees. The paint is applied in layers, creating this sense of depth, but it's not deep, it’s just this layering up and building of marks. The way the park and street sort of merge into this tapestry of urban life makes it all feels dreamlike. I love how he's handled the cobblestones in the lower-left corner, it's almost like a weaving. The individual brushstrokes are visible, each one a little decision, building up the image like a mosaic. It feels like an ongoing conversation with the materials, like the process itself is the point, more than the perfect representation of a scene. Vuillard reminds me of Bonnard, another painter interested in the intimate, domestic spaces of modern life. It’s about capturing a moment, a feeling, rather than making any grand statement.