Deux Femmes dans Interieur 1892

Curator: Let's turn our attention to Édouard Vuillard’s, "Deux Femmes dans Intérieur," from 1892. It's an exquisite watercolor. What springs to mind for you? Editor: The overall feeling is blue, intensely so, and quite dreamy. There's an intimate, quietness, like witnessing a fleeting, private moment. Almost a hazy, melancholic dream, where figures soften and edges dissolve. Curator: That sensation of dreaminess absolutely reflects Vuillard's connection to the Nabis movement. They explored the symbolic potential of color and form, flattening the picture plane and often depicting interior scenes of domestic life. Editor: And those flattened forms really let your imagination fill in the details. I can’t quite tell what the woman on the right is doing. She seems burdened in this moment, no? The other looks to have stepped directly from a painting, ready to depart the scene Curator: The woman on the right is leaning over, possibly sewing or reading, in the sort of intimate domesticity that was popular at the time. The one on the left is an odd sort of silhouette that reminds you how the Nabis were trying to flatten the composition and move past Impressionism. This movement was particularly interesting due to the climate after impressionism had settled to ask questions of representation and narrative. Editor: I see what you mean about this sense of experimentation. It’s a space that lets our emotions do some wandering, and even lets us tell our own version of a painting as we view it. Curator: Yes, the Nabis were quite taken with Japonism too, emphasizing the decorative surface. In many ways it foreshadows some of the modernist flattening of perspective and concern with the surface of the picture plane that we associate with painters like Matisse. Editor: Well, whatever it anticipates, this slice of dreamy, domestic quietude still casts a certain spell. There is a strange allure that continues to beguile after all these years. Curator: Indeed. It provides us with such a glimpse into a fleeting, tender, yet somehow ordinary scene—one captured with a beautifully evocative brevity.