Le peintre Ker-Xavier Roussel et sa fille 1903

Édouard Vuillard made this painting of Ker-Xavier Roussel and his daughter with oil on cardboard. Look at the muted palette, the creamy whites, the way he captures a domestic interior. You can almost feel Vuillard dabbing away at the surface, building up layers of tiny brushstrokes to create the scene before us. I imagine Vuillard standing there, palette in hand, trying to capture the intimacy of this moment. Did he feel the weight of responsibility to accurately portray a fellow artist and his child? Probably not, I imagine it was all about the atmosphere. The curtains act almost like an additional figure in the scene. There's something very special about artists painting other artists; you can feel the lineage, the shared understanding. Vuillard definitely knew what he was doing when he made this painting. There's an ongoing conversation happening, a nod to tradition, but with a modern sensibility. It’s about the exchange of ideas across time. Painting, after all, is an ongoing conversation.