Édouard Vuillard

Galerie Le Niveau, Paris

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (July 7, 1937)

Mlle Bouwens

L'Oeil Galerie d'Art, Paris

M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York (1963)

Herbert Morris, United States

Willavene S. Morris, Philadelphia (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 13, 1986, lot 15)

Richard M. Cohen, Los Angeles (acquired at the above sale)

Cohen Collection (acquired by descent from the above and sold: Christie's, New York, November 6, 2002, lot 25)

Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Oeuvres de Vuillard de 1890 à 1910, 1938, no. 45 (titled Devant la fenêtre)

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Vuillard (1868-1940), 1946, no. 49

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Mrs. Herbert C. Morris Collection, 1965

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Monet to Matisse: A Century of Art in France from Southern California Collections, 1991, illustrated in color p. 70 and 81

Théodore, ‘Edouard Vuillard’, in Konstrevy, 1938, no. 4, illustrated p. 126

Curt Schweicher, Vuillard, 1955, Bern, illustrated pl. 4

Antoine Salomon & Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, The Inexhaustible Glance, Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels, Milan, 2003, vol I, no. IV-141, illustrated in color p. 307

The textured confines of Belle Epoque interior spaces inspired Vuillard's most sensorially-engaging compositions.  Painted at the height of the Nabis movement in 1892, the present composition depicts the dressmaking studio of Vuillard's mother, where the artist spent many of his formative years observing women at work amidst a patchwork of patterns, shapes and colors. Within these dimly-lit quarters, swathes of colorful fabrics were discarded throughout the room, draped across surfaces or worn by the seamstresses themselves.  The spectacle was irresistible to Vuillard, whose approach to rendering these sharp, tonal contrasts was largely informed by his experience as a printmaker.  As exemplified by the pile of remnants on the table, Vuillard reduces forms to pools of color that are unmodulated by shadow or gradation. And the bold, linear pattern of Madame's dress and the lattice of the leaded window also call to mind the grooves of a woodblock print.