The Fireplace 1901

Édouard Vuillard’s painting, The Fireplace, is a cozy, intimate scene rendered in muted browns, greys, and blacks. It's as though the painting emerged from a dream, slowly building up from layers of memory and feeling. I imagine Vuillard standing before the canvas, brush in hand, lost in contemplation. What’s it like to create an intimate domestic scene? How does one capture the quiet glow of a fire or the stillness of a room? Look at the way he’s rendered the flickering flames with short, staccato strokes of orange and red – each dab of paint a tiny burst of energy. The fireplace mantelpiece looks like an altar, with objects placed upon it like offerings. Vuillard, like many painters, was in dialogue with those who came before him. From Impressionism, he learned to capture fleeting moments of light and atmosphere; but he then pushed beyond that into something more psychological. Ultimately, painting is an act of conversation—artists engaging with one another across time and space, building upon each other’s ideas and insights, inspiring new forms of seeing and being in the world.