Das Speisezimmer

Das Speisezimmer (The Dining Room) at the Neue Pinakothek, painted in 1902, shows Vuillard returning to one of his most persistent subject types — the dining room with its specific social and formal possibilities — within the context of his growing German patronage. The dining room had been central to his Nabi work since the early 1890s, appearing in various scales and social registers from the modest family apartment to more formally furnished bourgeois dining rooms. Its specific spatial and social character — the table as the organizing element, the white cloth catching light, the figures in the specific social arrangement of the meal — gave him a compositional structure he could inflect in different directions while maintaining its essential character. Munich's institutional enthusiasm for his work, reflected in the Neue Pinakothek's multiple acquisitions, placed him alongside Bonnard and the other Post-Impressionist painters in the German city's engagement with French modernism — an engagement that was more systematic and better informed in the early twentieth century than many French provincial institutions could manage.

The dining table with its white cloth anchors the composition horizontally, the surrounding room's furnishings and walls providing Vuillard's characteristic patterned field. The treatment of the tablecloth and dishware involves close observation of reflected light and shadow. The spatial handling compresses depth in his typical fashion.