Entrance to the city

Entrance to the City of 1903 is a rare urban subject for Vuillard — the city's boundary or entrance rather than the enclosed domestic interior that was his signature territory. The entrance to a city or neighborhood — the gates, boulevard intersections, or architectural markers that announced a transition between one urban zone and another — was a threshold subject that connected to his broader interest in the transitional spaces between different conditions of enclosure and openness. His treatment of such an urban subject would have applied his characteristic pattern-consciousness to the architectural and human elements of the city entrance: the buildings, the pedestrians, the specific character of the light falling on an urban space at the edge of the city's density. The 1903 date places this in his transitional period between the extreme Nabi flatness of his early work and the slightly more atmospheric approach of his mature years.

The spatial construction opens outward toward the city, creating more recession than typical Vuillard compositions. The architecture provides vertical structure amid the open street. The palette is relatively cool and urban, different from the warm domestic interiors that dominate his work.