In Bed

In Bed, of around 1891, is among Vuillard's most celebrated and formally radical early works — a painting that pushes the Nabi principle of the flat decorative surface to an almost abstract extreme. The figure in the bed is nearly entirely dissolved into the surrounding white bedclothes: head and sheets share the same tonal range, the face barely distinguished from the domestic textile through which it emerges. This radical dissolution of the figure into its environment was the logical consequence of the Nabi doctrine he was absorbing from Maurice Denis's theoretical writings and from the example of Gauguin's Synthetist simplifications. At the moment Vuillard made this painting, he was in close contact with Bonnard, Denis, Sérusier, and the other founding Nabis, all committed to the idea that color and form had autonomous expressive power independent of their descriptive function. In Bed demonstrates that conviction carried to its furthest point in Vuillard's early work — the picture surface asserting its sovereign flatness even at the cost of making the depicted figure almost unrecognizable. The Orsay's holding of this key early canvas makes it central to any understanding of Vuillard's development.

The composition is almost entirely white, with the figure compressed into a pattern of horizontal bands, wrinkles, and colour inflections across the bedding. Vuillard suppresses three-dimensional form almost entirely; the face emerges only as a slight warm tone against the surrounding white. The handling is remarkably restrained for a work of such extreme formal ambition.