La table

La table, painted in 1909, depicts a domestic table setting — the kind of intimate domestic subject that runs through Vuillard's career as consistently as his figure scenes. By 1909 his most radically compressed Nabi phase was behind him, but the fundamental approach — the integration of objects with their surrounding domestic surfaces, the muted earthy palette, the refusal of conventional still-life isolation — remained characteristic. The Nabis had taken Gauguin's flat Synthetism and applied it to intimate modern subjects, and Vuillard's table scenes extend this approach to the everyday objects of shared domestic meals. The Musée d'Orsay holds this study on paper as part of its comprehensive documentation of Vuillard's career.

Vuillard's table study on paper applies his Intimist technique to the still-life format — the objects on the table integrated with the tablecloth, the surrounding furniture, and the room's decorative surfaces through the mosaic-like strokes of muted ochres, rusts, and greens that define his approach. The domestic setting dissolves the conventional hierarchy of still-life painting into a unified pattern of domestic material.