Les journaux

Les journaux (The Newspapers) of 1909 depicts the domestic activity of newspaper reading — specifically the plural 'journaux,' suggesting multiple papers or multiple readers — within the domestic interior that was Vuillard's consistent subject. His newspaper reading subjects connected to his documented interest in figures absorbed in private activities within social domestic space: the newspaper reader as a figure simultaneously connected to the public world through the content of the paper and withdrawn into private absorption within the domestic room. By 1909 his treatment of such subjects had evolved from the extreme Nabi flatness of his early work toward a more atmospheric and spatially coherent approach, and his handling of the newspaper's large white or grey surface as a compositional element within the domestic color field would have engaged his characteristic formal intelligence about how different types of surfaces — reflective, absorptive, patterned, plain — organized the visual experience of a room.

The large flat grey-white surfaces of spread newspapers provide geometric contrast with the patterned domestic surroundings. Vuillard treats the newsprint as a relatively flat tonal element against the richer surfaces of furnishings and wallpaper. The figures are integrated into the reading environment.