Nature morte avec bouteille et carafe

Nature morte avec bouteille et carafe, painted in 1889, is an early still life that documents Vuillard's transition from conventional academic painting toward the Intimist approach he would develop fully in the 1890s. The bottle and carafe on a table are treated with more conventional three-dimensional modeling than his mature work would employ, but the attention to domestic objects and the compressed pictorial space already point toward the characteristic approach of his Nabi period. The Nabis — a group Vuillard was forming connections with at this moment — would take Gauguin's flat Synthetism and apply it to intimate modern subjects, and this early still life shows him working toward that formal revolution from within the conventions of academic training.

This early Vuillard still life shows him working toward but not yet having arrived at his mature Intimist compression — the bottle and carafe rendered with more conventional tonal modeling than his later work would employ, but already showing the earthy, muted palette and the interest in domestic objects as occasions for serious formal investigation that would define his developed style.