The Sunny Room

The Sunny Room of 1920, likely one of Vuillard's late domestic interiors from the interwar period, shows his intimist method applied in the more relaxed, spatially open style of his mature years. By 1920 the extreme flatness of his Nabi period was a memory, replaced by a richer, more atmospheric approach that retained his characteristic attention to pattern and surface but allowed somewhat more conventional spatial depth. The word 'sunny' suggests a specific quality of natural light — the warm illumination of a south-facing room on a clear day — which would have differed from the filtered, even light of his typical domestic interiors. Sunlight's more dramatic entry, with its shafts of brightness and deep shadow, created effects he approached differently from his more typically diffuse domestic lighting. His interwar interiors document the continued vitality of his intimist program through the changed social circumstances of post-war Paris, when the Belle Époque world he had documented was being replaced by the faster, louder culture of the années folles.

The increased scale of this mature work allows Vuillard to develop light effects — specifically the warm yellow of direct sunlight entering the room — with more atmospheric gradation than the small early panels permitted. The handling remains painterly and richly textured.