Maquette pour un portrait de Maillol

Maquette pour un portrait de Maillol from 1930 at the Musée d'Art Moderne shows Vuillard studying the sculptor Aristide Maillol — not a Nabi himself but closely associated with the group through Denis and Vuillard, and a significant figure in French art since the 1890s. By 1930 Maillol was internationally celebrated for his monumental female nudes, and Vuillard's sketch captures a late encounter between two artists who had observed French modernism from the same vantage point for four decades.

The sketch-portrait captures Maillol's physical presence with the directness of rapid observation — the sculptor's distinctive face and figure established in a minimum of marks. Vuillard's color sense remains acute even in preparatory work, the flesh tones and surrounding environment differentiated through chromatic rather than tonal means.