Personnages dans un intérieur. L'intimité

Personnages dans un intérieur. L'intimité (Figures in an Interior: Intimacy) from 1896, a third panel from the Petit Palais decorative cycle, takes as its subject the most private register of domestic life. Vuillard painted 'intimacy' as something visible in posture and proximity rather than in explicit gesture or expression, his figures identified as intimate through their spatial relationship to each other and to the room they share. The cycle of which this is part represents his most systematic exploration of domestic life as a subject worthy of monumental decorative treatment — paintings designed not for the gallery wall but for the walls of living rooms.

The 'intimacy' of the title is rendered through compositional closeness — figures positioned near each other within the compressed domestic space — rather than through any expressive or narrative device. The warm palette contributes to the feeling of private enclosure.