Personnages dans un intérieur. Le travail

Personnages dans un intérieur. Le travail (Figures in an Interior: Work) from 1896 at the Petit Palais belongs to a cycle of decorative panels Vuillard created depicting different aspects of domestic life. These panels were made for specific private apartments and represent his most ambitious integration of painting with interior design, consistent with the Nabi interest in all the decorative arts equally. The Petit Palais houses significant holdings of late nineteenth-century French art donated or bequeathed by artists and collectors. 'Work' in this context means domestic labor — sewing, mending, the everyday activities that structured bourgeois women's lives.

As part of a decorative cycle, this panel is designed to function within an interior as much as on a gallery wall — the composition is relatively simple, the colors warm and inviting rather than challenging. The figures engaged in work are rendered with Vuillard's characteristic absorption of form into pattern.