Madame Hessel au Sofa (Madame Hessel on the Sofa)

Painted in 1904 in oil and held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, this portrait of Lucy Hessel—Vuillard's closest confidante and probable love—reclining on a sofa captures the domestic ease of their relationship. By 1904, Lucy had become the dominant feminine presence in Vuillard's life, gradually replacing his mother in this role, and he painted her repeatedly in the Hessel family's various homes and country properties. The sofa portrait is a form with a distinguished history—from Manet's 'Olympia' to countless nineteenth-century drawing-room paintings—but Vuillard strips it of conventional erotic or social signaling in favor of intimate observation.

The sofa's upholstery and Lucy Hessel's clothing are rendered with Vuillard's characteristic integration of figure and furnishing, warm pinks and reds creating a unified visual field. His mature oil handling gives the figure a comfortable, atmospheric presence in the drawing-room setting, the light describing her reclining form without the idealization of academic portraiture.