L'Allée en sous-bois, Amfreville

L'Allée en sous-bois, Amfreville depicts a woodland path at Amfreville-sur-Iton in Normandy, where the Hessel family had a property that Vuillard visited repeatedly from around 1906. The sous-bois (undergrowth) motif — the view along a path through dense trees — was a favourite of both Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters; for Vuillard it offered a natural equivalent of his domestic interiors, with the filtering of light through leafy canopy creating effects analogous to the play of light through patterned curtains.

The tree trunks create a vertical rhythm through the composition while the dappled light on the path and undergrowth is built up in Vuillard's mosaic brushwork. Greens range from yellow-green in sunlit areas to blue-green and near-black in shadow. The depth recession along the path is handled with restrained atmospheric perspective.