The Pitch Pine Room

The Pitch Pine Room from 1910, at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, takes its title from the specific wood used in the room's paneling — an unusual degree of material specificity for Vuillard, who more often gave his interiors generic titles. Pitch pine, a dark-grained wood, was fashionable in certain late Victorian and Edwardian interiors, and its warm, reddish-brown tones would have given Vuillard a particular chromatic starting point. Norton Simon's collection, assembled with exceptional connoisseurship, includes important holdings of Post-Impressionist work alongside Old Masters. The museum's Vuillard holdings document his continued development after his most radical early phase.

The warm wood tones of the pitch pine create a dominant amber register throughout the composition, against which Vuillard plays cooler accents from fabric and other materials. The specific material quality of the wood is conveyed through the directional grain of brushwork.