The two schoolboys

The two schoolboys at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels was painted in 1894, the year Vuillard was producing his most ambitious decorative panels and his most intimate interior observations simultaneously. Two boys in school uniform provided an unusual subject — Vuillard was less interested in childhood as a sentimental theme than in the formal possibilities of two identically dressed figures creating patterns within a specific environment. The schoolboys are treated with the same detached observation he brought to adults in domestic interiors.

The matching school uniforms of the two boys create a compositional echo — similar dark shapes separated in the picture space, their repeated forms providing a rhythmic structure. Vuillard treats the uniforms with flat dark areas that contrast with the more varied, patterned handling of the environment around them.