Le Wagon de métro - I

Le Wagon de métro — I is among Vuillard's rare excursions into modern urban public space, depicting the interior of a Paris Métro carriage. The Paris Métro opened in 1900, and its enclosed, artificially illuminated carriages brought together strangers in an unprecedented social proximity. For a painter of intimate domestic interiors, the Métro carriage presented a fascinating formal problem: an enclosed space with fixed lighting, upholstered seats, and figures arranged without social connection. Vuillard's treatment of this modern subject is an anomaly in his oeuvre that suggests he recognised the potential of a new kind of interior.

The tunnel lighting of the Métro creates a uniform, directionless illumination that Vuillard renders without the warm domestic light of his interiors. The parallel benches and the proximity of anonymous figures create a different compositional situation from his home interiors. The handling is relatively direct and economical.