The Farmhouse

This undated farmhouse scene, held at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, represents Vuillard's engagement with rural subjects beyond his characteristic Parisian interiors. Vuillard made regular summer visits to the country — Brittany, Normandy, and the estates of his patrons — and these trips produced a body of outdoor and rural work that complements the urban intimiste paintings. A farmhouse, with its thick walls, deep shadows, and functional objects, offered the same opportunity for atmospheric observation that the Paris apartment provided. The Nationalmuseum's Scandinavian institutional context reflects the broad European reception of Post-Impressionist intimisme.

The rough stone and heavy shadows of a farm exterior or interior are rendered with a tonally restrained palette of grey-greens and warm ochres. The handling is looser than the patterned interior works, adapted to the less decorative, more structurally direct rural environment.