Foliage—Oak Tree and Fruit Seller

Painted in distemper (colle) in 1918 and held at the Art Institute of Chicago, this large decorative work combines the foliage of a monumental oak tree with the street commerce of a fruit vendor—a juxtaposition of nature's grandeur with everyday Parisian life. By 1918, Vuillard had long established distemper as his preferred medium for decorative commissions and large-scale works, its chalky mat surface ideally suited to the tapestry-like effect he sought. The oak's branching canopy creates a natural architecture beneath which the fruit seller operates with the calm ordinariness of daily commerce.

Vuillard's distemper technique creates a flat, chalky surface that is ideally suited to large decorative formats. The oak's foliage is rendered in complex overlapping layers of green and brown that fill the upper two-thirds of the composition, while the fruit seller below provides a warm note of human scale against the tree's organic abundance.