The doors

The doors at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, painted in 1894, takes as its subject the domestic architectural feature that divided and connected the rooms of a bourgeois apartment — the double doors that were a characteristic element of Haussmann-era Paris interiors. Vuillard was fascinated by the threshold as a spatial and psychological site: the moment of passage between rooms, the half-open door revealing a glimpse beyond. The doors themselves, with their panels, mouldings, and decorative details, provided geometric structure against which the surrounding pattern-world of the interior played.

The doors' geometric panels provide rectangular structure within the otherwise pattern-flattened composition — a counterpoint of straight lines and defined edges against the more irregular marks of the surrounding wallpaper, drapery, and furniture. Vuillard treats the door surfaces with varying paint density that suggests their different planes and the light falling across them.