Portrait d'une femme

Portrait d'une femme from 1912 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp shows Vuillard bringing his intimist approach to the formal portrait commission — the anonymous female sitter placed within an interior environment that provides as much visual information as she does herself. Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts holds this canvas as part of its French modern collection. By 1912 Vuillard had been painting commissioned portraits for over a decade and had developed a formula that satisfied clients' need for recognizable likeness while preserving his own formal priorities.

The portrait balances formal likeness requirements against Vuillard's compositional priorities — the face rendered with sufficient descriptive clarity to serve as a record of the sitter while the surrounding environment maintains the visual interest that prevents any reading of the figure in isolation. His touch is assured and varied, building up surfaces through a complex weave of short strokes.