La Fenêtre ouverte [The Open Window]

Painted in 1915 and held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, this work revisits one of Vuillard's most persistent motifs: the open window as a threshold between interior and exterior worlds. Where Bonnard used similar compositions to explore chromatic contrast, Vuillard's treatment is more concerned with the psychological texture of domestic space—the window as aperture through which outside light enters and transforms an interior. Painted during the First World War, when Vuillard was too old for active service, works like this reflect a sustained retreat into interior life.

The open window divides the composition between the warm interior and the cooler light of the world beyond. Vuillard renders the interior furnishings with closely valued warm tones while the exterior is treated with broader, cooler brushwork that evokes diffuse outdoor light flooding through the frame.