Garden Overlooking the Sea, Cannes

Painted in 1901 during a visit to Cannes on the French Riviera, this work at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh shows Vuillard extending his domestic Intimism to the Mediterranean garden. The view overlooking the sea places the lush subtropical planting against the distant blue of the Côte d'Azur, a combination of contained garden and vast exterior that gives the work an expansiveness unusual in his output. The Riviera trips he took with Misia Natanson and her circle provided him with different light and vegetation than his usual Parisian subjects.

The garden's dense vegetation is painted in layered greens of varied saturation, from the deep shadows of shrubs to the bright highlights of sun-struck leaves. The distant sea registers as a sliver of saturated blue at the top of the composition, providing tonal relief from the garden's warm complexity. Brushwork is animated and directional throughout.