Szene im Café

Szene im Café at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, painted in 1899, is Vuillard's take on the café scene in a more theatrically staged vein than his Cleveland version. By 1899 Vuillard was producing ambitious decorative panels for private patrons alongside intimate cabinet works, and the café subjects belong to the latter category — personal observations of the semi-public Parisian social world he moved through. The Neue Pinakothek's collection of French Post-Impressionist works provides context for how his art was received in Germany, where collectors were acquiring Nabi work with genuine enthusiasm.

The café interior creates a warm, enclosed space rendered with Vuillard's mature command of artificial light and its softening effect on the patterns of a public interior. Figures and furniture are integrated through the unified handling of paint surface, the café's atmosphere suggested as much through color temperature as through spatial description.