Interior

Interior from 1893, held at the Yale University Art Gallery, is among Vuillard's earliest mature works, painted as he was developing the dense, patterned approach to domestic space that would define his career. Trained alongside Bonnard and Denis under Paul Sérusier, Vuillard took the Nabi lesson about the sovereignty of the picture surface toward a kind of chromatic dissolution: figures and rooms merge into a single patterned field, people indistinguishable from the wallpaper. This early Interior shows that tendency already formed — the figure absorbed into the room's patterns rather than standing out against them.

The Nabi principle of the flat surface covered in colors arranged in a certain order is visible in the way pattern and figure compete for visual attention. Perspective is minimal, the room compressed into overlapping areas of fabric, wallpaper, and skin.