The Tuileries

The Tuileries, now in the Rosengart Collection in Lucerne, depicts the famous Paris garden in 1894, when Vuillard was deep in his Nabi period and the Tuileries was a site of bourgeois leisure culture — nursemaids, children, elegant promenaders, and the regulated social theater of a fashionable public garden. Vuillard's approach to such subjects was always indirect: rather than straightforward topographical records, his garden and park scenes dissolve figures into their surroundings through his characteristic pattern-flattening technique, creating a world where human beings and their environments are almost indistinguishably merged.

Vuillard applies his characteristic patterned approach to the garden setting — figures, foliage, and garden furniture treated with similar short marks that prevent any single element from asserting priority. The high-keyed, varied color palette of 1894 reflects his Nabi interest in color as emotional and decorative expression rather than naturalistic description.