Ker-Xavier Roussel Reading

'Ker-Xavier Roussel Reading,' painted by Vuillard in 1904, depicts his brother-in-law and fellow Nabi painter in an intimate domestic moment—absorbed in reading within the patterned interior environment that defined Vuillard's visual world. Ker-Xavier Roussel had married Vuillard's sister Marie and remained a close presence throughout his life; this portrait of a colleague in a shared domestic space belongs to the intimate inner circle that Vuillard documented with the greatest personal investment. The Saint Louis Art Museum holds this example of his late Nabi period figure work.

Vuillard integrates the reading figure into the surrounding interior patterns with characteristic skill—Roussel's form is partly absorbed by the patterned chair and background rather than standing clearly against them. The figure's absorption in the text mirrors the viewer's absorption in the painting's complex surface.