The Bakery (La patiserie)

Édouard Vuillard

Color lithograph on china paper

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Bakery (La patiserie) is a color lithograph on china paper created by French artist Édouard Vuillard in 1899, published by the celebrated art dealer Ambroise Vollard and printed by Auguste Clot in Paris. It forms part of the landmark portfolio Paysages et intérieurs (Landscapes and Interiors), a suite of twelve color lithographs issued in an edition of one hundred that stands as one of the most significant achievements in late nineteenth-century printmaking. Vuillard, a leading figure of the Nabis — the avant-garde Post-Impressionist group active in Paris from roughly 1889 to 1900 — brought to his prints the same flattened pictorial space, bold patterning, and intimate domestic observation that defined his paintings, reflecting the strong influence of Japanese woodblock printmaking on the French avant-garde. The series captures scenes of Parisian everyday life and interiors rendered in a richly decorative style that bridges the Nabi aesthetic with the broader fin-de-siècle fascination with color lithography as a fine art medium.