Woman in a Striped Dress

Édouard Vuillard

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

Woman in a Striped Dress is one of five decorative paintings Vuillard executed in 1895 on commission for Thadée Natanson, publisher of the avant-garde journal La Revue Blanche, and his wife Misia Godebska, an accomplished pianist. The work depicts an introspective woman arranging flowers in a richly patterned interior, rendered in Vuillard's characteristic dense harmonies of red, orange, and warm tones, where the figure and her surroundings merge into an almost tapestry-like surface. Vuillard, a French Post-Impressionist painter and member of the Symbolist-inflected Nabis group, was celebrated as an "Intimist" for his penetrating depictions of private domestic life, in which pattern, color, and form dissolve the boundaries between figures and their environments. The painting exemplifies his adoption of the Symbolist concept of synesthesia, whereby the sumptuous visual warmth of his palette evokes the sensory richness of Misia's music.