Vase of Flowers on a Mantelpiece

Édouard Vuillard

Oil on cardboard

National Gallery of Art

This intimate small-scale work depicts a floral arrangement placed atop an interior mantelpiece, rendered in the muted, pattern-rich vocabulary characteristic of Édouard Vuillard's mature Nabi period. Vuillard, a founding member of the French avant-garde group Les Nabis, characteristically downplayed strict naturalistic representation in favor of flattened planes of color, rich surface texture, and decorative form—qualities evident in this domestic still life. Born in Cuiseaux, France in 1868, Vuillard became one of the leading painters of intimate interior subjects, a practice that earned him and his close associate Pierre Bonnard the designation of 'Intimists.' Now held in the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., this painting exemplifies Vuillard's quiet mastery of the domestic subject at the moment the Nabis were concluding their collective exhibitions.