“Who speaks of art speaks of poetry. There is no art without a poetic aim. There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colors, of lights, of shadows, etc. It is this that one calls the music of painting.” 

—Édouard Vuillard

In the corner of her adorned home, a woman, submerged in the dark silhouette of her gown, sits at a piano, reading the notes to the song which she is about to play. The decorative objects surrounding her, painted in gestural brushstrokes with twirl like vines, seems to swirl around the room, mirroring the music that is about to permeate the space. Illustrating the wife of a wealthy Parisian industrialist and art patron, Édouard Vuillard’s Mme Arthur Fountaine au piano, 1904, illustrates an engaging view of interior domestic life of turn of the century France.

Introduced to Arthur Fontaine, state counselor and minister of labor, by his fellow-Nabis painter Maurice Denis in 1897, Vuillard would go on to paint both him and his wife several times throughout his career. The Fontaines were part of a cohort of new collectors, alongside Jos and Lucie Hessel. Using loose brushstrokes to depict Mrs. Fontaine, the present work mimics the sound of the music through expressive, almost rhythmic swathes of paint, creating an interplay between the “delicate interweaving of color and line, the harmony and melody of painting.”ⁱ Vuillard, whose work during this time primarily focused on interior spaces, captures the sitter in the middle of a leisurely activity in the comfort of her own home. As noted by Claude Roger-Marx, “ravished by the enchantment of these scenes, where happiness seems to flourish, it is happiness he [Vuillard] attempts to portray. He is animated by manifest sympathy and even by a kind of tenderness for his subjects and the gilded peace he saw there.”ⁱⁱ The present work was exhibited in the Salon d’Automne held in the fall of the year it was painted, 1904. Describing Vuillard’s works debuted in this show, Roger-Marx said “we perceive continuity in the refinement of his vision and the enrichment of his technique.”ⁱⁱⁱ

The Nabis painters, which included other notable members Pierre Bonnard and Paul Sérusier, embraced alternatives to the French Academic painting style, opting for simple yet deeply symbolic settings. Through this subversion of the French tradition, Vuillard and the Nabis were similarly drawn to Japanese woodcut prints which were popular during the late 19^th century. These prints, characterized by their flat shapes, sharp outlines and spatial effects, influenced Vuillard to incorporate similar perspectives into his own work. In this painting, the background in which Madame Fontaine is seated is compressed—a highly detailed yet relatively flat scene. Despite its shortened perspective, the wall behind the sitter appears to curve inward, as if the room itself were moving. As such, the scene is consumed by the inner world of the woman and piano that inhabit it. Vuillard’s illustrations of interior modern life illustrated “more what the room felt like than how they appeared.”^iv Departing further from his Nabis contemporaries, the present work represents a darker, more dramatic color palette for Vuillard than his brightly colored paintings from the years prior. In doing so, the artist upends the traditional representation of domestic scenes, adding a fresh, distinctive twist to classic subject matter.

ⁱElizabeth Wynne Easton, The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1989, p. 2.

ⁱⁱClaude Roger-Max, Vuillard, His Life and Work, London, 1946, pp. 67, 89.

ⁱⁱⁱ Ibid, p. 66.

^ivElizabeth Wynne Easton, The Intimate Interiors of Edouard Vuillard, exh. cat., The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1989, p. 76.