Breakfast by the Window

Breakfast by the Window:

is a painting from about 1892 by Edouard Vuillard (11/11/1868-6/21/1940). He said, "To say that a thing is beautiful is simply an act of faith, not a measurement on some kind of scale," and, "I don't paint portraits. I paint people at home."

There was an exhibit of his work at The Jewish Museum in 2012, which described him as "the twentieth-century master whose unique blend of tradition and modernity evokes the refined and sophisticated society of his patrons, many of whom were Jewish." In its coverage of the exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art, NPR notes that Vuillard created more than 3,000 paintings. In an article from 2012, NPR says, "Vuillard was part of a group of young post-Impressionist artists who called themselves Les Nabis — stemming from the word navi, which means "prophet" in Hebrew." Though not Jewish, he had many Jewish patrons, and the later NPR article mentions that his death came a week after the German occupation of France. NPR closes by saying,

By the time Vuillard died in 1940, Abstractionism was on the rise. Today, though, in our jagged, fragmented times, the cozy domestic worlds on Vuillard's canvases are a refuge from the jumble. His rooms aren't noisy, they're safe — for a while, anyway. Many of his wealthy Jewish patrons would die at the hands of the Germans. Their solid rooms would soon be empty. But Vuillard froze them in time..."

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has a painting by him. Swiss Landscape (1900):

You can view more of Vuillard's work at WikiArt.

This video is a 15 minute, staff-led overview of Vuillard's life and times and a more in-depth view of one of his paintings in the San Diego Art Museum:

I'm linking to T is for Tuesday at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog, where we share a weekly drink-related post. See the cup on the table in the painting at the top of this post?