La table

In October 1909 Vuillard sold this picture to his dealers, the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, for 400 francs. Within a month it had gone for 1300 to Henry Bernstein, a fashionable playwright of the Paris stage, and that November it hung in the gallery's exhibition of his recent work. The scene is a laid table seen from its near end. A tall glass carafe, a wine glass, a vase of pink flowers and a dish of fruit fill the foreground, while the people at the table are pushed far back, towards a window with trees outside. He painted it in glue-based paint on paper, which dries matt, so the white cloth has almost no shine. Bernstein sold his collection in 1911 and Bernheim-Jeune bought the picture back. In 1919 the painter took it home again, giving them another canvas in exchange.