La Visite

Paying calls was serious business for women in the Paris of the early 1890s. A household of any standing kept a fixed afternoon, its day, when friends and acquaintances could drop in and sit for a while. Every visit was expected to be returned. Vuillard's little picture from around 1891 catches one of these calls, and it is a strangely quiet one. A woman in olive green sits very upright at the left, hands folded in her lap. Beside her a figure is reduced to a dark reddish shadow against yellow wallpaper, and at the right a woman in a dark jacket stands with her head bowed in front of a pale armchair. The canvas is tiny, about 18 by 23 centimetres, and the paint is so thin that the weave shows through almost everywhere.