Le bureau

Two men face each other across a desk heaped with papers, one bearded and looking out towards us, the other a dark profile against a pale, heavily worked wall. The museum does not name them, and the picture's titles have wandered. Offered at Sotheby's in New York in 1974 as The Banker, it did not sell. In 1990 it came up in Paris as Le Banquier and went into the collection of Jean-Marc Vernes, who really was a banker, head of his family's bank in Paris. After his death in 1996 his collection was auctioned at the Hôtel George V, and the Vuillard went with it. The Musée d'Orsay uses the plainer title, the office, and dates the canvas to around 1896. The name in the lower left corner is a stamp, the mark put on works found in Vuillard's studio after his death.