Public Gardens: The Questioning

In 1894 Alexandre Natanson, one of the brothers behind the Paris magazine La Revue blanche, ordered a set of park scenes from Vuillard for his house on the avenue du Bois. This tall panel, more than two metres high, is one of them. On a sandy path under dark trees, a woman in a salmon-pink skirt lifts a small child up against her shoulder, the child's hand raised high. A taller woman in a long grey coat bends in close over the pair. A little girl in a striped dress, her hat trimmed with red, stands at their skirts. Far back, where the path meets the grass, two seated figures are just a few dabs of paint. The title calls the scene a questioning. Vuillard dated the panel 1894, then took it up again in 1936, more than 40 years on, and reworked it.