Roses in a Glass Vase

Around 1919 Vuillard was about 50 and painting in a quieter key than in the 1890s, when he belonged to the Nabis, a circle of young Paris painters, and learned a great deal from Japanese prints. This small canvas, less than half a metre wide, keeps one habit from those years. The tabletop is tipped up toward you, so the white cloth fills most of the picture and the glass vase seems to stand on a slope. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which owns it, calls the effect surprisingly disorienting for such a gentle subject. There is one white rose and one yellow, a few buds, and a scrap of pink check sliding off the lower right corner. The painting went through the hands of Paris dealers and a 1935 auction before Boston bought it in 1941.