Covoni di fieno nel Jardin des Étincelles a Criqueboeuf

Vuillard had built his name in the 1890s on small, hushed interiors, rooms so densely patterned that the figures almost dissolve into the wallpaper. This is him stepping outside. By 1902 he was spending summers in Normandy with the family of his dealer, in the loose and well-off holiday world he would paint for years, and the Jardin des Étincelles was one of those country gardens near the coast. He handles the haystacks and greenery much the way he once handled a parlor, as a woven field of close-keyed color rather than deep open space. The light over it is soft and northern, the kind that settles on the Normandy coast in summer.