Place Vintimille by Edouard Vuillard

Edouard Vuillard, Place Vintimille, 1911, five-panel screen, distemper on paper laid down on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Enid A. Haupt 1998.47.1

Unlike his fellow artists who created screens either for themselves or for sale, Vuillard received commissions to make screens for specific interior spaces. He first painted a version of Place Vintimille (as part of a set of seven stationary decorative panels) for the home of playwright Henri Bernstein. Several years later he made this five-panel screen for Marguerite Chapin's Paris apartment. In designing the screen, he had to consider its many compositional variations as a foldable work of art. For example, when Place Vintimille is folded, the sweeping curve of the street abuts the park in different ways that change the spatial relationships and surface movement of the figures.