This dazzling still life highlights Vuillard’s remarkable ability to transform even the simplest arrangement of quotidian objects into a glowing composition. Vuillard achieves a near perfect balance between the decorative tendencies of the Nabis movement and the new realism of the period following the turn of the century. The division of the composition into rectangular zones as well as the mixture of a variety of decorative motifs recall the prevailing style of the 1890s. However, the different motifs remain distinct and the technique varies according to the subject matter. The clever distribution of shadow and light contrast with the abstracted qualities of the wall in the background, creating the effect of perspective by situating each object in real space. The present work typifies the artist’s striking synthesis of the intimisme of his earlier pictures with a newfound vitality of color that was to define his most celebrated turn-of-the-century output.

This still life represents Vuillard's stylistic developments, expressing his attraction to abstracted qualities of decoration all the while confirming this commitment to the naturalist ideas that were in vogue at the time. However, this painting could equally be seen as a reflection of the artist’s state of mind and emotions. It was these private sentiments that Gide would recall several years later when he reviewed Vuillard’s work at the Salon d’Automne: “[Vuillard] is the most intimate of the story-tellers… I think it must be because his brush never breaks free of the emotion which guides it; the outer world, for Vuillard, is always a pretext, an adjustable means of expression" (André Gide, "Promenade au Salon d’Automne," in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1, 1905, n.p.).