1892
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
In Front of the Mirror (recto) is a 1892 by Édouard Vuillard, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a woman in a dark dress standing in front of a mirror, lifting her arms to fix her hair. Vuillard drew his sister Marie over and over in the early 1890s—same pose, same room. The back of the sheet has a quick charcoal sketch of a nude man, so he probably flipped the paper and kept working. If you like quiet, everyday scenes like this, look up the technique called *impasto*.
During the early 1890s, Édouard Vuillard repeatedly represented his mother and older sister, Marie, in domestic settings. This drawing relates to a pastel and painting, all of which show Marie standing before a mirror, raising her arms as if to adjust her hairstyle. A charcoal study of a nude male appears on the verso, suggesting that the artist may have reused the sheet.
Vuillard created this portrait of his sister Marie while she was living at home and working with their mother at her corset- and dressmaking business.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Édouard Vuillard (French: ; 11 November 1868 – 21 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist, and printmaker.
See the richer artist page
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