Description
Interior from the Artist’s Home, rue Carcel – a bouquet instead of a sitter
In the foreground stands a table under a white cloth with a small floral pattern. On it a wide glass bowl holds a large bouquet: white, red, pink and deep red flower heads rise almost to the middle of the canvas. To the left of the bouquet lie a small wooden bowl and a sheet of paper. Behind the table runs a dark wooden partition, and behind that sits a bearded man in a dark suit, turned to one side; to his right a child in a blue jacket stands at a musical instrument covered with patterned cloth. On the right stands an empty chair with a high back, and beside it a corner cabinet with a small blue and white figure. The walls are a warm ochre, their lower part dark green. The work is held by the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo under the inventory number NG.M.01153.
Who has the leading part
The portrait in this picture is not a human one. The bouquet is the largest, lightest and most fully worked object on the canvas: it stands in the foreground, in full light, and takes the central place. The two people are small, dark, turned away from us and set behind the partition. Looked at from a distance, the flowers are seen first, and only afterwards does one notice that anyone is in the room at all.
The empty chair
At the right of the foreground stands a chair with a high back, turned towards the table. Nobody is sitting on it. It is this empty chair that gives the scene its silence: the room is ready but idle, and the only thing really happening in it is the flowers.
Ten years before Tahiti
The museum record gives the year 1881. That is a full decade before the painter’s first voyage to the Pacific and some years before the Breton canvases. There are as yet none of the flat areas of colour or firm outlines by which we later recognise him; the colours are soft, the strokes small, and the space is built on the model of a middle-class room. The work therefore shows where the painter came from.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every reproduction here is hand-painted in oil on canvas, stroke by stroke. In this motif the bouquet is the hardest part: it is made of many small flower heads and must stay lively, or it collapses into a single pale patch. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished work for approval.
- Subject: a large bouquet on a white table, two figures behind the partition, an empty chair at the right.
- Technique: oil on canvas, soft strokes and warm ochre walls.
- Sizes: landscape format, from 40 x 32 cm to 200 x 160 cm; 80 x 64 cm and 100 x 80 cm are often chosen.
- Of note: by the museum record the work dates from 1881, from before the Breton and Tahitian canvases.
If the same period interests you, see also Winter Landscape (Vinterlandskap), The Market Gardens of Vaugirard and Breton Peasant Women. The museum gives the measurement as height by width: 130,5 x 162,5 cm.
