Cover (1899): Art, History and Details

Cover (1899) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

As in Vuillard’s other work, family, friends, and homelife inspire his emotionally resonant prints. The artist weaves his figures into each setting, establishing an intimate relationship between sitters and locale while expressing a range of feelings, from calm to melancholy to nostalgia. Here, two women relax in a snug interior: one, dressed in white and accompanied by a small dog, reads a green-covered book at the left, while another (almost camouflaged in her surroundings) studies a fine print at the lower right. The barely distinguishable text across the surface of this lithograph reads Douze lithographies en couleurs // Edouard Vuillard // editíés par Vollard // 6 rue Lafitte (Twelve color lithographs // Edouard Vuillard // published by [Amboise] Vollard // 6 rue Lafitte).

Object facts

• Title: Cover
• Date: 1899
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 59 x 44.4 cm (23 1/4 x 17 1/2 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1951.65.1

A detail from the museum

In 1893, Vuillard helped found Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, a Symbolist theatre helmed by French actor and producer Aurélien Lugné-Poë.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chapin, Mary Weaver. “Interior Dramas.’” In Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889-1900. Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown, 40-93. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.