In Front of the Mirror (recto); Reclining Male Nude (verso) (c. 1891–92 (recto); c. 1887–89 (verso)): Art, History and Details

In Front of the Mirror (recto); Reclining Male Nude (verso) (c. 1891–92 (recto); c. 1887–89 (verso)) 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:

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.

Object facts

• Title: In Front of the Mirror (recto); Reclining Male Nude (verso)
• Date: c. 1891–92 (recto); c. 1887–89 (verso)
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pastel and charcoal on beige paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 34.8 x 27.2 cm (13 11/16 x 10 11/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2018.77

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Bequest of William Kelly Simpson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Salsbury, Britany. Nineteenth-Century French Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Lewes, UK, Cleveland, Ohio: GILES; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.