Luncheon (Annette and Her Grandmother) (1899): Art, History and Details

Luncheon (Annette and Her Grandmother) (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:

Vuillard depicted close family members in this intimate domestic scene. The woman at the lower right corner of the composition is his mother, Marie Vuillard. She is tending to a her grandchild, Annette Roussel, the daughter of Vuillard’s sister and her husband, Ker-Xavier Roussel, who was also an artist. The two figures are in the apartment that Vuillard shared with his mother in Paris. Vuillard adopted a particularly steep angle of view in this painting, looking down upon the interaction of the figures. The viewer assumes the position of the artist himself, looking over his mother’s shoulder as she lovingly feeds the baby.

Object facts

• Title: Luncheon (Annette and Her Grandmother)
• Date: 1899
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on board
• Dimensions: Unframed: 29.8 x 32.4 x 2.9 cm (11 3/4 x 12 3/4 x 1 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2020.118

A detail from the museum

Vuillard began visiting his sister's home in the country more frequently and for extended periods of time after the birth of Annette, who was one year old at the time of this painting.

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Solomon, Antoine, Guy Cogeval, and Mathias Chivot. Vuillard, the Inexhaustible Glance: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. Milan, Italy: Skira, 2003.
• 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.
• Œuvres de Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Ibels, Aristide Maillol, Hermann Paul, Ranson, Roussel, Serusier, Vallotton, Vuillard: catalogue. Paris: MM. Bernheim Jeune et fils, 1900.

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.