The Cook (1899): Art, History and Details

The Cook (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:

The artist’s mother was known for her hospitality toward her son’s Nabi friends, who occasionally dined in the Vuillards’ apartment. Madame Vuillard reigned in the kitchen, but here,the artist depicts her as diminutive and frozen, part of the still life of objects and patterns of the room.

Object facts

• Title: The Cook
• Date: 1899
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 40.7 x 30 cm (16 x 11 13/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1951.65.12

A detail from the museum

Despite living in close quarters, Vuillard’s mother was known to warmly host and cook for her son’s Nabi friends.

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.