The Hearth (1899): Art, History and Details

The Hearth (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 combines potent signifiers of homelife—the hearth and kitchen tools—that pay homage to the daily chores and comforts of the domestic world he shared with his mother. The strange perspective in which the chair looms above the viewer suggests a childlike viewpoint.

Object facts

• Title: The Hearth
• Date: 1899
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 45 x 36 cm (17 11/16 x 14 3/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1951.65.9

A detail from the museum

Among the Nabis, Vuillard assumed the nickname le Nabi Zouave, as the color of his red beard was reminiscent of headdresses worn by the French North African regiment.

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.