Under the Trees (from "The Public Gardens") (1894): Art, History and Details

Under the Trees (from "The Public Gardens") (1894) 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:

This painting is from a nine-panel decorative series showing children playing in two of Paris’s most spacious parks: the Tuileries Gardens and the Bois de Boulogne. It depicts a game of hide-and-seek in which a girl conceals herself behind a tree. The stillness of the women resting on green chairs at the right is countered by children running at the left. Rather than a realistic rendering of the subject, Édouard Vuillard arranged the composition in bands of colorful, decorative patterns so that the painting seems like a tapestry.

Object facts

• Title: Under the Trees (from "The Public Gardens")
• Date: 1894
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: distemper on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 229.9 x 113 x 11.4 cm (90 1/2 x 44 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 214.2 x 96.3 cm (84 5/16 x 37 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1953.212

A detail from the museum

Vuillard's social circle included actors and directors. He often contributed to their theatrical pursuits by designing costumes, programs, and set pieces. In this panel from a nine-part series, a patterned landscape recalls scenery for the stage.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• d'Argencourt, Louise, Roger Diederen, and Alisa Luxenberg. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.
• Salomon, Antoine, Guy Cogeval, and Mathias Chivot. Vuillard, the Inexhaustible Glance: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. Milan: Skira, 2003.
• Salomon, Jacques. Vuillard. [Paris]: A. Michel, 1945.

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.