Women Meeting in the Shade (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

Women Meeting in the Shade (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ker Xavier Roussel (French, 1867–1944).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Roussel was a founding member of the French avant-garde group known as the Nabis (prophets) and the brother-in-law of fellow member Édouard Vuillard. Roussel shared their fascination with Japanese prints and developed a style of radically simplified forms and strong, decorative color. His intimate views of daily life convey a mood of quiet feeling rather than focusing on narrative, storytelling content. This painting depicts a group of figures, presumably two women and four children, meeting in the shade of tall trees, while other figures walk along the grassy riverbank.

Object facts

• Title: Women Meeting in the Shade
• Date: c. 1890
• Creator attribution: Ker Xavier Roussel (French, 1867–1944)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 31.1 x 39.2 cm (12 1/4 x 15 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2022.434

A detail from the museum

Known mostly for his small Nabis paintings of the 1890s, Roussel also produced large murals for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, and the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

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.