EDOUARD VUILLARD (CUISEAUX, 1868 – LA BAULE, 1940) Woman on a Sofa (The Wait) c. 1903 Oil on canvas mounted on panel 75.5 x 41 cm. Signed lower left ‘E. Vuillard’ Provenance Théodore Duret, Paris; Bernheim Jeune Gallery, Paris; Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet, Stockholm; Carl Matthiessen, Stockholm; Nore Lungren, Stockholm; the Bonnier Collection, Geneva; Wildenstein & Co., New York; Bibliography I. De HOOR, ‘Nägra franska malningar i Carl Matthiessens samling’, *Konstrevy*, 1928, p. 8; I. De HOOR, ‘The Matthiessen Collection in Stockholm’, *L’Amour de l’art*, vol. 11, 1930, p. 412, illustrated; *Architectural Digest*, May–June 1976, p. 64, illustrated in colour; Antoine SALOMON & Guy COGEVAL, Vuillard: Le Regard innombrable, critical catalogue of paintings and pastels, vol. II, Milan, 2003, no. VII-201, p. 644, illustrated in colour. Exhibitions Stockholm, Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet, ‘Uställning ung svensk Konst’, 1938; Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, ‘Frankrike genom konstnärsögon’, 1941; Stockholm, Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet, ‘French Art: from Private Collections in Stockholm’, 1951, no. 74; Stockholm, Liljevachs Konsthall, ‘From Cézanne to Picasso: French Art in Swedish Hands’, 1954, no. 395, illustrated; Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Five Centuries of French Art, 1958, no. 173; Tokyo, Wildenstein, Bonnard, Vuillard, K.X. Roussel, 1974, no. 22, illustrated, Tokyo, Fujikawa Galleries; Osaka, Fujikawa Galleries; Fukoko, Fujikawa Galleries, Masterpieces from 1850 to 1950, 1977, no. 14, illustrated; Roslyn, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collects, The Figure and Landscapes, 1990; Roslyn, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, La Belle Epoque, 1995. With her head tilted to one side and a melancholic air about her, this woman seated on a sofa is lost in thought. Everything about her bearing and attire—her hat, coat and fur collar, barely unbuttoned—suggests that she is a visitor, waiting to be received. Occupying the centre of the canvas, which is elongated in shape, she is depicted in the centre of the room, in the middle ground, as if viewed from a distance, which accentuates this sense of solitude or even abandonment. Perfectly balanced, the frontal composition organises the planes into a succession of horizontal lines that lend the work a sense of stillness and flatness, flattening the perspective. The wall panelling and the edge of the table superimpose their parallel lines. The bas-relief and the Japanese print hanging in the background align their geometric planes, which are echoed by the tabletop in the foreground. The sofa, the sole organic form, creates a break through its colour—bright red—and its scale, occupying the entire width of the canvas. The artist’s brushwork, which becomes increasingly prominent as it moves towards the foreground, helps to create this effect of perspective, verging on abstraction. Isolated in her own world, the young woman seems to be sitting on a cloud, levitating. By asserting his brushwork, Vuillard makes the act of painting itself the true subject of the work.