The Coffee Pot

Vuillard typically painted from memory, using his sketches as aide-mémoire. “I have enough to keep me busy for years on end developing and making artworks out of everything I have in my sketchbooks and folders,” he once wrote in his journal. A coffeepot resembling the one in this study appears in several of his pictures of breakfast tables. Vuillard’s intention to use the sketch for a painting is evident from the color notations inscribed on the sheet: vert (green), written twice next to the spout, and jaune (yellow), by the detail of the handle at the bottom of the page.

Édouard Vuillard
1868–1940
The Coffee Pot, ca. 1920
Graphite on paper
Gift of Mary Jo and Sheldon Weinig; 2019.289
© Édouard Vuillard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York