La Visite

The Visit, also known as Interior with Blue Sofa, is a gouache on cardboard that the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton made in 1899. It belongs to a series of Interiors with Figures shown at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, which shares themes and settings with the woodcut series Intimacies, published in late 1898. The Kunsthaus Zürich, where it is now kept, acquired it in 1909.

The scene unfolds in a comfortable living room: a long blue sofa, a red armchair in the foreground, a glass-fronted bookcase and an embroidered cushion on a rug. Many of these objects were probably drawn from the painter's own home, though the layout of the room seems to be imagined. On the right edge, with their backs to a closed door, a couple stand hand in hand; she, in a purple coat, hat and gloves, keeps her gaze lowered, while he draws her closer by the waist. An open door in the background hints at another room.

Their clothing suggests they have just arrived or are about to leave. The critic Kelly Grovier sees tension and fear in her, and the work is usually read as an illicit love encounter. This ambiguity, together with the carefully arranged middle-class atmosphere, makes the painting a telling example of Vallotton's discreet, intimate way of looking.

Painter

Félix Vallotton

Date

1899

Medium

gouache paint, cardboard

Dimensions

56 × 87 cm

Museum

Kunsthaus Zürich, District 1

Genre

interior view

Depicts

woman, man

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