The Kiosk, Place Saint-Augustin

This sketch is one of many studies Vuillard made in preparation for two large decorative panels he painted in 1912−13 depicting the Place Saint-Augustin, a city square in Paris’s eighth arrondissement. Keen on showing a modernized Paris, the artist included new features of city life such as streetcars in the paintings. Here, he focused his attention on a Morris column, one of the cylindrical kiosks installed throughout the city beginning in the 1860s to display advertising, especially for theater and concerts.