Women Meeting in the Shade

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

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. 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.