Breakfast

This scene shows the artist’s wife, Marthe, and two of the seven children they had together after marrying in 1893. The family are seen at breakfast, the mother’s arms raised with her plate, one daughter reaching down for a berry, and the younger child looking over to the artist. The scene is happy and pleasant and feels like a snapshot of a real scene. The colour palette is bright and highly saturated. From the window we see a lake or harbour, the bright blue of which clashes and exaggerates the bold pinks in the women’s clothes and table cloth. In establishing the manifesto of the Nabis group (considered the forerunners of the Fauves) Denis famously said in 1890 “Remember that a picture … is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order”. The flat patterning on the cloth combined with a relaxed approach to exaggerating and experimenting with colour can be seen in this piece.