‘Vuillard has been overlooked because – for all his innovations, which influenced subsequent artists, including Matisse – he foregrounded feminine domesticity: a subject that male art historians have tended to ignore. “Vuillard engaged profoundly with aspects of his mother’s life – and, indeed, of women’s domestic life, in general,” Francesca Berry writes. “In the 1890s, that was unique.”’ Indeed: it was unique to choose to paint a subject like The Laden Table.