Interiors by Design: Dining Room

As the number of rooms not primarily used for sleeping accommodation grew, every good home came to have a dining room, usually adjacent to the kitchen. This was more or less filled by a table where the whole family, and sometimes its guests, could sit and eat. A few dining rooms have been captured in paint.

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), After Dinner in Ornans (1849), oil on canvas, 195 x 275 cm, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Lille, France. Wikimedia Commons.

Gustave Courbet’s After Dinner in Ornans from 1849 marks the start of his series of realist paintings of everyday life in his home town in rural France. Four middle-class men have just finished dining together in a dark room with a flagstone floor. As one lights a tobacco pipe, the man at the right plays his violin to entertain them. A large hunting dog is curled asleep under a chair, and the man lighting his pipe is still wearing his hat and a long coat.

Paul Signac (1863-1935), La salle à manger (Breakfast, The Dining Room) (Op 152) (1886-87), oil on canvas, 89 x 116 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands. Image by anagoria, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nearly forty years later, Paul Signac pictured the bourgeoisie at table in La salle à manger, variously known as Breakfast or The Dining Room from 1886-87, perhaps his first major Neo-Impressionist painting. The man seen in profile with his cigar is Signac’s grandfather Jules, and the woman drinking coffee may be Signac’s mother, although she appears more anonymously as a type rather than a character. This is a far cry from rural Ornans, with its uniformed maid, a spotless tablecloth, plush curtains and a potted plant in the window.

Marie Bracquemond (1841–1916), Under the Lamp (1887), oil on canvas, 68.6 x 113 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Under the Lamp, painted by Marie Bracquemond in 1887, shows Alfred Sisley and his wife dining in the Braquemonds’ house at Sèvres.

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), The Potato Eaters (1885), oil on canvas, 82 × 114 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (1885) is a revealing insight into the lives of poor labourers in Nuenen, who are about to feast on a large dish of potatoes under the light of an oil lamp. This dining room appears more improvised, with a table that’s too low to accommodate their knees, and barely enough space to pour out coffee.

Laurits Andersen Ring (1854–1933), At Breakfast (1898), oil on canvas, 52 x 40.5 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Wikimedia Commons.

In another world just over a decade later, the Danish painter Laurits Andersen Ring’s wife Sigrid sits reading the ‘leftist’ daily newspaper Politiken At Breakfast in 1898. The furniture is modern, designed rather than thrown together, and colour-coordinated. On top of the dresser are some of the peculiar objects we gather through life.

Carl Larsson (1853–1919), Getting Ready for a Game (1901), oil on canvas, 68 x 92 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Courtesy of Nationalmuseum, via Wikimedia Commons.

Further north in Sweden, Carl Larsson’s wife Karin is Getting Ready for a Game (1901) as she prepares a tray of refreshments in her dining room. The grown-ups are about to enjoy an evening of cards together with friends.

Maurice Denis (1870–1943), Breakfast (1901), media and dimensions not known, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Fashions for tablecloths and domestic fabrics changed, and by the time that Maurice Denis painted this Breakfast the same year, their patterns overwhelmed the eye.

William McGregor Paxton (1869–1941), The Breakfast (1911), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

William McGregor Paxton, a great admirer of Vermeer who adopted the Dutch master’s optical techniques, seems to have painted The Breakfast in 1911 as a ‘problem picture’. As their maid walks out of the dining room, a young wife stares thoughtfully away from her husband, who is showing no interest in her at all, as he hides behind the pages of a broadsheet newspaper. You could cut the atmosphere here with a knife.

Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson (1924), oil on board, 39.5 x 55 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In Édouard Vuillard’s Reading in the Dining Room, Vaucresson, Lucy Hessel has already pushed her chair back from the dining table, left her husband Jos reading the newspaper, and is busying herself in the next room.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Evening by the Lamp (1921), oil on canvas, 73 x 89 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The Athenaeum.

Evening by the Lamp from 1921 is one of Bonnard’s lamplit interiors, although perhaps by now this room also has electric light. Sat at this dining table are a woman pouring tea, and a grey-haired man.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Marthe in the Dining Room (1933), oil on canvas, 111.5 x 59 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, France. The Athenaeum.

Finally, Bonnard’s wife Marthe, who developed a lasting fondness for white high-heeled shoes, is seen in his painting of Marthe in the Dining Room from 1933.