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Colourful wallpapers, fabrics and carpets characterised bourgeois interior painting around 1900. They convey the spirit of the age and, at the same time, served to create a sense of spatial depth within the picture. Henri Matisse was an advocate of the decorative in painting. He was particularly inspired by ‘Oriental’ ornamentation. Line and colour complement one another in his paintings.
The works in this room show that painters across Europe drew inspiration from non-European ornamentation, using it to expand their formal repertoire. Whereas for the French artist Édouard Vuillard it is a Persian carpet, for the German August Macke it is North African weaving, and for the Dutch painter George Hendrik Breitner it is a Japanese kimono.
In many paintings, the women's patterned clothing blends with the room's décor. This also reflects the social role of women: the private sphere is the area of life assigned to them, and ornamentation is their field of activity. At the same time, ornamentation was thus excluded from ‘high’ art – an assignment and restriction whose effects are still felt today.