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The artist occupies a separate physical space as he peers from the background through an open doorway. Marie assumes a frontal stance toward the viewer, but seems to withdraw into a tightened facial expression and magisterially clutching, as if for protection, a sturdy baguette. Vuillard from the grandmother, who likewise shrinks down into herself, her face depicted only with an area of dark shadowing. A highlight of candlelit negative space separates Mme. Madame Vuillard dominates at the left with her massive lateral, and compact silhouette, as she hunches over her task of lighting a flame, her bent elbow and head shrunken down into the neck both shutting out all proximate figures. There is bread and wine, but no one is eating or drinking. In this work the artist contrasts the idea of dinnertime, which is usually a coming together of human solidarity and communication, with the scene pictured here, where each silent family member occupies a separate space, symbolizing their separate inner thoughts. Vuillard is pictured here with his mother, grandmother, and sister, Marie. These large-scale works - intended for the use of interior decoration - linked him to other modernists' search for the "total work of art" (the Gesamtkunstwerk) that would help unify society, but updated it to function in contemporary interior spaces. Although the Symbolists were, in general, anti-utilitarian (and more art-for-art's sake), Vuillard created large-scale screens and murals that were architectural in conception (and part of the "applied arts").

Color and shape could represent experiences that are difficult to express in words. This kind of abstract painting evolved to communicate ideas not expressible through traditional painterly means. As a Symbolist painter and part of the fin-de-siècle escape into the aesthetic, Vuillard employed flat patterns into which his figures were embedded in order to express both emotion and ideas.This is an aspect of a modernist idea - the notion that one's personal viewpoint, a subjective view of reality, can gain insight into the truth. For Vuillard, reticent by nature, the subject of the interior served as a symbol for the interior self, separate from the rest of the world.