Turn of the 20th Century Interiors

That people could come into the world in a place they could not at first even name and had never known before; and that out of a nameless and unknown place they could grow and move around in it until its name they knew and called with love, and call it HOME, and put roots there and love others there; so that whenever they left this place they would sing homesick songs about it and write poems of yearning for it, like a lover...
William Goyen House of Breath

A house is such a strong symbol. Refuge and edifice, it expresses who we are and sometimes who we'd like to be. It is a witness to so many important events and silently echos other more everyday acts. Last week you saw the Maison Prisonnière, a villa that is uninhabited, locked up, but that will surely one day break free of its chains. Any house represents many possibilities and also contains many memories. That particular house strikes the imagination because it seems lonely under its cloak of vines in the midst of an otherwise well-kept neighborhood. The shutters are left to swing on their hinges and creak in the wind. A broken window pane lets the wind howl through and may provide the only breath of fresh air that gets inside. But this was a family house and maybe even a proud dream house once. These turn-of-the-century paintings by Félix Vallotton help to imagine what the inside might easily have been.