Édouard Vuillard
If it was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who indelibly captured the spectacle of public life in the cafés and cabarets of Paris in the 1890s, it was Édouard Vuillard who conjured the muffled quiet and richly patterned textures of private life inside the city’s bourgeois homes and gardens. His scenes of everyday life were anchored in the family’s apartment—intimate realms dominated by women. Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893) exemplifies the introspective, subtly disquieting mood that Vuillard achieved by allowing flattened, compressed space and complex patterning to nearly obscure the figures in his compositions. In doing so, he treated all the elements in his paintings as equal components of an ornamental whole. “I don’t do portraits,” he said. “I paint people in their surroundings.” 1
Vuillard’s father died when he was 15; afterward, his mother supported the family as a seamstress. Her love and knowledge of the materials of her craft made an impression on the young artist—he developed an interest in the most decorative and intimate objects of their workroom apartment: jumbled off-cuts of fabric, curtains, lamps. He abandoned his plans for a military career and by 1890 had joined forces with artists Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and others to form a group that called itself Les Nabis (from the Hebrew for prophet). With them he shared an admiration for the asymmetrical stylizations of Japanese woodblock prints, and for the bold color and flattened space that Paul Gauguin was forging in avant-garde painting. Collectively, the Nabis artists maintained that art was a synthesis of metaphors and symbols manifested in everyday life. “I go on with my work according to my conscience, endeavouring to express what I feel and what I love, and I have no other goal,” Vuillard explained. 2
In 1890 Vuillard shared a studio with Bonnard, his closest peer, and others, including the actor and theater director Aurélien Lugné-Poe. The Nabis painters’ close connection to the Symbolist theater, also emerging at that time, was important to Vuillard’s development as an artist, and he produced stage sets and theater programs for Lugné-Poe’s Theatre de l’Oeuvre (1893). Vuillard and the Nabis also contributed illustrations to the progressive journal La revue blanche, which was closely connected to that theater. Vuillard became close to the journal’s founders, the brothers Alexandre and Thadée Natanson, who gave him some of the first of many commissions he received from the French patron class for large-scale panel paintings to decorate their homes. Thadée Natanson’s young wife, Misia, appeared in many of Vuillard’s shimmering interiors of the 1890s, such as The Game of Checkers (1899). A pianist, hostess, and champion of the Nabis and the Symbolists, she is often identifiable because of her large, top-knotted hairstyle.
The Nabis mounted their final group exhibition in 1900. That same year Vuillard, who never married, met Lucy Hessel (the wife of his dealer, Jos Hessel), and the two began an affair that endured for 40 years. Together with his mother and Misia Natanson, Lucy is the third of the three women who appear most often in Vuillard’s paintings. After 1914, Vuillard’s focus shifted in part to commissioned society portraits executed in a more naturalistic style. Remaining ever sensitive to the subtle frissons of modern life, he continued to transform everyday interior happenings textured by the integral roles of his family, friends, and patrons into the subject of his oeuvre.
Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2020
- Introduction
- Jean-Édouard Vuillard (French: [vɥijaʁ]; 11 November 1868 – 21 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, where the subjects were blended into colors and patterns. He also was a decorative artist, painting theater sets, panels for interior decoration, and designing plates and stained glass. After 1900, when the Nabis broke up, he adopted a more realistic style, painting landscapes and interiors with lavish detail and vivid colors. In the 1920s and 1930s he painted portraits of prominent figures in French industry and the arts in their familiar settings.
- Wikidata
- Q239394
- Introduction
- He had a long career spanned the fin-de-siècle and the first four decades of the 20th century. He is known as a quintessentially Parisian artist, beginning with early academic studies through experimental Nabis paintings of the 1890s. He is also known for his work associated with the avant-garde theatre, as well as large-scale decorations, landscapes, portraits and drawings, graphics, and photographs. French artist. Comment on works: Genre; Portraits; Landscapes
- Nationality
- French
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Interior Designer, Genre Artist, Landscapist, Portraitist, Painter, Photographer
- Names
- Edouard Vuillard, Édouard Vuillard, Jean Edouard Vuillard, e. vuillard, jean edouard vuillard, Vuillard, Edouard Vuilliard
- Ulan
- 500014954
Exhibitions
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Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond
Apr 16, 2020–Jan 2, 2021
MoMA
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501: 19th-Century Innovators
Through fall 2021
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Taking a Thread for a Walk
Oct 21, 2019–Jan 10, 2021
MoMA
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The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters
Jul 26, 2014–Mar 22, 2015
MoMA
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Artist’s Choice: Trisha Donnelly
Nov 9, 2012–Jul 28, 2013
MoMA
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Édouard Vuillard has
62 exhibitionsonline.
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Édouard Vuillard Dinnertime c. 1889
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Édouard Vuillard Vase of Flowers (n.d.)
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Édouard Vuillard Monsieur Bute by Maurice Biolley 1890
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Édouard Vuillard Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Siesta or Convalescence (La sieste ou la convalescence) published 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Interior with a Screen (L'Intérieur au paravent) c. 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm October 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Âmes Solitaires December 1893
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Édouard Vuillard The Green Lamp 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Still Life with Top Hat 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Lonely Soles (Âmes solitaires) from The Beraldi Album of Theatre Programs 1893
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Édouard Vuillard Program for An Enemy of the People (Un Ennemi du peuple) from The Beraldi Album of Theatre Programs 1893
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Édouard Vuillard The Dressmaker (La couturière) from La Revue Blanche c. 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Au dessus des forces humaines February 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for La Vie Muette November 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Solness Le Constructeur April 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Lisez La Revue Blanche and Une Nuit d'Avril a Ceos February 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Lisez La Revue blanche and Frères, La Gardienne, Créanciers May 1894
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Édouard Vuillard The Park 1894 (reworked in 1908)
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Édouard Vuillard The Window 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Program for The Silent Life (La Vie muette) from The Beraldi Album of Theatre Programs 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Bécane c. 1894
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Édouard Vuillard Embroidery 1895-96
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Édouard Vuillard Program for Au-dela des Forces January 1897
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Édouard Vuillard Cover (Couverture de l'album) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Game of Checkers (La Partie de dames) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Avenue (L'Avenue) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard Through the Fields (A Travers champs) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard Interior with Ceiling Lamp (Intérieur a la suspension) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard Interior with Pink Wallpaper I (Intérieur aux tentures roses I) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard Interior with Pink Wallpaper II (Intérieur aux tentures roses II) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard Interior with Pink Wallpaper III (Intérieur aux tentures roses III) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Hearth (L'Atre) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard On the Bridge of Europe (Sur le pont de l'Europe) from Landscapes and Interieurs (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Pastry Shop (La Patisserie) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Two Sisters-in-Law (Les deux belles-soeurs) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Édouard Vuillard The Cook (La cuisinière) from Landscapes and Interiors (Paysages et intérieurs) 1899
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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard La Cuisine de Monsieur Momo célibataire 1930. (Reproduced drawings executed c. 1880)
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Édouard Vuillard Siesta 1928
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