Édouard Vuillard

(French, 1868–1940)

Édouard Vuillard was a French artist whose modestly sized paintings of interiors, married flat patterns with nuanced tonal relationships. Vuillard's work The Album (1895), exemplifies his ability to integrate decorative elements into a naturalistic space. “Nothing is important, save the spiritual state that enables one to subjectify one’s thoughts to a sensation and to think only of the sensation, all the while searching to express it,” the artist once said. Born on November 11, 1868 in Cuiseaux, France, he and his family moved to Paris when he was 10 years old. Vuillard grew up amidst the patterned fabrics of his mother’s dressmaking business, and went on to study under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts. During his time in school, he was drawn to the 17th-century Dutch paintings and the still lifes of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin he saw in the Louvre. In 1889, he joined a small cluster of artists known as the Nabis, which included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Paul Sérusier. The group’s main tenets were comprised of an interest in Japanese prints and the use of patches of pure color. During the latter part of his career, Vuillard adopted an increasingly traditional painting style that utilized perspectival depth, rendered forms, and accurate details. The artist died on June 21, 1940 in La Baule, France. Today, his works are found in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.