Edouard Vuillard

French, 1868-1940

Biographyb. 1868, Cuiseaux, France; d. 1940, La Baule, France

Édouard Vuillard was born on November 11, 1868, in Cuiseaux in the Bourgogne region of France, to a soldier-turned-tax collector and his wife, a dressmaker. In 1877, at the age of ten the family moved to Paris where Vuillard attended the prestigious Lycée Condorcet and subsequently, the Académie Julian and Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1889 Vuillard became a leading member of the Nabis, (after the Hebrew word for prophet), an avant-garde group of painters and printmakers whose stylistic approach and thematic interests helped to pave the way for 20th-century abstraction. The group viewed works on paper, such as prints and posters, as works of art in their own right, and were the first to introduce color and painterly effects into fine art printmaking.

Over the next decade Vuillard became a master of color lithography and produced over seventy print compositions, treating only a few specific themes, notably landscapes, scenes of city life, and domestic views of cozy interiors with his immediate family circle. Of these, his most important print project, Passages et Intérieurs illustrates how, like many other Nabis artists, he was inspired by the everyday scenes found in Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. Often described as an ‘intimist’, Vuillard’s use of rich decorative patterns and textures dissociated his work from visible reality, while maintaining a sense of intimacy– precisely what makes his prints so unique. Published by Ambroise Vollard, the famous art dealer, and a central figure in the print revival of the 1890s, Vuillard's lithographs are today acclaimed as some of the most creative printmaking undertakings at the turn of the last century.

Vuillard engaged in many aspects of Parisian cultural life and, as a Nabis, sought to intertwine his artistic projects with the realms of theater, literature, and music. During the 1890s Vuillard’s association with the anarchist journal La Revue Blanche led to several important decorative commissions from its editors, the brothers Thadée and Alexandre Natanson. In addition to designing sets for plays by Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Vuillard turned to creating works in formats such as posters and theater programs that demonstrate the ways in which printed art extended beyond the traditional realm of the art collector at this time.

In 1900 Vuillard met Lucie Hessel, whose husband, Jos Hessel, was his dealer at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. Madame Hessel would become Vuillard’s model and close friend for the next four decades. In later years Vuillard moved toward a more luminous style influenced by Impressionism, but his work nevertheless retained the flat, decorative quality of his Nabis compositions. He died in La Baule, near Saint-Nazaire, while making his way to Hessel’s seaside home, on June 21, 1940.

Person TypeIndividual

Terms