Édouard Vuillard: The Complete Story
Edouard Vuillard was the French painter of rooms: small interiors where wallpaper, lamplight and his mother's sewing table become the whole world. Born in 1868, a founder of the Nabis at 21, he made privacy itself a subject for painting.
No painter ever stayed closer to home, or got more out of it. Here is how a corset shop in Paris produced some of the most quietly radical pictures of the 1890s.
Vuillard at a glance:
Born in Cuiseaux in 1868; his mother ran a corset workshop in their apartment.
Core member of the Nabis with Bonnard from 1889.
Painted interiors so dense with pattern the figures dissolve.
Photographed his rooms obsessively with a hand-held Kodak.
Died in 1940, weeks before the Germans reached Paris.
The corset shop that was also a studio
Vuillard was born in Cuiseaux in 1868 and grew up in Paris, where his widowed mother ran a corset and dressmaking workshop at home. He lived with her until her death in 1928, when he was 60, and called her his muse.
The bolts of patterned fabric, the working women bent over cloth, the cramped lamplit rooms: his entire visual language was cut from that workshop.
The Nabis, prophets at twenty one
Around 1889, with Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Paul Serusier, Vuillard joined the young group who called themselves the Nabis, Hebrew for prophets.
Their creed, written by Denis in 1890, said a painting is first of all a flat surface covered with colours in a certain order.
Vuillard took that flatness indoors: his interiors of the 1890s press wallpaper, dress and face into one woven surface, and figures almost dissolve into the pattern around them.
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The myth: the timid painter of small things
Because the pictures are domestic, Vuillard is often filed under minor and modest. The record disagrees.
In the 1890s he was one of the most sought after decorators in Paris, painting large panel cycles for private patrons, nine panels of public gardens for Alexandre Natanson in 1894 alone.
He designed for the avant garde theatre, illustrated La Revue Blanche, and in 1912 he refused the Legion of Honour, with Bonnard, rather than join the establishment.
The Kodak in his pocket
From around 1897 Vuillard carried a hand held Kodak and took some two thousand photographs of his circle, checking compositions against the camera's accidental crops.
The snapshots survive, and they show how modern his eye was: figures cut by door frames, backs turned, rooms seen as if in passing. He painted memory with the casualness of a photograph decades before that became a style.
The late portraits and the quiet end
After 1900 his palette cleared and society came calling: he spent his later decades on portraits of Paris figures in their own crowded apartments, every room as loving as the faces. Elected to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1938, he died in June 1940 at La Baule, as France fell, and his reputation went into a long sleep until the museums woke it again.
Where to see Vuillard
The Musee d'Orsay in Paris holds the essential rooms, including panels from the Natanson cycle. The National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Modern Art in New York keep major interiors, and the 2003 retrospective that travelled from Washington to Paris remains the reference show.
The corset workshop as a studio
Vuillard lived with his seamstress mother until he was 60, and her workshop filled the apartment with cut fabric, wallpaper, and bolts of print.
His paintings are that room: figures camouflaged into pattern, private life woven flat. He called his mother his muse without irony.
The Kodak in the pocket
From 1897 he carried a Kodak, photographing dinner tables and lamplight, over 2,000 frames now archived.
The snapshots taught him the off-center crop and the interrupted figure. Painting and photography edited each other for forty years.
The decorations nobody moves
His largest works are decorative cycles painted for friends' apartments, the Vaquez panels among them, rooms wrapped in gardens and reading women.
Many still hang where architecture allows, and museums rebuild the rooms when they cannot. Vuillard is best measured by the wall, not the frame.
The Édouard Vuillard questions that keep coming up
What is he known for? Small, patterned interiors of the 1890s, and being a founder of the Nabis.
What does Nabis mean? Prophets, in Hebrew: the young group formed around 1889 with Bonnard and Denis.
Did he ever marry? No. He lived with his mother until her death in 1928, and called her his muse.
When did he die? In June 1940, at La Baule, during the fall of France.
What are the Nabis? The prophets, a group of young painters around 1889, Vuillard, Bonnard, Denis, who flattened painting into pattern and prophecy after Gauguin.
Why do his figures blend into wallpaper? Deliberate camouflage: he painted intimacy as texture, people absorbed by their rooms, decades before anyone said all-over composition.
More secrets to unlock
One last fact
In 1912 the French state offered Vuillard the Legion of Honour. He turned it down, and so did Bonnard, his friend since art school. The two painters of quiet rooms agreed on this too: the work was the honour, and the ribbon could go to someone louder.
