The Newspaper

Edouard Vuillard’s domestic interiors radiate, through their muted patterns, an aura of intimacy and tranquility. Born November 11, 1868, in Cuiseaux (Saóne-et-Loire), Vuillard moved with his family to Paris in 1877. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1886 to 1888, when he entered the Académie Julian. There he met Pierre Bonnard and became a newly founded member of the group of Nabis, which included Bonnard, Denis, Ibels, Ranson, Roussel, Sérusier, and Vallotton.

Edouard Vuillard’s interiors of the 1890s represent the artist at the height of his early style, which was based on the Nabis ideal of celebrating color and pattern over perspective and subject, and which drew inspiration from Japanese art and the synthetist ideas of Gauguin’s circle at Pont Aven. In his interiors, Vuillard usually depicted relatives or friends at his home, creating images that became the foundation for his personal manner of interpreting space, pattern, and color. The Newspaper shows Madame Vuillard relaxing with her paper in the sunny salon of the home she shared with her son at 342 rue Saint-Honoré.