Édouard VUILLARD 1868-1940

Edouard Vuillard, nabis and intimate painter

Edouard Vuillard was born on November 11, 1868 in Cuiseaux in Saône-et-Loire, he arrived in Paris in 1877 where he studied at the Lycée Condorcet. His friends there were Maurice Denis, Lugné-Poe and Ker-Xavier Roussel, who would later become his brother-in-law. Vuillard led his life existence seemingly without incident, alongside his mother until her death in 1928. From 1887 he took classes at the Académie Julian and is part of the first core of the Nabis group. Vuillard met Thadée Natanson in 1891.

His first exhibition also took place in the offices of the Revue Blanche, which he became Director of in 1891.

In 1892 he received an order from the Desmarais family for six door tops. From 1893 he painted many paintings representing bourgeois interiors such as ‘Interior, mother and sister of the artist’ (New York, The Museum of Modern Art), where the characters are based in space. From 1893 to 1894 he designed programs and sets for theatre for the work of Lugné-Poe. He also painted nine panels titled “Public Gardens” for the dining room of Natanson. From 1897 he began a series of lifelong trips to Europe. He continued however to exhibit, at Bernheim-Jeune from 1900 and the Free Aesthetic in Brussels in 1901.

In 1908 he painted ‘The Ventimiglia Place’ signs. In 1912, Vuillard painted decorations for the comedy theatre of the Champs-Élysées. Vuillard travelled to Lyon during the war where Thadée Natanson directed a munitions factory of which he did several paintings. In 1937 he became a member of the Institute of France and the Museum of Decorative Arts dedicated a retrospective to his work. The following year, he painted a panel, “Protecting Peace of the Muses”, in the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Vuillard died on June 21, 1940 in La Baule where he was living.