Édouard Vuillard 1868-1940
By Sophie Turner
Édouard Vuillard, Interior at l'Etang la Ville, 1893, Oil on board, 31.75 x 37.34 cm, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.
Édouard Vuillard’s (1868-1940) reserved, introspective personality matched his intimate, verging upon claustrophobic, bourgeois scenes he is famed for. Vuillard represented late nineteenth century, Parisian society through domestic interiors – a sphere categorised as female. Considering decoration as painting’s principal function, he challenged the academic distinction between fine art and decorative crafts. Vuillard’s career spanned from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. However, his bourgeois subject matter appeared ill equipped to address the cultural shift post World War One, situating him chiefly as a late nineteenth century artist.
Born in the provincial town of Cuiseaux in 1868, nine years later the Vuillard family moved to Paris. Due to the death of his father when he was aged fifteen, his paintings are arguably more influenced by the female psyche. His mother’s dress making studio within their family apartment and more broadly spaces connected with female domesticity are dominant themes in his work. The coloured and patterned fabrics used by his mother can be cited against Vuillard’s decorative aesthetic. Interior with work table (1893) typifies this; the rich patterning and flattened perspective camouflage the figures who merge into the room. Vuillard argued that technically accurate paintings did not inspire prolonged viewing. Rather, he was guided by a consideration that the figures should not be the focus of the canvas but rather one part of a decorative scene.
Abandoning his plans to follow in his father’s footsteps with a military career, he received artistic training between 1886 and 1889, first at the École des Beaux-Arts and later the Académie Julian. A year later, he revolted against his academic training, joining a brotherhood named the Nabis (Hebrew for prophet), which included his student peers Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and Maurice Denis (1870-1943). Inspired by the simple forms and lack of perspective in Japanese woodcuts and Paul Gauguin’s (1848-1903) use of bold colours and flattened space, the Nabi’s tendency towards distorted space and colour patterning did away with valuing a painting for its precise appearance in favour of exploring the psychological truth of a scene.
Vuillard consideration of art as decoration extended beyond easel painting. The Nabi’s interest in the psychological meaning beyond surface appearance sought parallels with nineteenth century Symbolist theatre. Vuillard’s practice as a decorative artist reflected the Nabi’s close relationship with the dramatic arts; he painted large theatre sets for the Aurélien Lugné-Poe, a theatre director he shared a studio with. Used for set design, Vuillard also employed the medium of distemper for interior decoration, both for domestic interiors and Paris’s expanding public social spaces.
In 1900, the Nabi’s exhibited together for the final time. In the latter half of his life, Vuillard continued to depict everyday interiors but his style became more naturalistic, an approach that has been cited as nostalgia for the nineteenth century. Critical reception of Vuillard dwindled during the first half of the twentieth century. He made a revival in 1938, when he was admitted to the Académie des Beaux Arts and was the subject of a large scale retrospective exhibition a year later. He died in 1940, in La Baule, Brittany. Vuillard’s intimist scenes of familiar interiors may connect with present day viewers on a new level – as now more than ever, like the figures within Interior with work table, we feel part of the furniture of our own interiors.
Bibliography:
Auricchio, Laura, ‘The Nabis and Decorative Painting’, (October 2004), http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dcpt/hddcpt.htm
Groom, Gloria, Beyond the easel: decorative paintings by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Roussel, 1890-1930, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001)
Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff, Edouard Vuillard, (New York: Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Arno Press, 1969)