Vuillard was born at Cuiseaux, Sâone-et-Loire, the son of a retired army officer. The family moved to Paris in 1877 and Vuillard became a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1886, later moving to the Académie Julian. There he met Bonnard and other painters with whom he founded the Nabis in 1889 (the name derived from the Hebrew for prophet).
The group, influenced by Gauguin and Degas, concentrated on pattern and distortion to emphasise psychological meanings beyond appearances in ordinary domestic subjects, though Bonnard and Vuillard returned by the end of the century to a more naturalistic style. As well as his smaller paintings, Vuillard executed from 1892 to 1937 large decorative schemes, including stage scenery. He was elected to the Institut in 1938.
Edouard Vuillard
1868 - 1940
Paintings by Edouard Vuillard
This painting was the left half of a decorative panel commissioned by Jean Schopfer, a writer who published under the pen name Claude Anet. In 1935, over 30 years after its completion, Vuillard cut the panel into two and reworked it; the other half, La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Lunch, is also in th...
Not on display
This painting was the right half of a decorative panel commissioned by Jean Schopfer, a writer who published under the pen name Claude Anet. In 1935, over 30 years after its completion, Vuillard cut the panel into two and reworked it; the other half, La Terrasse at Vasouy, the Garden, is also in...
Not on display
This quiet domestic scene shows all the warmth and intimacy of Vuillard’s late paintings. We look into the elegant drawing room of a Parisian home – that of the Wormser family, at 27 rue Scheffer. The decoration reflects the taste of fashionable French society in the 1920s: pictures by Manet, Mon...
Not on display
This picture – a combination of interior scene and still-life painting – shows Vuillard’s room at Château-Rouge in Amfreville, Normandy. His friends Jos and Lucy Hessel rented the house for the summers of 1905, 1906 and 1907.A posy of wild flowers on the marble mantelpiece sits alongside a number...
On display elsewhere