VUILLARD, Édouard (Cuiseaux, 1868 – La Baule, 1940)
Édouard Vuillard studied at the Lycée Condorcet, where he befriended Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis and Aurélien Lugné-Poe. Encouraged by Roussel—who years later would become his brother-in-law—at the end of 1885 he enrolled in the atelier of the painter Maillart. In 1886 he attended lessons at the Académie Julian. A year later, after several attempts, he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was taught by Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1889, after leaving the École des Beaux-Arts, Vuillard became a member of the Nabis group.
During the 1890s Vuillard took part in the Nabis collective exhibitions held in the galleries Le Barc in Bouteville, Ambroise Vollard and Bernheim-Jeune, with highly decorative interior scenes in which small areas of light and contrasting colour dissolve the forms. At the same time, he executed decorative panels for the mansions of Paul Desmarais (1893), Alexandre Natanson (1894), Misia and Thadée Natanson (1895) and Dr. Henry Vaquez (1896), which are some of the most relevant works in his career. In the same years he also painted the theatre sets for Maeterlink’s L’Intruse and Les Aveugles, Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, Hauptmann’s Âmes solitaires, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu roi, etc.
Around 1898–1899, as can be appreciated from the panels made for Claude Anet, Jean Schopfer, Stéphane Natanson and Adam Natanson, Vuillard went back to a more naturalist style, although influenced by the Impressionist example. Also, from 1900 on, landscape painting acquired a greater importance in his oeuvre. In the first years of the 20th century, Vuillard exhibited regularly in the Salon des Indépendants. His works were also shown in La Libre Esthétique, in the Wiener Secession and in the Berliner Secession. In 1904, the Salon d’Automne devoted an entire room to his oeuvre.
Vuillard continued to paint in Paris and its surroundings until the end of the 1930s. His last decorative pieces include important public commissions for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1912), the Palais de Chaillot (1936) and the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva (1937). In 1938, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris organised an important retrospective exhibition of the whole of his oeuvre. Two years later, on 21 June 1940, Vuillard died in La Baule.
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