Self portrait, 1889.
The French artist, Jean-Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) had a reticent and introspective nature so the subject of the interior served as a symbol for his interior self, separate from the rest of the world. This is an aspect of a modernist idea – the notion that one’s personal viewpoint, a subjective view of reality, can gain insight into the truth.
From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis (from the Hebrew and Arabic term for “prophets” and, by extension, the artist as the “seer” who reveals the invisible).He was less drawn to the mystical aspects of the group but drawn more drawn toward fashionable private venues where philosophical discussions about poetry, music, theatre, and the occult occurred.
His paintings swarmed with seas of pure color, his interior scenes (influenced by Japanese prints and by the post-impressionists, especially Paul Gauguin), blended their subjects into colors and patterns like camouflage. He also was a decorative artist who painted theatre sets, panels for interior decoration, and designed plates and stained glass. In 1899 he produced a flurry of colourful lithographs on paper. By the time the Nabis broke up in 1900, he had evolved, or was evolving a more realistic style, painting landscapes and interiors with lavish detail and vivid colors.
He is known as a painter and a decorative artist. Less so as a printmaker.
These are some of his few lithographic prints on paper, from an album he produced in 1899 called Landscapes and Interiors.
