Vuillard, (Jean) Edouard (1868–1940)

French painter and printmaker. He was a founding member of les Nabis, and is noted for his decorative paintings of intimate domestic interiors with figures and for his brilliantly coloured lithographs.

He was closely linked with Pierre Bonnard, his friend from youth, and took a parallel direction in art. As Vuillard himself said, there was ‘nothing of the revolutionary’ about him. The term Intimiste, applied both to him and to Bonnard, refers particularly aptly to the gentle and seclusive spirit in which Vuillard painted lamplit domestic interiors. He was less venturesome and more academic in tendency than Bonnard, though in colour lithography, inspired by Japanese prints, he developed some brilliant and unconventional designs.

He also produced a number of decorative works, for the Comédie des Champs Elysées 1913, Palais de Chaillot 1937, and the Palais des Nations, Geneva, 1938. His notebooks and diaries were left to the Bibliothèque Nationale on the condition that they were not opened until 1980.