VUILLARD, (JEAN-)DOUARD

born , Nov. 11, 1868, Cuiseaux, Fr. died June 21, 1940, La Baule French painter, printmaker, and decorator, who, with Pierre Bonnard, developed the Intimist style of painting (see Intimism). Vuillard met Bonnard, Paul Srusier, and Flix Vallotton while studying at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and, along with his old friends Maurice Denis and Ker-Xavier Roussel, they formed an association called the Nabis (q.v.) that drew its inspiration from the Synthetist works of Gauguin's Pont-Aven period. Vuillard's "Jardin de Paris," a series of decorative panels, is characteristic of his mature work as a Nabi. In those nine panels (1894; examples in the Cleveland Museum of Art; Muse National d'Art Moderne, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas; and Muse des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), Vuillard used pale light and discreet areas of neutral colours as flat surface pattern to create a mood of restful calm. In contrast to his earlier work, all modelling was avoided. Instead, unaltered colour filled the contours of the forms depicted, producing a two-dimensional, tapestry-like effect. In 1899 the Nabis exhibited together for the last time. That year Vuillard painted works that show the influence of the techniques of Impressionism and his admiration for the subtle interior compositions of Manet and Degas. He also executed two series of masterful lithographs that reveal his great debt to Japanese woodcuts, then in vogue in Europe. Vuillard never married. He lived with his widowed mother until her death, and the majority of his works deal with domestic scenes set in his mother's bourgeois home. As early as 1892, his production of small paintings of daily home life, such as "Woman Sweeping" (c. 1892; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), led him to be called an Intimist. Vuillard received numerous commissions to do decorative works. These included the decorations (1913) in the foyer of the Thtre des Champs-lyses, and murals in the Palais de Chaillot (1937) and in the League of Nations, Geneva (1939). In addition, he did designs for the Thtre de l'Oeuvre and the Ballets Russes. After the turn of the century, he painted several works in his Intimist manner. The majority of his late works, however, lack the charm and directness of his early work.