Vuillard (Masters of Art) Hardcover – 21 Oct 1985

The advantage of this book is the illustrated text by Stuart Preston, described as an expert in fin-de-siècle Paris and in modern art. Its downside is, firstly, that it is a concise edition of a volume originally published in 1971 and, secondly, of its 114 illustrations, mostly paintings but also including contemporary photographs, [only] 40 are included as colour plates.

As is very clear from these colour plates, contrasts of colour and intricate patterning are crucial for an appreciation of Vuillard’s art. The delicacy evident in works such as “The Park”, 1894, “Misia and Thadée Natanson”, c. 1897, and “Woman Seated in a Garden”, 1898, would all be lost in a general ‘many shades of grey’ as is the case with “Little Girls Walking”, 1891, “The Widow’s Visit”, c. 1893, and “Portrait of the Artist’s Grandmother”, 1894.

The book contains a Selected Bibliography that includes General Works, Biographies and Monographs, Articles and Exhibition Catalogues; however, these are not updated from those included in the original edition.

Vuillard, 1868-1940, was pre-eminently a spectator of late 19th-century French bourgeois life, which explains why much of his later work seems repetitive and backward looking. Tantalisingly, Preston promises confiture tomorrow by referring to the forthcoming ‘opening of his private journal, promised for the 1980s’. In fact publication of this voluminous source was delayed until nearer the end of the century and, as might have been expected of a ‘timid, reticent, even secretive, individual’, it offered gossip, sketches and doodles but very little in the way of revelations or explanations of the artist’s motivation and internal rationalisation. Churchill’s 1939 opinion of Russia, ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, seems equally to apply to an artist whose life was coming to an end.

However, as Preston points out, Vuillard was neither unsocial nor solitary, having a wide circle of friends including Bonnard and his brother-in-law, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and was more familiar with the wider Parisian world than is generally imagined. It was during the last decade of the 19th-century that his art was at its zenith with his daring proto-Fauve figure paintings and his ‘revolutionary’ captivating and poetic decorations. After 1900, his work became more conservative, he took on commissions from the wealthy and rarely exhibited after 1914. Between 1900-40 all aspects of the artist’s life were dominated by the gallery director, Jos Hessel, and his wife.

As the author points out ‘It would be difficult indeed to imagine a Cubist or a Surrealist Vuillard’. Not surprisingly, Preston focuses on this early period of the artist’s development. Vuillard, together with Roussel, Bonnard and Valloton, were associated with the Nabis but were not at its centre because of their lack of a religious element to their work.

After 1920, Vuillard painted more than 40 major portraits of artist friends [Bonnard, Maillol, Denis and Roussel], writers [Jean Giraudoux and Paul Léautaud], politicians [Bertholet] and actresses [Yvonne Printemps and Jane Renouart]. The artist’s comment that ‘I don’t paint portraits. I paint people in their homes’ is often used by critics who point out that in such works he gave the sitters little more prominance than their surroundings, a significant contributor to their ‘blandness’.

Amongst the colour plates, each of which is accompanied by a short but well-focussed explanatory text, are “Woman Sweeping in a Room”, 1892-93, “Interior”, 1893, “Mother and Sister of the Artist”, c. 1893, “The Park”, 1894, panels from the decoration “Public Gardens”, 1894, “Interior with Figure”, 1896, “Room under the Fauves”, 1897, “Woman Seated in a Garden”, 1898, “Woman Reading in a Garden”, 1898, “Symphony in Red”, c. 1898-1900, “The Chaise Longue”, c. 1900, “Self-Portrait”, 1903, “Interior of a Bedroom”, 1908, “La Place Vintimille”, 1908-17, “Théodore Duret in his Study”, 1912, “Annette Meditating”, 1918, “The Visit”, 1931 and “The Comptesse de Noailles”, c. 1932. A detail from “Entrance to the Garden”, 1903, is illustrated on the front cover.

Despite the passage of time, this remains a good introduction to an artist who flourished at the end of the 19th century but whose last three decades left him sidelined in the wake of the advance of modernism.

A really beautiful book, many fantastic paintings and information of this very inspiring artist,

Book arrived promptly and exactly as described - excellent.

v.g