Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940

Friday, 04 May 2012 - Sunday, 23 September 2012

The Jewish Museum, New York
This exhibition offers a fresh view of the French artist Edouard Vuillard's career, from the vanguard 1890s to the urbane domesticity of the lesser-known late portraits. The presentation focuses on the inspiration provided by friends and patrons whose support became inseparable from the artist's achievement. Featuring some fifty key artworks in various media, the exhibition extends pioneering past projects of The Jewish Museum, New York, on the significance of collectors and patrons for the development of modern art. Accompanied by the beautiful exhibition catalogue.

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More about the exhibition catalogue

In many of Edouard Vuillard's (1868-1940) most famous paintings, figures are nestled in intimate settings among bold patterns and colours. As the viewer's eye adjusts to the complexity of the scene, the artist's world opens up. At a young age, Vuillard was one of a group of avant-garde painters in Paris who favoured rich palettes and dreamlike imagery. He was equally a member of the literary and theatrical circles that included writers like Marcel Proust and Stephane Mallarme. As his career progressed into the new century, he entered the rarefied society of upper-class French families - many of them Jewish - who collected the new art, published the new poetry, and wrote the new criticism.

This beautifully illustrated book examines the master artist's work in the context of a unique circle of friends and patrons between the turn of the 20th century and World War II. Essays by leading scholars explore the artist's relationship with key members of this glamorous social circle, as well as the connections between Vuillard and Proust as two of the world's great observers of a world now lost. A fascinating exploration of artistic culture in Paris before the war, Edouard Vuillard establishes the artist as one of the masters of the modern portrait.