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Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 Hardcover – May 29, 2012

by Stephen Brown (Author), Richard R. Brettell (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
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In many of Edouard Vuillard's (1868-1940) most famous paintings, figures are nestled in intimate settings among bold patterns and colors. 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 favored rich palettes and dreamlike imagery. He was equally a member of the literary and theatrical circles that included writers like Marcel Proust and Stéphane Mallarmé. 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, 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.

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  1. Print length
    144 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yale University Press
  4. Publication date
    May 29, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    8 x 0.75 x 9.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0300176759
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0300176759
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

 Honorable Mention in the Photography/Art category at the 2012 New England Book Festival. (Photography/Art Honorable Mention New England Book Festival 2013-01-22)

About the Author

Stephen Brown is assistant curator at The Jewish Museum, New York. Richard R. Brettell is the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair, Art and Aesthetics, University of Texas, Dallas, and director of its Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Museums. His books include French 19th-Century Painting in the Norton Simon Museum (Yale), and Monet in Normandy (Yale).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press; First Edition (May 29, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300176759
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300176759
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.75 x 9.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

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Stephen Brown

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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Elliot Silvera
5.0 out of 5 stars A Painter with a Large Jewish Patronage
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2012
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Edouard Vuillard was one of the most important pre World War II French artists. Although Vuillard was a great painter and printmaker, created theater sets, and even dabbled into photography, he isn't as widely familiar as other artists of his time such as Henri Matisse. This book was published on the occasion of an exhibit at the Jewish Museum which I just saw. The catalogue contains two essays discussing his life, work, and world of the Parisian elite. Both are profusely illustrated with most of the exhibited works as well as other important paintings which survey his entire career. Although he produced still lifes, landscapes and numerous portraits, Vuillard is renowned for his domestic interiors with figures. His earliest and most famous works often feature his mother. "Madame Vuillard at Table" and "The Drawer" which shows her at work as a dressmaker are typical examples. As his career flourished in the 1890s, Vuillard designed theater sets and contributed artwork in the cultural and literary publication, La Revue Blanche founded by Thadee Natanson. Natanson, the son of a Jewish banker was artist's first major patron. During his involvement with the magazine and throughout the next century, the Catholic Vuillard befriended many Jewish writers, art dealers, and businessmen. They and their family members were the subjects of many of his most impressive but lesser known portraits. Like his earlier paintings, they were mainly set in domestic environments. Two women were especially important in his life. Vuillard had romantic relationships with Misia Natanson and Lucy Hessel, the wives of Thadee and Jos Hessel, his art dealer and close friend. They were frequently included in the artist's interiors and landscapes. In fact, Lucy modeled for Vuillard for nearly forty years until his death in 1940. Besides portraits, many of Vuillard's patrons also commissioned the artist to create several decorative murals for their homes. They include three major series, "The Album" which depict a group of women in an ornate room and two Parisian park scenes, "Public Gardens" and "Place Vintimille". These large scale works are now considered some of the most important oeuvres by the artist. At the end of the book, there are brief biographies of all the mentioned figures and families. The book is different than most exhibition catalogues because there are no standard entries describing the works. This is a slight disadvantage if you didn't see the exhibit or want to learn more about a specific artwork. However, I found the text very informative and the reproductions clearly photographed. If you want a basic introduction on this French artist, I strongly recommend this museum publication.
17 people found this helpful
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L. Padula
5.0 out of 5 stars A must for any Vuillard lover.
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2016
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I love Vuilard's paintings and spend a lot of time going through this book and just looking at all of his breathtaking paintings. I have also read it and found it just as enjoyable and interesting to read. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves Vuillard.
2 people found this helpful
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Kenneth Hughes
4.0 out of 5 stars Stephen Brown, "Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940"
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2012
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This is a book published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at The Jewish Museum in New York City from May to September 2012. It is not a catalogue in the usual sense, with numbered reproductions corresponding to the works exhibited and commentary on them; rather, it consists of two profusely illustrated essays. Some of the illustrations are full-page, and they are all clear and in very good color. There are also many photographs of Vuillard and his circle. Stephen Brown, Assistant Curator at the Museum, has written the major essay, "An Artist, His Patrons, and the Muses," a seventy-five page survey of Vuillard's life and his association with the close circle of several intermarried families of wealthy, mostly assimilated Jewish intellectuals and artists who were, in fact, his friends, patrons, and, in a couple of cases of the woman, also his "muses." To speak of Vuillard's painting is inevitably to speak of these people, for the persons in this coterie were his major artistic subject. Brown does not engage in much discussion of aesthetics, except in the broadest sense of placing Vuillard in an art historical context, and here I think he may protest too much. Most people think of Vuillard as having had his heyday some time before the turn of the century, and although this book has persuaded me that he was less conservative than I had thought he was, I think Dr. Brown claims too great a degree of modernism for him. He affirms readily that Vuillard "declined to follow the path after 1900 from Symbolism to Cubism (or Surrealism) to abstraction" and avows that this was "strange" for an artist who continued painting for another forty years, and "[s]tranger still, given that Vuillard is one of the greatest painters of the century" (29). But that logic seems backwards; I think most people would argue rather that an artist who "declined" to participate in the artistic ferment of the first forty years of the century can't really be considered one of its "greatest painters." (How glad we should be that it's not a contest!)

The second essay is a thirty-page piece by Richard R. Brettell, which he calls "Vuillard, Proust, and Portraiture" and in which he makes the very suggestive point that the artists constructed similar worlds independently, but in similar ways. Prof. Brettell compares Proust's narrator's description of the Marquise de Villeparisis's sitting room with four portraits that Vuillard made of members of the Kapferer family and, not losing sight of the differences in the media, underscores what they have in common and what at the same time makes them so different. Proust in this comparison emerges as the more "modern" in technique, for in formal terms "in comparison to his old colleague Bonnard, Vuillard looks conservative" (102), but what makes Vuillard indeed modern is exactly what is modern about Proust: the entirely realist social project of aesthetic preservation; he was perhaps the "great visual anthropologist" of his time and place (100), whose identity portraits "collectively constitute an analysis of modern society as sophisticated and subtle as any in modern art" (108). These are both fairly heady and abstract essays, so this is not really the book for someone who just wants nice reproductions of Vuillard's paintings along with some art-historical commentary; there are other books available for them. But if you're a devotee of Vuillard or interested in questions of marketing or artist-patron relations or want a quick and excellently illustrated biographical sketch, this book can be well recommended.
23 people found this helpful
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Colorist
2.0 out of 5 stars More a Study in Sociology Than Art
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2013
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If you are interested in how a very out of fashion Vuillard survived through the patronage of a small, select group of wealthy patrons throughout the 1930s until his death in 1940, you may find this book interesting in spite of it's smaller format and few pages.

If you are interested in finding new examples of his earlier work, and consider his later pieces less interesting, it is not for you.
The illustration choice is sparse in early work, but there are plenty of rather dry and surprisingly small reproductions that seem borrowed from another publication of several years back of his supporters and hosts of numerous social events. The color seems pale and washed out for the most part, and his famous saying " he does not paint portraits but people in rooms " rarely seems to ring true.
19 people found this helpful
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J. Marcus
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2014
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What a treasure! The narrative is just as interesting as the illustrated paintings.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars I like this book
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2017
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Thank You.I like this book.OK!
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Top reviews from other countries

Hermione Johnsen
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2014
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Vuillard was an innovative painter moving Impressionism forward to another level. His portraits shown are wonderful. A well written book of a great artist.
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The Bear
1.0 out of 5 stars Poor reproduction of the paintings
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2014
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They are very poor quality reproductions that do not do justice to the artist or his work. Not a good buy
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