Edouard Vuillard - Painter - Decorator

Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), one of the most admired post-impressionist artists, is best-known for his small easel paintings and their charming portrayals of everyday life. However, a major part of his work during his early life was the painting of large decorative panels in the Parisian homes of wealthy private patrons, produced between 1892 and 1912. These panels - some fifty in total - have been little studied, due principally to the inaccessibility of many of them and the impossibility of their being included in exhibitions. In this book, the author offers an overview of these large-scale projects for decorative commissions, describing how they shaped the artist's thinking about his art and methods of working and the influence they had on his later work. She also discusses the state of private patronage, the nature of Vuillard's patrons, and the understanding of decoration in public and private contexts in turn-of-the-century Paris. The book is lavishly illustrated, showing the panels in their original locations and as they appear today, and also includes other works by the artist and by his contemporaries - Bonnard, Monet and Seurat, amongst others, in order to compare and contrast Vuillard's achievements.