the nabis and intimate modernism

Providing a fresh perspective on an important but underappreciated group

of late nineteenth-century French painters, this is the first book to provide an
in-depth account of the Nabis’ practice of the decorative, and its significance
for twentieth-century modernism.
Over the course of the ten years that define the Nabi movement (1890–
1900), its principal artists included Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard,
Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier, and Paul Ranson. The author reconstructs
the Nabis’ relationship to Impressionism, mass culture, literary Symbolism,
Art Nouveau, Wagnerianism, and a revolutionary artistic tradition in order
to show how their painterly practice emerges out of the pressing questions
defining modernism around 1900. She shows that the Nabis were engaged,
nonetheless, with issues that are always at stake in accounts of nineteenth-
century modernist painting, issues such as the relationship of high and low
art, of individual sensibility and collective identity, of the public and private
spheres.
The Nabis and Intimate Modernism is a rigorous study of the intellectual
and artistic endeavors that inform the Nabis’ decorative domestic paintings
in the 1890s, and argues for their centrality to painterly modernism. The
book ends up not only re-positioning the Nabis to occupy a crucial place
in modernism’s development from 1860 to 1914, but also challenges that
narrative to place more emphasis on notions of decoration, totality and
interiority.

Katherine M. Kuenzli is Associate Professor of Art History

at Wesleyan University, USA.
The Nabis and Intimate Modernism
Painting and the Decorative at the Fin-de-Siècle

Katherine M. Kuenzli
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2010 Katherine M. Kuenzli

Katherine M. Kuenzli has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Kuenzli, Katherine Marie.
The Nabis and intimate modernism : painting and the
decorative at the fin-de-siècle.
1. Nabis (Group of artists) 2. Nabis (Group of artists)--
Influence. 3. Painting, French--19th century. 4. Modernism
(Art)
I. Title
759.4’09034-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kuenzli, Katherine Marie.
The Nabis and intimate modernism : painting and the decorative at the fin-de-siècle /
Katherine M. Kuenzli.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6777-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Nabis (Group of artists) 2. Painting, French--19th century. 3. Decoration and
ornament--Influence. I. Title. II. Title: Painting and the decorative at the fin-de-siècle.

ND547.5.N3K84 2009
709.44’09034--dc22
 2009045494

ISBN  9780754667773 (hbk)

Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements xvii

Introduction 1
Intimacy and the Dream of Public Art 10
Transgressing Spatial and Gender Distinctions 13
The Home as a Total Work of Art 15
The Nabis and Modernism 19
Method 23

1 Decorating the Street, Decorating the Home: Bonnard’s

Women in the Garden and the Poster 33
Women in the Garden: Between Posters and Painterly Symbolism 36
Bonnard’s Intimate Paris 47
Posters and the Dream of Unity 56
A Hybrid Art Form 59

2 Wagner as Intimist: Vuillard’s Desmarais Decoration and

the Symbolist Theater 69
The Nabis and the Symbolist Theater 71
Interior/Interiority 82
Wagnerian Painterly Aesthetics 88

3 Modernism and Catholicism in Maurice Denis’s

Frauenliebe und Leben 105
Schumann and Wagner 109
Denis’s Neo-Traditionism 119
Symbolists and Decadents 127
Matter and Spirit 132
vi the nabis and intimate modernism

4 Two Versions of the Gesamtkunstwerk: The Nabis and the

Art Nouveau Interior 149
Theorizing the Art Nouveau Interior 152
The Gesamtkunstwerk and the Nabi Interior 165

5 The Art of Reverie: Vuillard’s Vaquez Decoration and

the Nabis’ Critical Legacy 185
Unfamiliar Domesticity 187
The Art of Reverie 193
The Vaquez Panels’ Critical Reception 197

Conclusion
An Armchair Aesthetic: From the Nabis to Matisse and Beyond 215

Bibliography 231
Index 265
List of Illustrations
All works by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Edouard Vuillard © Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Other copyright credits are listed in individual
entries below. The author has made every effort to recover and credit copyright holders.
Anyone objecting to the reproduction of any copyrighted images without permission
should contact the author.
Color Plates
1  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens: The
Nursemaids, The Conversation, The Red
Sunshade (1894), distemper on canvas,
213.5 × 73 cm, 213 × 154 cm, 214 × 81
cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo: Jean
Schormans. Photo credit: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
2  Pierre Bonnard, Women in the Garden:
Woman in a Dress with White Dots (1891),
painted paper mounted on canvas, 160
× 48 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo:
Hervé Lewandowski. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY
3  Pierre Bonnard, Women in the Garden:
Woman in a Checkered Dress (1891),
painted paper mounted on canvas, 160
× 48 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo:
Hervé Lewandowski. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY
4  Pierre Bonnard, Women in the
Garden: Woman in a Blue Shawl (Woman
with a Hooded Cape) (1891), painted
paper mounted on canvas, 160 × 48 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo: Hervé
Lewandowski. Photo credit: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
5  Pierre Bonnard, Women in the Garden:
Woman Seated with Cat (1891), painted
paper mounted on canvas, 160 × 48 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo: Hervé
Lewandowski. Photo credit: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
6  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
The Dressmaking Studio I (1892), oil on
canvas, 48.5 × 117 cm. Private collection.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
7  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
The Dressmaking Studio II (1892), oil on
canvas, 48.5 × 117 cm. Private collection.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
8  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und Leben:
Farandole (1895), oil on canvas, 48 × 205
cm. Private collection. Photo credit:
Catalogue raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
9  Edouard Vuillard, Album (1895),
oil on canvas, 67.6 × 204.5 cm. The
viii the nabis and intimate modernism
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg
Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore
Annenberg, 2000. Bequest of Walter H.
Annenberg, 2002. (2000.93.2) Image
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
10  Edouard Vuillard, Vaquez Decoration:
Library and Desk (1896), distemper
on canvas, 212.5 × 77.25 cm, 212.5 ×
77.25 cm. Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.
Inv. 2439. Photo: Bulloz. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY
11  Edouard Vuillard, Vaquez Decoration:
The Salon (The Reader) (1896), distemper
on canvas, 212.5 × 154.5 cm. Musée
du Petit Palais, Paris. Inv. 2439. Photo:
Bulloz. Photo credit: Réunion des
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
12  Edouard Vuillard, Vaquez Decoration:
Music (The Piano) (1896), distemper on
canvas, 210 × 153 cm. Musée du Petit
Palais, Paris. © ARS, NY. Photo credit:
Banque d’Images, ADAGP/Art Resource,
NY
Black-and-White Illustrations
Introduction
0.1  Georges Seurat, A Sunday on the
Grande Jatte (1884–86), oil on canvas,
205.5 × 308.1 cm. Helen Birch Bartlett
Memorial Collection, 1926.224, The Art
Institute of Chicago. Photography © The
Art Institute of Chicago
0.2  Claude Monet, The Valley of the
Creuse (Sunlight Effect) (1889), oil on
canvas, 65.1 × 92.4 cm. Boston, Museum
of Fine Arts. Julia Cheney Edwards
Collection. Photograph © 2010 Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston
0.3  Claude Monet, The Creuse Valley,
Evening Effect (1889), oil on canvas, 65
× 81 cm. Musée Marmottan, Paris/The
Bridgeman Art Library
0.4  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
The Two Schoolboys (1894), distemper on
canvas, 214 × 98 cm. Musées Royaux des
Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. Photo
credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
0.5  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
Under the Trees (1894), distemper on
canvas, 214.2 × 96.3 cm. The Cleveland
Museum of Art, Gift of the Hanna Fund,
1953.212
0.6  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
Little Girls Playing (1894), distemper on
canvas, 212 × 84 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
0.7  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
Asking Questions (1894), distemper on
canvas, 212 × 96 cm. Musée d’Orsay,
Paris. Photo credit: Vuillard Archive,
Paris
0.8  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
The Promenade (1894), distemper on
canvas, 214.3 × 97.2 cm (frame: 229.2
× 110.5 cm). The Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston; The Robert Lee Blaffer
Memorial Collection, Gift of Mr. and
Mrs. Kenneth Dale Owen
0.9  Edouard Vuillard, Public Gardens:
First Steps (1894), distemper on canvas,
212 × 67 cm. Private collection, USA.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
0.10  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes,
Ancient Vision (1885), oil on canvas
affixed to wall, 460 × 578 cm. Musée des
Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Photo credit: ©
MBA Lyon/Alain Basset
0.11  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes,
Christian Interpretation (1886), oil on
canvas affixed to wall, 460 × 578 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Photo
credit: © MBA Lyon/Alain Basset
0.12  Proposed reconstruction of the
dining room at Marie Henry’s Buvette de
la plage, Le Pouldu, France

0.13  Edgar Degas, The Tub (1886), pastel
on heavy wove paper, 60 × 83 cm. Inv.
RF4046. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski.
Fonds Orsay. Louvre, Paris. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY
0.14  Pierre Bonnard, Intimacy (1891),
oil on canvas, 38 × 36 cm. Inv. R1992-
406. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. Musée
d’Orsay, Paris. Photo credit: Réunion
des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource,
NY
0.15  Edouard Vuillard, Interior, Mother
and Sister of the Artist (1893), oil on
canvas, 46.3 × 56.5 cm. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Photo credit:
Vuillard Archive, Paris
1  Decorating the Street, Decorating
the Home: Pierre Bonnard’s Women in
the Garden and the Poster
1.1  Pierre Bonnard, France-Champagne
(1891), color lithograph, 78 × 50 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
1.2  Maurice Denis, poster for La Dépêche
de Toulouse (1892), color lithograph, 140 ×
90 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris
1.3  Edouard Vuillard, Bécane (1894),
color lithograph, 80.8 × 60.4 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
1.4  Maurice Denis, illustration
for Verlaine’s Sagesse (1891), wood
engraving, 73 × 61 cm. Musée
Départemental Maurice Denis ‘Le
Prieuré,’ Saint-Germain-en-Laye
1.5  Maurice Denis, Poetic Arabesques for
a Ceiling Decoration (Ladder in the Foliage)
(1892), oil on canvas glued to cardboard,
235 × 172 cm. Musée Départemental
Maurice Denis ‘Le Prieuré,’ Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
1.6  Pierre Bonnard, Women in the
Garden: Woman in a Checkered Dress
list of illustrations ix
(1890–91), oil sketch, 154 × 47 cm.
Kunsthaus Zürich
1.7  Pierre Bonnard, Woman with Dog
(1891), oil on canvas, 40.6 × 32.4 cm.
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Photograph copyright © 2009 Sterling
and Francine Clark Art Institute
1.8  Pierre Bonnard, Twilight (Croquet
Game) (1892), oil on canvas, 130 × 162.5
cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. RF
1985–8. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski.
Photo credit: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
1.9  Jules Chéret, Bal du Moulin Rouge
(1889), lithograph in vermilion, yellow,
blue-violet, gray-green, and black, sheet
124.14 × 87.95 cm; plate 120.02 × 87 cm.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Kurt J. Wagner MD and C. Kathleen
Wagner Collection. Photograph ©
Museum Associates/LACMA
1.10  Jules Chéret, Vin Mariani (1894),
lithograph in vermilion, chrome yellow,
ultramarine and gray-violet, sheet
118.11 × 81.91 cm. Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Kurt J. Wagner MD
and C. Kathleen Wagner Collection.
Photograph © Museum Associates/
LACMA
1.11  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At
the Moulin Rouge: The Dance (1890), oil
on canvas, 115 × 150 cm. Philadelphia
Museum of Art, The Henry P. McIlhenny
Collection in Memory of Frances P.
McIlhenny, 1986
1.12  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin
Rouge: La Goulue (1891), color lithograph,
175 × 115 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris
1.13  Pierre Bonnard, Chahut, Moulin
Rouge (1891), sketch, pastel and charcoal,
54.6 × 48.4 cm. The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles, California
 the nabis and intimate modernism
1.14  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant (1892),
color lithograph, 138 × 94 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
1.15  Pierre Bonnard, La Revue blanche
(1894), color lithograph, 80 × 62 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
1.16  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La
Revue blanche (1895), color lithograph,
sheet 129.6 × 93.2 cm. Publisher: G.
Charpentier and E. Pasquelle for La
Revue blanche, Paris. Printer: Edward
Ancourt, Paris. Edition: 1000–3000.
Purchase, 1967. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Digital image © The
Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by
SCALA/Art Resource, NY
1.17  Pierre Bonnard, L’Estampe et
l’affiche (1897), color lithograph, 83.8 ×
61.7 cm. Yale University Art Gallery.
Purchased with a gift from J. Paul
Oppenheim, BA 1929, by exchange.
Photo credit: Yale University Art
Gallery
1.18  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Elles:
Woman Reclining, Waking Up (1896),
bistre lithograph, sheet 40 × 52.1 cm. Yale
University Art Gallery, Gift of A. Conger
Goodyear, BA 1899. 1959.62.4
1.19  Pierre Bonnard, frontispiece
for La Lithographie originale en couleurs
(1898), color lithograph, 21.5 × 19.5 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris
1.20  Pierre Bonnard, Le Moulin Rouge
(1896), oil on canvas, 61 × 40 cm. Private
collection
1.21  Pierre Bonnard, The Painter’s Life,
page 1 of sketchbook (circa 1910). Private
collection
1.22  Henri-Gabriel Ibels, L’Escarmouche
(The Skirmish) (1893), color lithograph,
64.5 × 50 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris
1.23  Félix Vallotton, The Age of Paper.
Published in Le Cri de Paris, 23 January
1898. Photomechanical print, 28.5 × 19.5
cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris
2  Wagner as Intimist: Vuillard’s
Desmarais Decoration and the
Symbolist Theater
2.1  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
Stroking the Dog (1892), oil on canvas,
48.5 × 170 cm. Private collection. Photo
credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
2.2  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
Gardening (1892), oil on canvas, 48.5 ×
170 cm. Private collection. Photo credit:
Vuillard Archive, Paris
2.3  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
Nursemaids and Children in a Public Park
(1892), oil on canvas, 48.5 × 117 cm.
Private collection. Photo credit: Vuillard
Archive, Paris
2.4  Edouard Vuillard, Desmarais Panels:
A Game of Shuttlecock (1892), oil on
canvas, 48.5 × 117 cm. Private collection.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
2.5  Pierre Bonnard, La Geste du roi,
illustration from Le Livre d’art: suite aux
Programmes du Théâtre d’Art (1891–92),
photomechanical reproduction, 14.3 × 6.8
cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris
2.6  Paul Sérusier, La Fille aux mains
coupées, illustration from Le Livre
d’art: suite aux Programmes du Théâtre
d’Art (1891–92), photomechanical
reproduction, 11.2 × 6.7 cm. Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris
2.7  Maurice Denis, Théodat,
illustration from Le Livre d’art: suite aux
Programmes du Théâtre d’Art (1891–92),
photomechanical reproduction, 9.2 × 5.3
cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris

2.8  Paul Ranson, Le Bateau ivre,
illustration from Le Livre d’art: suite
aux Programmes du Théâtre d’Art (1891–
92), photomechanical reproduction, 10.8
× 5.4 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris
2.9  Maurice Denis, theater program for
Maurice Maeterlinck’s Intérieur (1895),
lithograph, sheet 25 × 33.7 cm. Zimmerli
Art Museum, New Brunswick, New
Jersey
2.10  Edouard Vuillard, Solness, le
constructeur (The Master Builder) by
Henrik Ibsen (1894), lithograph in black
on brown wove paper, sheet 32.5 × 24.2
cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington
DC, Gift of The Atlas Foundation.
Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees,
National Gallery of Art, Washington
2.11  Maurice Denis, The Two Sisters,
Fragment of L’Intruse (1891), oil on
canvas, 47.5 × 39.5 cm (including frame).
Amsterdam. Photo credit: Catalogue
raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
2.12  Edouard Vuillard, L’Intruse (1891),
oil on board, 28 × 60.5 cm. Private
collection. Photo credit: Vuillard Archive,
Paris
2.13  Henri Fantin-Latour, The Daughters
of the Rhine (Rheingold) (1888), oil on
canvas, 115.5 × 79 cm. Hamburger
Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany. Photo:
Elke Walford. Photo credit: Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource,
NY
2.14  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The
Poor Fisherman (1881), oil on canvas, 156
× 193 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo:
Hervé Lewandowski. Photo credit:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY
2.15  Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa
(1503–06), oil on poplar, 77 × 53 cm.
list of illustrations xi
Louvre, Paris. Inv. 779. Photo: R.G.
Ojeda. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
2.16  Georges Antoine Rochegrosse,
Knight Among the Flower-Maidens, from
Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’ (1894), oil on canvas,
235 × 375 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. Photo
credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/
Art Resource, NY. © 2010 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP,
Paris
3  Modernism and Catholicism in
Maurice Denis’s Frauenliebe und Leben
3.1  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: The Communicants (1895), oil on
canvas, 50 × 90 cm. Private collection.
Photograph taken circa 1898. Photo
credit: Catalogue raisonné Maurice
Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
3.2  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Young Girl at the Mirror (1895), oil
on canvas, 49 × 34 cm. Private collection.
Photograph taken circa 1898. Photo
credit: Catalogue raisonné Maurice
Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
3.3  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Farandole (1895), oil on canvas, 48
× 205 cm. Private collection. Photo credit:
Catalogue raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
3.4  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Engagement Wreath (1895), oil on
canvas, approx. 45 × 137 cm. Presumed
lost. Photograph taken circa 1898. Photo
credit: Catalogue raisonné Maurice
Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
3.5  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Marriage (1895), oil on canvas,
approx. 45 × 134 cm. Presumed lost.
Photograph taken circa 1898. Photo
credit: Catalogue raisonné Maurice
Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
xii the nabis and intimate modernism
3.6  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Birth (1895), oil on canvas, approx.
50 × 201 cm. Presumed lost. Photograph
taken circa 1898. Photo credit: Catalogue
raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
3.7  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Childhood (1895), oil on canvas, 53
× 147 cm. Presumed lost. Photograph
taken circa 1898. Photo credit: Catalogue
raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
3.8  Maurice Denis, Frauenliebe und
Leben: Childhood, installed in the dining
room of Harry Kessler’s apartment (after
1904), Weimar, Germany. Photo credit:
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY
3.9  Félix Vallotton, To Richard Wagner
(1891), xylograph on vellum, plate 19.5
× 13.8 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Département des Estampes et de
la photographie, Paris
3.10  Félix Vallotton, To Schumann
(1893), woodcut, 15.3 × 12.4 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
3.11  Henri Fantin-Latour, A Piece by
Schumann (1864), etching, 18.7 × 27.7 cm.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada.
Photo © National Gallery of Canada/
Canadian Museum of Contemporary
Photography
3.12  Fernand Khnopff, Listening to
Schumann (1883), oil on canvas, 101.5 ×
116.5 cm. Brussels, Musées Royaux des
Beaux-Arts de Belgique
3.13  Maurice Denis, Four Panels for a
Young Girl’s Bedroom: September (1891),
oil on canvas, 38 × 61 cm. Musée des Arts
Décoratifs, Paris. Photo credit: Catalogue
raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
3.14  Maurice Denis, Four Panels for
a Young Girl’s Bedroom: October (1891),
oil on canvas, 38.2 × 61.2 cm. Private
collection. Photo credit: Catalogue
raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
3.15  Maurice Denis, Four Panels for a
Young Girl’s Bedroom: April (1892), oil on
canvas, 37.5 × 58.7 cm. Collection Kröller-
Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands. Photo
credit: Catalogue raisonné Maurice
Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
3.16  Maurice Denis, Four Panels for a
Young Girl’s Bedroom: July (1892), oil on
canvas, 38 × 60 cm. Fondation Rau pour
le Tiers-Monde, Zürich. Photo credit:
Catalogue raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
3.17  Maurice Denis, sketch for
Frauenliebe und Leben: Engagement Wreath
(1895), charcoal and gouache on paper,
42.7 × 139 cm. Musée Maurice Denis,
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
3.18  Maurice Denis, sketch for
Frauenliebe und Leben: Marriage (1895),
charcoal and gouache on paper, 45 ×
134 cm. Musée Maurice Denis, Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
3.19  Fra Angelico, Annunciation (circa
1440–45), fresco, 230 × 297 cm. Museo
di San Marco, Florence. Photo credit:
Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY
3.20  Carlos Schwabe, poster for the
First Salon de la Rose + Croix (1892),
lithograph, 198 × 80.5 cm. Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris
3.21  James Tissot, The Life of Our Lord
Jesus Christ: The Young Rich Man Who
Went Away Sorrowful (circa 1886–96),
opaque watercolor over graphite on gray
wove paper, 12.5 × 18.7 cm. Brooklyn
Museum, New York, 00.159.159.
Purchased by public subscription
3.22  Maurice Denis, Trinitarian Evening
(1891), oil on canvas, 105 × 72 cm. Private
collection. Photo credit: Catalogue

raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye
3.23  Maurice Denis, illustration for
L’Imitation de Jésus Christ (1894–1903),
wood engraving after drawing by Denis,
30 × 25 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris
3.24  Paul Gauguin, The Vision After the
Sermon (1888), oil on canvas, 72.2 × 91 cm.
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh,
Scotland. Photo credit: Art Resource, NY
3.25  Odilon Redon, The Fairy (Profile of
Light) (1882), charcoal and black chalk
on paper, 35.9 × 26 cm. Louise Reinhardt
Smith Bequest. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Digital image © The
Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by
SCALA/Art Resource, NY
3.26  Maurice Denis, Crucifixion (1903),
oil on canvas, 148 × 88 cm. Sacred Heart
Chapel, Sainte-Marguerite du Vésinet.
Photo credit: © Ile de France, Inventaire
général du patrimoine culturel. Photo
credit: J.B. Vialles
4  Two Versions of the
Gesamtkunstwerk: The Nabis and the
Art Nouveau Interior
4.1  Dining room at Siegfried Bing’s
1895 Salon de l’Art Nouveau, rue de
Provence and rue Chauchat, Paris.
Furniture by Henry van de Velde,
painted murals by Paul Ranson, and
table service by Edouard Vuillard. DAF/
Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/
Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle.
Cliché E. Pourchet, Paris. © 2010 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
4.2  Henry van de Velde’s wife, Maria
Sèthe, posing in Bloemenwerf, Uccle,
Belgium. Photo taken between 1898 and
1900 and published in Dekorative Kunst 8
(1901), page 35
list of illustrations xiii
4.3  Edouard Vuillard, Album: Tapestry
(Embroidery) (1895), oil on canvas, 176 ×
65 cm. New York, Museum of Modern
Art, John Hay Whitney Collection. Photo
credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
4.4  Edouard Vuillard, Album: Striped
Blouse (1895), oil on canvas, 65 × 58 cm.
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
4.5  Edouard Vuillard, Album: Vanity
Table (1895), oil on canvas, 65 × 116 cm.
Private collection. Photo credit: Vuillard
Archive, Paris
4.6  Edouard Vuillard, Album: Stoneware
Vase (1895), oil on canvas, 65 × 116 cm.
Private collection. Photo credit: Vuillard
Archive, Paris
4.7  Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s
house in Auteuil, France. Grand salon
with fireplace. Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris
4.8  Rudolf Alexandre Schröder,
upholstered chairs for A.W. Heymel’s
apartment, Munich, Germany.
Photographed and published in Julius
Meier-Graefe, ‘Ein modernes Milieu,’
Dekorative Kunst, Year 4, vol. 8, no. 7
(1901), page 261
4.9  Henry van de Velde, Woman at the
Window (1889), oil on canvas, 114 × 128
cm. Anvers, Musée Royal des Beaux-
Arts. © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW. ©
2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/SABAM, Brussels
4.10  Henry van de Velde, Summer
Garden (1892), oil on canvas, 172 × 67.5
cm. Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen.
Photo: Friedrich Rosenstil, Cologne. ©
2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/SABAM, Brussels
4.11  Henry van de Velde, Angel’s
Watch (1893), wool and silk embroidery,
xiv the nabis and intimate modernism
140 × 233 cm. Museum für Gestaltung
Zürich, Kunstgewerbesammlung.
Photo: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich,
Kunstgewerbesammlung. Marlen Perez
© ZHdK. © 2010 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/SABAM, Brussels
4.12  Henry van de Velde and Georges
Lemmen, smoking room exhibited at
Siegfried Bing’s 1895 Salon de l’Art
Nouveau, Paris. Photographed and
published in Dekorative Kunst, Year 1, vol.
3, no. 1 (1898–99), page 19. © 2010 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
4.13  Maurice Denis, Regattas at Perros-
Guirec (1892), oil on canvas, 41 × 32 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, on deposit at the
Musée de Quimper, France. Photo credit:
Catalogue raisonné Maurice Denis, Saint-
Germain-en-Laye
4.14  Maurice Denis, Pink Boats (1893),
wallpaper design, gouache on paper
glued to cardboard, 79 × 50 cm. Musée
Départemental Maurice Denis ‘Le
Prieuré,’ Saint-Germain-en-Laye
4.15  Edouard Vuillard, dinner plate
exhibited at Siegfried Bing’s 1895
Salon de l’Art Nouveau. Porcelain,
24.5 cm (diameter). Loan number: TR
10444. Private collection. Photo credit:
Indianapolis Museum of Art
4.16  Edouard Vuillard, Chestnut Trees
(1894–95), cartoon for a stained-glass
window commissioned by Siegfried
Bing. Distemper on cardboard glued to
canvas, 110 × 70 cm. Private collection.
Photo credit: Vuillard Archive, Paris
4.17  Central floor plan of Bing’s Galerie
de l’Art Nouveau, 22 rue de Provence
and 19 rue Chauchat, 3 July 1895.
Archives de Paris, 1Fi 1744
4.18  Edouard Vuillard, Interior with
Work Table (The Suitor) (1893), oil on
millboard panel, 31.75 × 36.35 cm. Smith
College Museum of Art, Northampton,
Massachusetts. Purchased with the
Drayton Hillyer Fund
4.19  Anonymous, Seignorial Life:
Embroidery (16th century, Southern
Netherlands), wool and silk tapestry,
265 × 224 cm. Musée National du
Moyen Age-Thermes de Cluny, Paris.
Inv. Cl.2181. Photo: Franck Raux. Photo
credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/
Art Resource, NY
5  The Art of Reverie: Vuillard’s
Vaquez Decoration and the Nabis’
Critical Legacy
5.1  Office of Léon Ginain, as reproduced
in ‘Les Maîtres de l’architecture française.
Académie des Beaux-Arts. M. Léon
Ginain,’ La Construction moderne (11 May
1895), page 374. Bibliothèque Nationale
de France, Paris
5.2  Edouard Vuillard, Théodore
Duret in His Study (1912), oil on board
mounted on cradled panel, 95 × 74.5 cm.
Washington DC, National Gallery of Art,
Chester Dale Collection. Photo credit:
Vuillard Archive, Paris
5.3  Edouard Vuillard, Interior (Marie
Leaning Over Her Work) (1892–93), oil on
board mounted on cradled panel, 23.2
× 34.3 cm. Yale University Art Gallery,
New Haven, Connecticut. Bequest of
Edith Malvina K. Wetmore. Photo credit:
Yale University Art Gallery and Vuillard
Archive, Paris
5.4  Edouard Vuillard, Madame Vuillard
Reading the Newspaper (1898), oil on board
mounted on cradled panel, 32.2 × 53.3
cm. The Phillips Collection, Washington
DC. Photo credit: The Phillips Collection,
Washington DC, and the Vuillard
Archive, Paris
5.5  Edgar Degas, Resting (Repos) (1876–
77), monotype in black ink on China

paper, 16.4 × 21.6 cm. Musée Picasso,
Paris. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
5.6  Edouard Vuillard, Schopfer
Decoration. Woman Reading on a Bench
(1898), distemper on canvas, 214 × 161
cm. Private collection. Photo credit:
Vuillard Archive, Paris
5.7  Edouard Vuillard, Schopfer
Decoration. Woman Seated in a Garden
(1898), distemper on canvas, 214 × 161
cm. Private collection. Photo credit:
Vuillard Archive, Paris
5.8  Edouard Vuillard, Luncheon at
Vasouy (1901), distemper on canvas, left
half, 218 × 182 cm. National Gallery,
London. Photo credit: Vuillard Archive,
Paris
5.9  Edouard Vuillard, Luncheon at
Vasouy (1901), distemper on canvas, right
half, 218 × 182 cm. National Gallery,
London. Photo credit: Vuillard Archive,
Paris
Conclusion: An Armchair Aesthetic:
From the Nabis to Matisse
and Beyond
6.1  Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red
(1908), oil on canvas, 180 × 220 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg. © 2010 Succession H.
Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York
6.2  Henry van de Velde, Hohenhof
house (south façade) (1906–08), Hagen,
Germany. Photo credit: Foto Marburg/
Art Resource, NY. © 2010 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
6.3  Henri Matisse, Tile Triptych (Nymph
and Satyr) (1907), painted and glazed
ceramic tiles, left to right, 58.5 × 39.9
cm, 56.6 × 67 cm, 57 × 38 cm, installed
list of illustrations xv
in the conservatory of the Hohenhof
house, Hagen, Germany. Photo credit:
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY. © 2010
Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York
6.4  Ferdinand Hodler, The Chosen
One (1890–1900), tempera, 220 × 300
cm, installed in the sitting room of the
Hohenhof house, Hagen, Germany.
Photo credit: Foto Marburg/Art
Resource, NY. © 2010 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
6.5  Edouard Vuillard, Promenade
(1900), oil on canvas, 260.4 × 248.9 cm,
installed (1907) in the living room of
the Hohenhof house, Hagen, Germany.
Photo credit: Foto Marburg/Art
Resource, NY
6.6  Conservatory of the Hohenhof
house (1906–08) with Matisse’s ceramic
triptych, Hagen, Germany. Photo credit:
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY. © 2010
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/
SABAM, Brussels. © 2010 Succession H.
Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York
6.7  Winding walk with steps leading
from the veranda to the sunken garden,
Hohenhof house, Hagen, Germany.
Author’s photograph. © 2010 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
6.8  Main staircase in the Hohenhof
house (1906–08), Hagen, Germany.
Photo credit: Foto Marburg/Art
Resource, NY. © 2010 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/SABAM,
Brussels
6.9  Henri Matisse, Dance (1910), oil
on canvas, 260 × 391 cm. The State
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
© 2010 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
xvi the nabis and intimate modernism
6.10  Henri Matisse, Music (1910),
oil on canvas, 260 × 389 cm. The
State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg. © 2010 Succession H.
Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York
6.11  Henri Matisse, Composition II
(Bathers) (circa 1909–10), watercolor
and ink, 21.5 × 29.2 cm. State Pushkin
Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. © 2010
Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York
Acknowledgements

In writing this book I have incurred many debts to institutions and

individuals. A Fulbright Grant, a Dedalus Dissertation Fellowship, and a
Chateaubriand Fellowship funded several years of research in France. A
Department Dissertation Fellowship from the University of California at
Berkeley’s History of Art Department enabled me to complete a first draft of
the project, which I subsequently revised and expanded with the assistance
of Project Grants from Wesleyan University and a Faculty Fellowship
at Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities. The final stage of gathering
illustrations for publication was greatly eased by a generous Publications
Assistance Grant from Wesleyan University.
My work on the Nabis began in a graduate seminar with T.J. Clark at
the University of California at Berkeley, and I am greatly indebted to his
continued enthusiasm and support for this project. Clark gave me free rein
to develop as a scholar while providing valuable advice at critical junctures,
including reading a full draft of the book manuscript. Clark’s intellectual
generosity as well as his own powerful work on modernism has informed
this project at every turn.
This project would never have been written were it not for the pioneering
work of Jean-Paul Bouillon and Gloria Groom. Bouillon’s rigorous editions
and interpretations of Denis’s critical writings have established these texts
as major documents in the study of modern art. Groom’s writings have
elucidated the terms of the Nabis’ decorative commissions, provided
essential information about their patrons, and recovered the paintings’
original installations. Her archival work has shaped our understanding
of the social networks that brought these paintings into existence. Both
Bouillon and Groom have been extremely generous in offering practical
research advice as well as in reading drafts of my manuscript.
Numerous other colleagues and friends have read and commented on
this manuscript, and their clear-headed advice and moral support have been
greatly appreciated. Kathleen James did the most to help me conceive of this
project as a book, and her heroic editing will be remembered for years to
come. André Dombrowski provided essential advice and encouragement,
xviii the nabis and intimate modernism

and crucial elements of this project came together during the symposium
‘Towards a Synaesthetic Modernity,’ that we co-organized in the spring of
2007. Timothy Barringer, Juliet Koss, and Debora Silverman asked questions
at that symposium that were particularly helpful in shaping Chapter 2. My
colleague Joseph Siry commented thoughtfully on numerous drafts of this
manuscript, and he provided a rock of stability during periods of revision
and reorganization. Jenny Anger read a draft of Chapter 4 and generously
shared her research and thoughts on the decorative. Rossella Froissart-
Pezone also shared with me her extensive knowledge of the decorative,
and pointed me in the direction of several key sources. Aruna D’Souza read
an entire draft of my manuscript, and her questioning led me to sharpen
my argumentation and connect it to trends in recent scholarship. Two
anonymous readers’ reports from Ashgate were extremely helpful in their
rigor and thoroughness. I know that this book is better for them.
Portions of this book were presented in the form of invited talks at the
Association of Art Historians, the College Art Association, the Musée d’Orsay,
Smith College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University. My project benefited
substantially from questions and conversations initiated at these institutions.
My thanks go to Patrizia di Bello, Jean-Paul Bouillon, Edward Cooke, André
Dombrowski, Gloria Groom, and Gabriel Koureas for inviting me to share
my research. My colleagues at Wesleyan University, especially Clark Maines,
Yonatan Malin, John Paoletti, Clare Rogan, Philip Wagoner, and Sarah Wiliarty
offered me their keen insights and helped me keep the project in perspective.
My students at Wesleyan, especially Christopher Gartrell, Sarah Leonard, and
Adam Rizzo, have learned more about the Nabis than they ever wanted, and
their questions and enthusiasm have nourished this project.
Staff at libraries and archives aided the research and publication phases
of this project. Maire El Caïdi at the Musée Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-
en-Laye was extremely accessible and responsive, and made working at the
archive a pleasurable experience. Claire Denis generously provided me with
essential documentation and images. Mathias Chivot at the Vuillard archive
was indispensable in helping me secure images for publication. I am also
indebted to Andrea Sinzel at the Karl Ernst Osthaus archive in Hagen for
bringing key documents to my attention. The staff at Wesleyan’s Interlibrary
Loan Office found just about every source I requested; Carol Kearney and
Rhonda York provided much-appreciated administrative assistance, and
Susan Passman and Nara Giannella helped with digital images. I am also
indebted to the staff at the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Bibliothèque
Jacques Doucet in Paris, the Bibliothèque Albert Ier in Brussels, and the
Kunsthistorisches Institut and the Staatsbibliothek in Munich. My editors at
Ashgate, Erika Gaffney and Meredith Norwich, have done a wonderful job
of moving this project forward. Their enthusiasm and attention to the project
fueled its final stages.
My greatest debt of all goes to my family. My husband, Michael Printy, has
lived through every phase of this project, and has been a constant source of
 acknowledgements xix

advice, patience, and wisdom. He read more drafts of my chapters than any
one should, stayed up for late-night discussions, and facilitated and supported
my work at every stage. Our two children, Oliver and Nora, arrived in the
middle of my writing, and have been incomparable sources of joy. Joan and
O’Neill Printy have helped with childcare and kept us from becoming starving
scholar-parents. Rudolf and Cecile Kuenzli, my parents, have believed in this
project since its inception, and have supported it materially, emotionally, and
intellectually. I dedicate the book to them.
Introduction

‘All my life, I floated between intimism and decoration,’ Pierre Bonnard

once said.1 His association of intimacy with the decorative conjures up the
refined and well-appointed Parisian homes with which his group of artists,
the Nabis, is associated. The Nabis distinguished themselves between 1890
and 1900 as decorative painters for private patrons, and their reputation as
intimists has continued unabated to the present day. However, their very
success proved to be their undoing when the decorative and the domestic
became terms of derision in canonical formulations of modernism.2 This
study seeks to recover the intellectual seriousness and artistic ambition
underlying the Nabis’ practice of decoration, and argues for its crucial
importance to painterly modernism.
Intimacy was far from being a merely personal affair in the 1890s: for
the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé and his followers, it constituted
the grounds for forging an experience of totality. Previous generations
of artists had associated universality with grandiose public statements.
The size of a canvas, orchestra or poem stood in proportion to its author’s
ambition, and the nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of works
of enormous length and physical proportion intended for increasingly
large audiences. In contrast, the Nabis joined Mallarmé in reversing the
equation between publicity and ambition. True knowledge, they believed,
could not be found in exterior appearances or actions, but was best arrived
at through introspection. Art was to enable an experience of psychological
intimacy that was characterized by the breakdown of boundaries between
self and other. The Nabis’ and Mallarmé’s valorization of introspection
led them to ground their search for meaning in private, enclosed spaces,
especially those of the domestic apartment. These artists detached the home
from its familial functions, and reinvented it as a space for reverie and
contemplation. Psychological interiority could not be directly represented,
artists believed, but could be evoked through a series of seductive formal
fragments. Accordingly, painters distorted nature to form a series of
allusive formal rhythms that awakened viewers’ intuition and provoked
in them feelings of expansiveness.
  the nabis and intimate modernism

0.1  Georges Not only ‘intimacy,’ but also the ‘decorative’ stood at the forefront of
Seurat, A Sunday artistic innovation in the 1890s as both a new idiom and an approach to
on the Grande
painting as an environment. Claude Monet exhibited his landmark series
Jatte (1884–86),
205.5 × 308.1 cm of haystacks and poplars in 1891, and these works were praised at the time
for their ‘decorative’ effect. Félix Fénéon and the Neo-Impressionists put
forward their own vision of decorative harmony in public murals, whether
Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on the Grande Jatte (1884–86, Figure 0.1) or Paul
Signac’s In the Time of Harmony (1895). In 1891, critic Albert Aurier celebrated
Paul Gauguin as a decorative painter and defined Symbolist painting as
above all ‘decorative.’ The 1890s were filled with tributes to the monumental
murals of Puvis de Chavannes, whom artists and critics alike hailed as
France’s greatest decorator.3
Far from marginal, the decorative represented the terrain upon which
artistic battles were waged in the wake of Impressionism. Artists who
practiced the decorative debated the nature of sensation and its role in
composition, as well as modern art’s relationship to a real or imagined public.
At stake in these debates was an attempt to restore an enduring character to
painting, to revise Impressionist spontaneity and directness in favor of more
deliberate arrangement. Art threatened to devolve into a form of journalism,
Nabi artist Maurice Denis cautioned fellow painter Edouard Vuillard in
1898.4 With these words he expressed real concern that art was becoming
too individualistic, too subjective, and too mercantile. Denis wrote at a time
when Impressionist painting was fetching relatively large sums on the art
0.2  Claude Monet, The Valley of the Creuse (Sunlight Effect) (1889), 65.1 × 92.4 cm.
Photograph © 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

0.3  Claude Monet, The Creuse Valley, Evening Effect (1889), 65 × 81 cm

 the nabis and intimate modernism

market. Such financial success, Denis believed, cheapened art’s intellectual

and aesthetic value. Buyers acted out of financial motivation and purchased
paintings on speculation, only to resell them when prices climbed. By
contrast, the Nabis conceived of art’s riches as above all spiritual, and they
constructed decorations as fixed ensembles, which eluded market forces.
Denis directed his criticism above all to the work of Claude Monet, who
famously associated Impressionism with the decorative in the 1880s in his
series paintings of the Creuse valley, as well as in his multiple views of Belle-
Isle and Antibes.5 In each series, Monet repeats the same motif and even
sometimes the same viewing position. What varies are the changing lighting
and atmospheric conditions, which lend the landscape an alternatively
lush or somber character (see Figures 0.2, 0.3). The ‘decorative,’ as it was
employed by Monet and his supporters, referred to the poetic character of
his canvases. His admirers praised how the artist did not recreate nature, but
instead made it the basis of dream-like visions. Loose, bravura brushwork
varies according to his subject matter and mood, and attests to his personal
and spontaneous approach to composition.
Vuillard’s nine-panel series Public Gardens (see Figures 0.4–0.9, Plate 1)
provides insight into the ways that the Nabis revised Monet’s take on the
decorative. Instead of repeating a single recognizable motif, as was Monet’s
practice, Vuillard constructs a generalized park space complete with
nursemaids and frolicking children across the multiple canvases that comprise
his decoration. He combines elements from several Parisian parks rather
than documenting a single location.6 And instead of conceiving of painting
as a window onto nature, Vuillard brings the profusion of nature into the
interior. He compresses pictorial space and lends natural forms a decidedly
artificial, stylized appearance. These distortions inevitably result in awkward
moments, such as in Asking Questions (see Figure 0.7) when a girl, who is
meant to be leaping and spinning in space, instead appears pinned to the
surface of the canvas, her body flattened into an illegible mass. However, these
odd moments are not an end, but a means of creating abstract, and essentially
soothing, harmonies of line and color. Vuillard’s paintings turn on a tension
between cultivating the specificity of individual sensation – capturing the
children’s impulsive movements and the lightness of the billowing clouds
– and abstracting nature through all-over patterning. The sandy park floor
and blooming chestnut trees consist of individual touches applied with the
precision of a miniaturist. Vuillard conveys his painstaking and deliberate
process of composition in an 1894 journal entry, in which he compares
painting to lace-making.7 However, his aims were by no means artisanal or
limited: like Seurat, whose canvases he admired, Vuillard, in his decorations,
adopts a more deliberate and disciplined approach to art-making in order to
lend individual sensation a more enduring character.
Ultimately, Vuillard’s painted environment is more stable and fixed
than Monet’s variable surfaces. Kermit Champa astutely observes that the
grouping of Monet’s series paintings together individualizes the paintings
 0.4  Edouard Vuillard, 0.5  Edouard Vuillard,
Public Gardens: The Two Schoolboys Public Gardens: Under the Trees
(1894), 214 × 98 cm (1894), 214.2 × 96.3 cm
 0.6  Edouard Vuillard, 0.7  Edouard Vuillard,
Public Gardens: Little Girls Playing Public Gardens: Asking Questions
(1894), 212 × 84 cm (1894), 212 × 96 cm
 0.8  Edouard Vuillard, 0.9  Edouard Vuillard,
Public Gardens: The Promenade Public Gardens: First Steps
(1894), 214.3 × 97.2 cm (1894), 212 × 67 cm
 the nabis and intimate modernism

while at the same time producing a composite effect. Each painting represents
a discrete moment at the same time that it participates in a larger sequence.8
By contrast, Vuillard conceives his canvases as a single tableau. The panels
that comprise Public Gardens are not meant to be viewed sequentially,
but to constitute a single un-ending composition whose effects transcend
those of any particular place or moment. And rather than selling canvases
individually, Vuillard created his canvases as an unbroken ensemble for his
patrons, Alexandre and Olga Natanson, who permanently installed them in
their Parisian apartment.9
In its site-specificity, Public Gardens recalls the works of Pierre Puvis de
Chavannes and Paul Gauguin, who provided Vuillard with essential points of
reference, and yet Vuillard (and the Nabis generally speaking) went further
than their predecessors in redefining decorative painting’s structure, form,
and viewer relationship. In Public Gardens Vuillard departs from previous
decorative conventions in continuing a single composition across nine panels
in an effort to surround the viewer with repetitive rhythms of line and color.
His strategies of formal flattening and distortion recall those of Puvis de
Chavannes, but he rejects Puvis’s practice of composing decorations out of
discrete compositions with interlinked narratives. In Ancient Vision (1885,
see Figure 0.10) and Christian Inspiration (1886, see Figure 0.11), two murals
created for the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, Puvis signals the distinctness
of classical and medieval eras, whereas the Nabis create an all-over effect.
Although Puvis innovates formally in his Lyon murals, as Jennifer Shaw
has demonstrated, in other ways he continues to paint within a tradition of
narrative decorative cycles.10 Of course the Nabis interpreted Puvis’s painting
to serve their own interests, but their admiration for him did not result in
mere imitation. The Nabis never received the same public commissions
that made Puvis’s reputation, and the Beaux-Arts ministry was not alone in
perceiving a fundamental difference between Puvis’s decorations and those
of a younger generation. Significantly, Puvis never expressed any sympathy
for the Nabis’ accomplishments even though they worked at the very same
moment in Paris.
Unlike Puvis’s decorations, which were displayed in grand, public spaces,
the Nabis created their decorations in the 1890s almost exclusively for private
environments. Although they dreamed of one day creating public decorations,
they rejected both allegory and naturalist idioms, which were favored by the
Third Republic’s Beaux-Arts administration. Not only the Nabis’ idiom, but
also the sheer banality of their motifs sets them apart from official decoration.
By painting local parks and private interiors devoid of significant action, the
Nabis transgressed monumental painting conventions.11 In many ways, the
domestic sphere served the Nabis’ intentions: viewers were meant to come
close, to more fully enter into the work’s lulling rhythms, which they believed
could dissolve boundaries between painting and viewer, self and other.
The Nabis’ emphasis on everyday sensation and elaboration of a single
composition across multiple panels also sets their work apart from Gauguin’s
 0.10  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Ancient Vision (1885), 460 × 578 cm

0.11  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Christian Interpretation (1886), 460 × 578 cm