Biographies

Edouard Vuillard (1868 – 1940) He was born at Cuisseaux in France. When he was nine his family moved to Paris. His father, a retired military officer, died in 1883. His mother who came from a family of textile designers, went into the dressmaking trade to support her children. Such an environment must have nurtured Vuillard’s sensuous awareness of patterns and textures. Vuillard was educated, like , at the Lycee Condorcet in Paris, where he met , who married his sister, and . In 1886, Vuillard went on, with Roussel, to study painting at the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the academic . Two years later he was working with Denis, his lifelong friend , and at the Academie Julian. Toulouse-Lautrec Ker Xavier Roussel Maurice Denis Jean Leon Gerome Pierre Bonnard Paul Serusier That year, 1888, Serusier met at Pont-Aven in Brittany and later brought back with him a painting, , of an entirely new type, the result of taking literally Gauguin’s advice to paint in unmodulated, unshaded, unadulterated colors. Led by Serusier these young painters formed a group called the Nabis, after the Hebrew for “Prophets.” Vuillard, Bonnard, Denis, and Roussel all became members. The Nabis quickly became leaders in the post-impressionist movement, attracting other painters and sculptors into their orbit. Many of them wrote and illustrated for . Gauguin The Talisman La Revue Blanche