Pierre Bonnard
(French, 1867–1947)

Pierre Eugène Frédéric Bonnard spent his childhood in the village of Le Grand-Lemps, which served as subject matter in his early paintings. While earning a law degree, Bonnard simultaneously attended art classes at the Académie Julian in Paris. There, he and fellow artists Maurice Denis, Ker Xavier Roussel, and Edouard Vuillard banded together in their dissatisfaction with academic teachings to form a secret brotherhood dedicated to returning art to its purely decorative roots. Bonnard, like Denis, worked in the most varied of formats, designing posters, book illustrations, sheet music, theater programs, stage sets, costumes, and stained-glass windows, while also producing drawings and lithographs for newspapers and magazines and experimenting with photography. Bonnard’s discovery of the Mediterranean region around 1910 inspired him to use luminescent color to evoke the sensuous nature of that region. Intense color continued to be a meaningful component of his decorative works in his later years.

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Edouard Vuillard
(French 1868–1940)

While his colleagues increasingly took inspiration from the Mediterranean region in the early years of the 20th century, Edouard Vuillard remained rooted to Paris and its environs. He lived in the French capital throughout his life, residing for many years with his mother in the apartment under her dressmaking studio. A lifelong bachelor, Vuillard also remained close to his sister, who married the painter Ker Xavier Roussel in 1893 and bore two children. Vuillard attended the same lycée (high school) as did Roussel and Maurice Denis and went on to study at both the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His preferred themes were urban life and intimate domestic interiors. He also worked on lithographic design, as well as programs, sets, and costumes for theater productions. Vuillard experimented extensively with distemper (dry pigments dissolved in hot glue), which became his preferred medium in his later years.

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Maurice Denis
(French, 1870–1943)

Maurice Denis was the most fervent promoter of the Nabis. He wrote numerous reviews, articles, and treatises, including the group’s manifesto defending the innovations of Paul Gauguin that emphasized the importance of the decorative elements of line, color, and form over pure representation. Denis’s work is distinguished by his use of Christian imagery and symbolism, as well as by the classical subjects and forms inspired by several sojourns in Italy.

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Ker Xavier Roussel
(French, 1867–1944)

Originally predisposed toward representations of dark, intimate scenes consistent with the works of the Nabis, Ker Xavier Roussel later became influenced by the topography and light of the south of France. The distinct qualities of this landscape made their way into Roussel’s art after 1900 and are seen in his pastoral paintings, lithographs, drawings, and pastels. A unique component of these landscapes is the presence of figures drawn from ancient mythology, with an emphasis on those from sensual and Dionysian tales. Although he is the least known of the four artists to the modern American public, Roussel (like Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard) also received critical international fame and commissions from influential patrons.

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