The French painter and graphic artist Edouard Vuillard was born in Cuiseaux on November 11, 1868. He goes to Paris in 1877, where he attends the Académie Julian as of 1888. Besides Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton and Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard belongs to the co-founders of the artists group "Nabis" in 1890. Inspired by Japanese color woodcuts and the painting of Paul Gauguin and Pointillism, the artists experiment with a new concept of image space, in doing so they attain a decorative flatness and pattern-like order of what is depicted. The image's colors do not primarily consider the exact reproduction of the object, but follow esthetic aspects, additionally, the artist's own imaginative forces and emotions play an important role, which leads to an estheticization of the picture's symbolism.
Edouard Vuillard soon distinguishes himself from "Nabis". As of 1890 he makes his best and most important works. Among them are portraits and interior picture, which, restrained in color and form, put an emphasis on the depiction of humble settings and everyday life.
Besides paintings, he also creates an extensive graphic oeuvre, mostly lithographs depicting life in Paris in his days.
As of 1903 Edouard Vuillard regularly exhibits in the gallery Bernheim-Jeune and also some times in the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne, of which he is also co-founder. He spends the summer months in Brittany and Normandy. He leaves Paris in 1940 to flee the approaching troops, and dies a little later in La Baule on June 21, 1940.
Edouard Vuillard's works are in possession of large museums all over the world, his oeuvre was shown in an exhibition in the Seibu Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1977. The Lyon Musée des Beaux-Arts showed a retrospective of his works in 1990.