Edouard Vuillard by Belinda Thompson

During the 1890s and early 1900s Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) produced a body of work that combines intimate subject matter with abstract form through the simplification of pictorial elements and observation of decorative fabrics and wallpapers. Through these devices he developed an art that is unashamedly decorative and yet always replete with subtle suggestions of deeper meanings. In balancing form and content, psychological drama and abstraction, his pictures are about as close to poetry as any artist's, and all the more brilliant for their understatement and the near imperceptibility of their craft.

Illustrating many rarely seen paintings from private collections, this book offers a fresh look at the early career of this much-loved artist. Introduced by Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne Museum, and with an original essay by Belinda Thompson.

Belinda Thomson is a freelance art historian and Honorary Professor in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. A specialist in late 19th-century French painting, particularly Gauguin and the Nabis, she published a monograph on Vuillard in 1988 (Phaidon). In 1991-2 she curated the Vuillard exhibition for the South Bank Centre which was seen in Glasgow, Sheffield and Amsterdam and in 1994 co-curated Bonnard at le Bosquet, London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 2010-11 she was lead curator of Gauguin: Maker of Myth at the Tate Modern, London, and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Dr Chris Stephens has been Director of the Holburne Museum since 2017. Prior to that he worked at Tate for over 20 years, as Head of Displays, Tate Britain, for much of that time, and also as Head of Modern British Art. Exhibitions in London and St Ives included Barbara Hepworth: Centenary (2003), Francis Bacon (2008), Henry Moore (2010), Picasso and Modern British Art (2012), Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World (2015) and David Hockney (2017). His book St Ives: The Art and the Artists was published by Pavilion in 2018.