By Paris Breakfasts.

Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and his muses

 This terrific view of Place de la Concorde is from the book called,Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard (Phillips Collection)

 Yesterday I went to The Jewish Museum to see Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and his muses, 1890 - 1940

 So many snapshots are included taken by Vuillard. He loved to include mirrors and their reflections in his paintings.

 Here he's standing in the corner recording a luncheon. 'Vuillard sometimes used snapshots as studies or sketches toward paintings, but in their cropping, the relations of light and dark tones, and their unusual viewpoints, they bear the imprint of his personal aesthetic vision'.

 The casual patterned, truncated quality of this painting is simplified much like a photograph.

 A famous portrait of the charmer Madame Misia Natanson, loved by every artist in Paris (Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Félix Vallotton, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Romain Coolus, Octave Mirbeau, Tristan Bernard, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel) at the time. There's an exhibit devoted just to her on at the Musee d'Orsay if you're in Paris.

 Nearly 2,000 of Vuillard's small format prints survive.

 Portrait head painted on cardboard by Vuillard.

 Many of Vuillard's figures are caught in repose, reading, writing at a desk. 'As often in his work, there are passages where objects merge with ground and become nearly abstract...'

 A family portrait with most of the figures reading...

 Vuillard plays with 'lost and found' edges here so the figure merges often with the background color.

 'In this signature 'Nabi' work Vuillard embeds his figure in a compressed space packed with competing patterns and suppressed emotion...'(from the wall placard)

 Tout Sweet Karen Wheeler's introduced me to her friend the Maire of Anche, Martine. When she sat down to write something in the town's books, I said to her,

'You're a Vuillard painting!'

 After seeing yesterday's exhibit I did my 'Vuillard' version of Maire Martine...

Vuillard's images of people reposing, reading and generally lounging about spells summer all over it. The exhibit is on until September 23rd. Don't miss it!