Edouard Vuillard & Ker-Xavier Roussel: Intimites en plein air: Paysages (1890–1944) / Private Moments in the Open Air: Landscapes (1890–1944)

The French painters Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) and Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944) had a singular relationship, sharing similar artistic trajectories and interests in careers that bridged the 19th and 20th centuries. One such shared interest was the landscape genre, which both artists returned to again and again, in paintings and drawings, as a site for stylistic experimentation. In the 1890s, the two artists painted landscapes in order to renew the genre, filtering it through the radical, anti-naturalistic colors of the Nabis group. By the 1920s and 1930s, Vuillard and Roussel were swept up in the “return to order,” painting the landscape in a classicizing, decorative style. This new volume examines the theme of the landscape in the oeuvres of the two painters, offering a new perspective on the evolution of European painting over the course of half a century.