Book excerpt: "The long and illustrious career of Edouard Vuillard spans the fin-de-siecle and the first four decades of the twentieth century, during which time the French painter, printmaker, and photographer created an extraordinary body of work. This is the first volume to explore Vuillard's rich and varied career in its totality, presenting nearly 350 works that demonstrate the full range of his subject matter and reveal both the public and private sides of this quintessentially Parisian artist." "In a series of illustrated essays and catalogue entries, the authors explore Vuillard's complex and diverse artistic development, beginning with his academic training in Paris in the late 1880s and the innovative Nabi paintings of the 1890s for which he is best known, including his provocative, disquieting middle-class interiors and his work associated with the avant-garde theatre. The authors also examine Vuillard's splendid but lesser known large-scale decorations, his luminous landscapes, and the elegant portraits from the last decades of his career. In addition to paintings, the volume includes a substantial selection of drawings and graphics, together with a large group of striking photographs by the artist, many of which are published here for the first time." "This illustrated catalogue accompanies the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to the work of Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940). The exhibition opens at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and travels to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved