Collection: Edouard Vuillard

Awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Lycée Condorcet, Vuillard met Ker-Xavier Roussel and Maurice Denis, with whom he would become lifelong friends. He would eventually co-found the artists’ group Les Nabis — the brotherhood — together with these two artists and others including Paul Sérusier and Pierre Bonnard.

Les Nabis (from the Hebrew and Arabic term for "prophets" and, by extension, the artist as the "seer" who reveals the invisible). The artists who became part of this Post-Impressionist, avant-garde collective were inspired by the paintings of Paul Gauguin, who sought to balance — or synthesise — considerations of form, colour and emotion.

However, he was less drawn to the mystical aspects of the group and more drawn to fashionable private venues where philosophical discussions about poetry, music, theatre, and the occult occurred. Because of his preference for the painting of interior and domestic scenes, he is often referred to as an "intimist," along with his friend Pierre Bonnard. He executed some of these "intimist" works in small scale, while others were conceived on a much larger scale made for the interiors of the people who commissioned the work.