The murmur of interiors: When bonnard and vuillard reinvented the art of living
Imagine an autumn afternoon in Paris, 1894. Golden light filters through the muslin curtains of an apartment in Montmartre, tracing shifting patterns across the floral wallpaper. In one corner of the sitting room, a woman in a plum-colored dress bends over her sewing, while a young girl, leaning against a Japanese screen, absently flips through a book. In the foreground, a man in a dark frock coat observes the scene, nearly invisible, as if he were just another shadow among the carpet’s motifs. This is not a photograph, but Édouard Vuillard’s Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, where domestic life becomes a symphony of colors and textures, where every object seems to whisper a story.
By Artedusa
••10 min readThis painting, like so many others by the Nabis, is not merely a representation. It is an invitation to step into a world where art no longer just decorates walls but inhabits space, where it breathes alongside those who observe it. Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, the two most intimate figures of this movement, pushed the boundaries until they erased the line between canvas and sitting room, between painting and wallpaper. Their genius? Having understood that beauty does not reside only in grand subjects, but in those stolen moments when a cup of tea, a shaft of sunlight on a wall, or the reflection of a face in a mirror become visual poems.
Why do their works, more than a century after their creation, still move us? Perhaps because they capture something universal: the desire to transform the everyday into something magical, to make our interiors places where art is not hung but lived.
01The talisman of Pont-Aven: when a painting changed the history of art
It all begins in 1888, in a Breton inn lost amid beech woods. A young painter, Paul Sérusier, meets Paul Gauguin there, who is then in search of an art that would escape the stifling naturalism of the Academy. Under the master’s guidance, Sérusier takes his palette and, on the lid of a cigar box, paints a stylized landscape: trees with violet trunks, a blood-red river, an emerald-green sky. Gauguin tells him: “How do you see that tree? It’s green? Then use green, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow? Rather blue? Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.”
This small painting, The Talisman, becomes the cornerstone of the Nabis. Sérusier brings it back to Paris and shows it to his friends at the Académie Julian—Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, Ranson. For these young artists, it is a revelation. They understand that painting does not have to imitate nature but translate it into forms and colors, extracting its essence rather than its appearance. They call themselves the “Nabis,” a Hebrew word meaning “prophets,” for they see themselves as heralds of a new art, freed from academic constraints.
But what truly sets the Nabis apart is their refusal to hierarchize the arts. For them, a poster, a screen, or a theater curtain is as valuable as a museum canvas. Bonnard designs programs for the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, Vuillard creates sets for Pelléas et Mélisande, and both design wallpapers that turn walls into works of art. Their credo? “Art is everywhere; you just have to know how to see it.”
02The studio of secrets: when walls speak
In the small apartment at 28 Rue Pigalle, shared by Bonnard, Vuillard, and Maurice Denis, the studio resembles Ali Baba’s cave. The walls are covered with Japanese prints, embroidered fabrics, and scattered sketches. The air carries the scent of turpentine and coffee, mingled with the fainter aroma of cigarettes smoked by the artists as they talk. It is here, in this creative chaos, that the movement’s boldest works are born.
Bonnard, the most extroverted of the group, paints with almost childlike joy. He loves bright colors, daring compositions, scenes where life seems suspended in a moment of grace. Vuillard, more reserved, observes the world with almost obsessive intensity. He notes everything: the way his mother folds a napkin, the play of light on a porcelain cup, the intricate patterns of a Persian rug. For him, painting is like keeping a diary, but with brushes.
One day, Bonnard decides to turn a simple breakfast scene into a visual feast. In The Dining Room (Interior, Woman at the Breakfast Table), Marthe, his companion, sits before a table laden with fruit, dishes, and a cat eyeing a crumb. The wall is covered in floral-patterned wallpaper, the tablecloth is a brilliant yellow, and the morning light floods the room, casting bluish shadows on the floor. What strikes the viewer is not the precision of the drawing but the way the colors seem to dance together. The blue of Marthe’s dress echoes the yellow of the tablecloth, the green of the leaves mirrors the red of the fruit. It is a chromatic symphony where every note matters.
Vuillard, on the other hand, prefers more muted, almost suffocating scenes. In The Suitor, his mother and sister sit in a sitting room overloaded with patterns: flowers on the wallpaper, stripes on the sofa, checks on the rug. A man stands in the doorway, half-hidden in shadow. One senses tension, an untold story. Vuillard’s genius lies in turning this bourgeois banality into a silent drama, where the characters seem trapped in their own decor.
03The wallpaper revolution: when art came down from the walls
At the end of the nineteenth century, the idea that a painter might design wallpaper was almost heretical. Yet the Nabis made it their crusade. For them, art should not be confined to museums but integrated into daily life. Bonnard and Vuillard collaborated with decorators like André Groult to create interiors where every element—from screens to rugs to cushions—was a work of art.
Bonnard, in particular, adored wallpapers. He designed several series, including one for Madame Kapferer’s townhouse, where floral motifs coiled around the walls like a lush jungle. These creations were not mere ornaments: they were paintings in their own right, designed to envelop space and create an atmosphere. “An interior,” he wrote, “should be like a second skin.”
Vuillard took the idea even further. In 1896, he received a commission to decorate Dr. Vaquez’s dining room. Instead of painting a canvas to hang on the wall, he created a series of mural panels in distemper (a glue-based paint) depicting scenes of public gardens. The figures—nannies, children, strollers—seem to float in a world of patterns and colors, as if they were part of the decor. These panels, now in the Musée d’Orsay, are a technical feat: the matte quality of the distemper absorbs light, creating a velvety softness that contrasts with the brilliance of the colors.
What strikes the viewer in these works is their modernity. By integrating art into architecture, the Nabis anticipated the research of the Bauhaus and Art Deco. They proved that beauty does not need to be spectacular to be powerful—that a simple pattern on a wall can transform a space into a poetic place.
04Marthe and the mother: the invisible muses
Behind every great artist, there is often a muse. For Bonnard, it was Marthe de Méligny, a mysterious woman he met in 1893 and whom he painted more than three hundred times. For Vuillard, it was his mother, with whom he lived until her death in 1928. Though very different, these two women share a common trait: they embody intimacy, that secret territory where the deepest emotions unfold.
Marthe is an enigma. She lies about her age, hides her origins, and refuses to marry Bonnard for decades. Yet she is omnipresent in his work. We see her bathing in golden light (Nude in the Bath), reading a newspaper (Woman with a Newspaper), or simply sitting at a table, lost in thought. Bonnard does not seek to represent her realistically but to capture her essence, as if he wanted to grasp the soul of the woman who shares his life. “I don’t paint a model,” he says, “I paint Marthe.”
Vuillard, meanwhile, is obsessed with his mother. In his paintings, she is always sewing, reading, or watching over his sister. She embodies the figure of the bourgeois woman, confined to a domestic role, but also a reassuring presence, almost maternal for the artist himself. In Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, the mother sits in an armchair, her hands busy with needlework, while the sister, leaning against a screen, seems lost in dreams. The decor, overloaded with patterns, seems to suffocate the characters, as if domestic life were both a refuge and a prison.
These two women—Marthe and Vuillard’s mother—are not mere models. They are the silent heroines of an art that celebrates the intimate. In painting them, Bonnard and Vuillard explore the most secret corners of the human soul—those moments when we believe ourselves alone but are actually observed by the loving (or anxious) gaze of the artist.
05Light as a brush: when color becomes emotion
If the Nabis are today considered masters of color, it is because they understood one essential thing: light is not merely illumination but a material in its own right. Bonnard, in particular, is a master of nuance. In The Dining Room, the morning light passes through the curtains and breaks into a myriad of reflections: yellows on the tablecloth, blues on the floor, greens on the leaves of the plants. These colors are not realistic but emotional. They create an atmosphere, a mood, like music that envelops the viewer.
Vuillard, for his part, plays with light in a more subtle way. In his interiors, it is often diffuse, softened by curtains or absorbed by fabrics. In The Suitor, the room is bathed in a golden glow, but the shadows are deep, almost mysterious. This soft, almost melancholic light gives the scenes a dreamlike quality, as if the characters were moving through a dream.
What fascinates in these two artists is their ability to turn light into something tangible. In Bonnard, it is warm, enveloping, almost sensual. In Vuillard, it is more discreet, almost secretive. But in both cases, it is far more than a mere effect: it is the very heart of the work, what gives it life.
06The Nabis’ legacy: when the everyday becomes eternal
More than a century after their emergence, the Nabis continue to influence art and design. Their idea that art should be integrated into daily life inspired movements like Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus, and even contemporary design. Today, artists like David Hockney and Peter Doig cite Bonnard as a major reference, while decorators draw inspiration from Vuillard’s wallpapers to create poetic interiors.
But their true legacy may be this: the idea that beauty hides in the simplest details. A shaft of sunlight on a wall, a forgotten cup of tea on a table, the reflection of a face in a mirror—these moments, which we often overlook, are in fact treasures. The Nabis taught us to see them, to cherish them, to turn them into art.
Today, when you enter a room and the light traces patterns on the floor, or when you notice a cup of coffee on a floral tablecloth, remember: you may be living a Nabi moment. And if you listen closely, you might hear the murmur of the walls, telling a story more than a century old.