The nabis, or the art of making walls speak

Among them, two figures stand out: Pierre Bonnard, painter of stolen moments and intoxicating colors, and Édouard Vuillard, master of stifling interiors where every pattern tells a story. Their genius? To have transformed the everyday into a visual language where walls murmur, fabrics whisper, and objects become silent accomplices to our secret lives. But how did these artists, often dismissed as mere "decorators" by their contemporaries, manage to turn the banality of home into a work of art? And why, more than a century later, do their canvases still speak to us with such intensity?

01The small painting that changed everything

It all begins in 1888, in an inn in Pont-Aven. A young painter, Paul Sérusier, walks through the woods with Paul Gauguin. The latter, then at the height of his influence, challenges him: "How do you see that tree? It’s green? Then use green, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow? More blue? Don’t hesitate to make it as blue as possible." Sérusier complies and paints a miniature landscape on a cigar box lid, using pure, arbitrary colors. Back in Paris, he proudly shows his work to his friends at the Académie Julian. Among them, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard. This small painting, which they will call The Talisman, becomes their manifesto.

What strikes one about The Talisman is not just its chromatic boldness—a red tree, an emerald-green sky—but its radicality. For the first time, a group of artists asserts that painting need not imitate reality but transcend it. That colors are not copies but emotions. That art should leave museums to inhabit homes, theaters, everyday objects. The Nabis (from the Hebrew word meaning "prophet") are born, and with them, a new way of seeing the world—and decorating it.

02When walls become characters

If the Nabis left their mark on art history, it is because they turned interiors into more than mere backdrops: they made them full-fledged characters. In Vuillard’s work, walls are never neutral. In The Suitor (1893), a bourgeois seduction scene unfolds in a stifling parlor where the patterned wallpaper nearly swallows the protagonists. The vertical stripes of the tapestry seem to imprison the figures, while the stylized flowers on the sofa add a touch of discreet sensuality. Everything here breathes tension—that of a budding love, but also of a society where feelings must remain polite.

Bonnard takes the idea even further. In Dining Room in the Country (1913), walls are no longer boundaries but porous membranes between inside and outside. The golden light of the garden filters through the windows and reflects on the tablecloth, while the patterns of the seated woman’s dress seem to merge with those of the curtains. Space becomes fluid, almost liquid, as if the house breathed with the rhythm of the seasons. What fascinates in Bonnard’s work is his ability to capture the ephemeral—a sunbeam sliding across a table, a hand brushing a glass, a cat stretching lazily. His interiors are not snapshots but memories in the making.

03Color as a secret language

For the Nabis, color is never incidental. It is a code, an emotion, sometimes even a character. Take Vuillard’s Misia at the Piano (1895). Misia Natanson, muse and patron of the group, is depicted in a white dress, but what strikes the viewer is the background—a wall covered in red and black patterns that seem to vibrate around her. These colors are not realistic but symbolic. Red, the color of passion and power, reflects Misia’s volcanic personality, while black evokes the mystery surrounding her. Vuillard does not paint a woman playing the piano; he paints a woman who is the music, absorbed in a world where notes mingle with the wallpaper’s motifs.

Bonnard, on the other hand, uses color like a drug. His canvases explode with pinks, yellows, acid greens that seem to defy logic. In The Toilet (1908), a woman combs her hair before a mirror, but what draws the eye is the bright orange dress contrasting with the blues and greens of the room. These colors are not there to describe but to intoxicate. Bonnard often said, "Color is a matter of taste, not truth." And that is precisely what makes his paintings so modern—they do not seek to represent the world but to reinvent it through the prism of sensation.

04The theater of intimacy

The Nabis were not just painters; they were also directors. And no one understood this better than Édouard Vuillard, who spent part of his career designing sets for Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Œuvre. His canvases, like his stage designs, are scenes where silent dramas unfold. In The Album (1895), a woman flips through a book while a man, seated in the background, watches her. The frame is tight, almost suffocating, and the wallpaper’s patterns seem to close in on them like prison walls. One senses a story—a secret affair, unrequited love, a betrayal—but Vuillard never gives all the keys. His paintings are enigmas, fragments of life where every detail matters.

Bonnard, meanwhile, prefers genre scenes with a touch of voyeurism. In The Bath (1925), a naked woman washes herself in a tub, but her face is blurred, almost absent. What interests Bonnard is not the body itself but the moment—the light dancing on the water, the rising steam, the reflection in the mirror. His nudes are not erotic; they are domestic, almost banal. And that is precisely what makes them so unsettling. By painting Marthe, his companion, hundreds of times in intimate poses, Bonnard turned the everyday into art. But he also created a form of visual dependency—as if, without Marthe, his art would lose its soul.

05The invisible legacy of the Nabis

Today, when you enter a Parisian apartment with walls covered in geometric patterns, when you admire a floral dress that seems to have stepped out of a Vuillard painting, or when you sit in a café with warm, saturated colors, you are, without knowing it, in the legacy of the Nabis. Their influence is everywhere, but it is so diffuse that it goes unnoticed.

Yet their revolution endures. Before them, decorative art was considered minor—craftsmanship, not art. The Nabis changed the game by showing that walls, fabrics, and objects could be full-fledged means of expression. They also paved the way for modern art by rejecting academic rules. Without them, there would be no Matisse and his pure colors, no Klimt and his golden motifs, no Hockney and his turquoise pools.

But perhaps their greatest legacy is the idea that art should not be confined to museums. That it can—and must—inhabit our lives, our homes, our routines. That beauty is not in grand gestures but in small nothings: a sunbeam on a table, a dress blending into the wallpaper, a cat sleeping on a sofa. The Nabis taught us to see the world differently—not as a backdrop, but as a living canvas where every detail tells a story.

06Why their paintings still speak to us

There is something strangely familiar in Bonnard and Vuillard’s interiors. Perhaps because they capture a universal truth: our homes are extensions of ourselves. The walls we choose, the objects we accumulate, the colors we love say a lot about who we are. And that is precisely what makes their paintings so timeless.

Take Vuillard’s The Bedroom (1899). A woman, probably his mother, sits in a room cluttered with fabrics, books, and knickknacks. The frame is tight, almost claustrophobic, yet there is a softness in this accumulation of objects. As if each thing—the vase on the table, the blanket on the bed, the carpet’s pattern—were a part of her. This painting does not show a bedroom; it shows a life.

With Bonnard, it is the opposite. His interiors are airy, bathed in light, as if space itself breathed. In The Terrace at Vernon (1920–1939), the garden seems to enter the house, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside. The colors are bright, almost too bright, as if Bonnard had wanted to capture not reality but the way memory transforms it. His paintings are memories in the making—and perhaps that is why they move us so deeply.

07The last word: the art of living

The Nabis were not just painters; they were philosophers of intimacy. They taught us that art is not limited to museums but can—and must—inhabit our lives. That beauty is not in grand gestures but in small nothings. That a wallpapered wall, a patterned tablecloth, a sunbeam on a table can be works of art in their own right.

Today, as we spend more time than ever in our interiors, their message resonates with new force. Perhaps now is the time to rediscover Bonnard and Vuillard—not as painters of the past, but as guides for the present. Artists who remind us that true decoration is not just about choosing the right furniture or colors, but about creating a space that reflects us, that tells our story, that makes us dream.

So the next time you choose a wallpaper or place a vase on a table, ask yourself: what if you turned your interior into a Nabi canvas? What if, like them, you transformed the everyday into art?