Vuillard and the Art of Japan

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Centred on the delicate landscape held at the Hermitage, “La Maison de Roussel à La Montagne” (1900), the exhibition shows the crucial influence of Japanese art on Vuillard’s work.

The artist was a great collector of ukiyo-e prints, in which he found formats of a kind hitherto unknown in the Europe, radical compositions and framing, and unusual motifs, all of which greatly enriched his aesthetic language. Around a hundred paintings and engravings of scenes of everyday life and nature, created by Vuillard between the 1890s and the First World War, will be shown here in dialogue with some fifty Japanese masterpieces.

The exhibition will be organised around the different genres in which Vuillard worked, seen through the lens of Japanese aesthetics. The artist’s highly personal approach will be explored through Scenes of ordinary life, Screens and kakemonos, Prints and graphic arts and The Wonder of Nature. Also on display will be a group of paintings by Vuillard’s Nabi friends who were greatly influenced by Japanese art, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Paul Élie Ranson and Félix Vallotton.