Intimate Color: The Print Portfolios of Bonnard, Vuillard, and Denis, 1899

Mary Weaver Chapin, curator of prints and drawings at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, presents a special talk on the print portfolios of key leaders of the Nabis artistic movement, who played a central role in the late nineteenth-century transition from Impressionism to early modernism.
Chapin’s lecture coincided with the final day of the Clark’s presentation of "Hue & Cry: French Printmaking and the Debate Over Colors." In 1899, art dealer and print enthusiast Ambroise Vollard published lithographic suites by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Maurice Denis. Each album consisted of twelve lithographs plus a cover, and each was issued in an edition of 100. In contrast to audacious scenes of nightlife by Toulouse-Lautrec or the bold public posters of Jules Chéret, these artists used color lithography to explore the private interior, family life, and intimate glimpses of the city. Ranging from deep, saturated color to the faintest whisper of ink on paper, the Vollard albums demonstrate the wide range of tone that artists used to evoke emotion and subjective responses in the viewer and are generally considered to be among the finest examples of color lithography from the period.