Described as a “brotherly friendship”, the relationship between Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard was a key artistic partnership in the history of late 19th-century art. The two painters met at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before enrolling together at the Académie Julian, where they studied alongside Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Ker Xavier Roussel, and Paul Sérusier. This group of artists formed the Nabis, a collective established around 1888 which centred on Sérusier, who had returned from Brittany with a painting made under the guidance of Paul Gauguin: Le Paysage du Bois d’Amour, renamed The Talisman by the group.
The Nabis sought to break entirely with the past and to free themselves from the burdensome heritage of historical styles, endlessly rehashed and reinterpreted throughout the 19th century. They positioned themselves as a constant rebellion against the ignorance of the Academy, a liberation in the name of the fusion of the arts. Bonnard and Vuillard quickly became leading figures of the group. Bonnard – fascinated with the abandonment of perspective and the colour-blocking techniques of Japanese prints, which he discovered in 1890 – was nicknamed the “Nabi Japonard” (Japanese Nabi). Vuillard, on the other hand, came to be known as the “Nabi Zouave” because of his experience in the military. In 1890, Vuillard created his first synthetist works, painted with piercing yellows, teal blues, and the most vivid of oranges. That same year, he wrote in his journal: “The purer the elements, the purer the work; the more mystical the painters, the brighter the colours (reds, blues, yellows); the more materialistic the painters, the darker the colours they use (earth, ochre, bitumen black).”
Our pastel bears witness to the friendship between the two painters and the artistic emulation that bound them. Drawn with extreme economy of means, it combines several formal traits of the œuvre of both artists, namely the emphaiss on the rendering of shadows and of areas of flat colour which evoke Japonisme. The drawing dates to 1891, the year in which the two artists shared a studio at 28 rue Pigalle, in Paris, along with the critics Lugné-Poe and Georges Roussel. Another portrait of Bonnard painting by Vuillard was likely created just a few days apart. 1891 was also the year of the first Nabi group exhibition, held at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye – a turning point for the movement, for both artists’ careers, and for modern painting as a whole.