Bonnard_Roussel

BONNARD, VUILLARD AND ROUSSEL were lifelong

friends and colleagues. In Paris, Vuillard and Roussel began their

careers together as students at the Lycée Condorcet, along with

Maurice Denis. Bonnard and Denis studied the legacy of Paul

Gauguin with Paul Sérusier at the Académie Julian. Denis, Bonnard,

and Vuillard shared an apartment at

Rue Pigalle in the early

1890

’s, and Roussel married Vuillard’s older sister Marie in

1893

Most importantly, in

1888

, Bonnard, Roussel, and Vuillard, along

with Denis, formed the

Nabis

, and set about revolutionizing easel

and decorative painting by declaring the flatness of the painted sur-

face. Illusionistic details were discarded and realism was replaced by

suggestion. Pictorial elements evoked the subject rather than

depicted it. In this moment, these three painters cleared the way

for abstraction at the start of the twentieth century.