Intimism

also: Intimisme

movement c. 1890-1920 France

Intimism (French: intimisme) was a movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries devoted to banal yet deeply personal domestic scenes, most often interiors crowded with family life. It was practiced above all by Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, former Nabis who turned after the group's 1899 disbandment toward the small drama of their own households. Where the Impressionists chased accurate light and atmosphere, the intimists favored emphasized texture, exaggerated color, and a merging of figure and ground that lets wallpaper, tablecloth, and person fuse into one surface. The critic Camille Mauclair defined it as a revelation of the soul through the things painted. Edgar Degas and Félix Vallotton have also been classed as intimists, and the word now extends to later art of quiet domesticity.

1899 painting by French artist Pierre Bonnard
1899 painting by French artist Pierre BonnardPublic domain (credit: Pierre Bonnard) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Domestic interiors and everyday rituals - meals, sewing, reading, family at ease
  • Patterned surfaces (wallpaper, textiles) that fuse figure and ground into one continuous field
  • Compressed, shallow spaces seen at close range, often from cropped viewpoints
  • Emphasized texture and exaggerated, muted or earthy palettes over naturalistic color
  • Quiet, absorbed figures unaware of the viewer, suggesting private psychological life
  • Decorative flatness that abandons Impressionist accuracy of light and perspective

Key figures

  • Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) — Nabis painter whose patterned domestic interiors defined the movement
  • Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) — Intimist of luminous household scenes, from lunch tables to later bathers
  • Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) — Swiss-French Nabis painter and printmaker classed as an intimist
  • Camille Mauclair (1872-1945) — French critic who defined intimism as a revelation of the soul through things painted

Example works

  • Lunch at Le Grand-Lemps — Pierre Bonnard (1899)
  • Madame Vuillard Sewing — Édouard Vuillard (1895)
  • The Album — Édouard Vuillard (1895)

Sources

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