1891 -1939 · Théâtre de l'Œuvre, proscenium, kiosk and musical evening

Vuillard sees the show from the stage, the room and the living room: cut silhouettes, oblique light and suspended gestures abolish the border between public theater and intimate drama.

Theater profoundly shapes the art of Édouard Vuillard. From high school, he attended Aurélien Lugné-Poe, then participated in the founding of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre in 1893 with Lugné-Poe and Camille Mauclair. First manager of this symbolist scene, he designed programs, sets and sometimes stage devices for a repertoire marked by Ibsen, Strindberg and Maeterlinck. The naturalism of the closed setting gives way to suggestive lighting, inclined planes and deliberately impersonal gestures. Vuillard transposes these experiences into his paintings: truncated characters, uncertain depth and dark materials make each interior a theater of psychological life. The proscenium at the theater Antoine observes the room from a privileged edge where spectators, balcony and stage respond to each other. Open-air theater, the kiosk moves the performance into the garden and combines light architecture, music and gathering. Characters in an interior. Music and Musical evening show that the living room can become a stage: the instrument organizes the presences, but everyone remains absorbed in their own space. Vuillard frequents artists, actors, authors and patrons around La Revue blanche, the Natansons and the Hessels. His taste for spectacle lasted for more than five decades. Even far from a theater, his cut framing, shadow play and differences in scale preserve the imprint of a staging. The "Music and theater by Édouard Vuillard" selection notably compares L’avant-scène at the Antoine theater and Théâtre de plein air (the kiosk). His reading favors figures.

Vuillard has never left the backstage: in a living room or in a proscenium, he places the bodies, adjusts the light and lets the inner drama begin.