The traveling exhibition on which this catalogue is based (it's now in Washington, D.C.) has been described as overstuffed in more than one review. But since one is not jostling for space or walking miles of galleries when perusing this volume, its bulk works in its favor, revealing in 463 color (and 95 b&w) reproductions the breadth of Vuillard's achievement, as well as its limits. The 334 works from the show begin in 1889, with Vuillard and Waroquy, a portrait of the artist and his friend ("of whom we know almost nothing") and plunge into the astonishing works of the 1890s, where Vuillard (along with Bonnard) took Impressionism in new directions. Cogeval, director of Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts, rightly devotes a good portion of the book to this period, providing ample sketches and studies to buttress the case for Vuillard's accomplishment, along with photos of the figures one often finds in the work (also part of the exhibit). After some uncertain mid-period works, the book presents a series of portraits from the 1930s that reveal Vuillard (1868–1940) to have been a "discreet observer of a certain modernity." That discretion, for some, may signal a dead end, but long enough looks at some of these late works reveal that "certain modernity" to have a lot in common with the denatured reality of lifestyle journalism. But whatever one's final opinion of the work, the book (which also includes four scholarly essays and a detailed chronology) allows a contemplation of it that was previously impossible. (Apr.)
