Édouard Vuillard. In the Louvre

Édouard Vuillard’s fascinating views of the Louvre for a villa in Basel

In 1921/22 Édouard Vuillard created a cycle of six paintings for the entrance hall of the Villa Bauer in Basel. Four large-format pictures show exhibition rooms in the Louvre from Antiquity to French Rococo painting. Two overdoors provide an intimate insight into the artist’s art collection.

The cycle of paintings is of outstanding quality as regards both content and form, but it to date has seldom been examined and exhibited. It was created immediately after the end of the First World War and the re-opening of the Louvre. Vuillard’s Louvre pictures are a humanist manifesto for the social importance and responsibility of museums as places that preserve the evidence of human creativity for future generations.