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Paul Sérusier: The Bois d'Amour à Pont-Aven: The Talisman (Le Talisman), 1888, oil on wood, 27 cm × 21.5 cm (10 ³⁄₄ in × 8 ¹⁄₂ in) Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Les Nabis (French pronunciation: ​[le nabi]) were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. Initially a group of friends interested in contemporary art and literature, most of them studied at the private art school of Rodolphe Julian (the Académie Julian) in Paris in the late 1880s.

In 1890, they began to participate successfully in public exhibitions, while most of their artistic output remained in private hands or in the possession of the artists themselves. By 1896, the unity of the group had already begun to break: Homage to Cézanne, painted by Maurice Denis in 1900, recollects memories of a time already gone, even before the term Nabis had been revealed to the public. Meanwhile, most members of the group, including Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard, could stand on their own artistically. Only Paul Sérusier had problems to overcome—though it was his Talisman, painted at the advice of Paul Gauguin, that had revealed to them the way to go.

Origin of the term

Homage to Cézanne, Maurice Denis, 1900. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Nabi means prophet in both Hebrew and Arabic.^[a]

Les Nabis originated as a rebellious group of young student artists who banded together at the Académie Julian. Paul Sérusier galvanized Les Nabis and provided the name; he also disseminated among them the example of Paul Gauguin. Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, and Maurice Denis became the best known of the group, but at the time they were somewhat peripheral to the core group.

The term was coined by the linguist Auguste Cazalis, who drew a parallel between the way these painters aimed to revitalize painting (as prophets of modern art) and the way the ancient prophets had rejuvenated Israel.^[1] Possibly, the nickname arose because "most of them wore beards, some were Jews and all were desperately earnest".^[2]

Les Nabis regarded themselves as initiates, and used a private vocabulary. They called a studio an ergasterium and ended their letters with the initials E.T.P.M.V. et M.P., meaning "En ta paume, mon verbe et ma pensée" (In your palm, my word and my thoughts.)

Influence

Meeting at Académie Julian, and then at the apartment of Paul Ranson, they preached that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an artist's synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. Paving the way for the early 20th-century development of abstract and nonrepresentational art, they had in common with most progressive artists of the time the goal of integrating art and daily life.

Style

Pierre Bonnard, Les Parisiennes 1893, lithograph

Les Nabis artists worked in a variety of media, using oils on both canvas and cardboard, and distemper on canvas and wall decoration, and they also produced posters, prints, book illustrations, textiles and furniture. Considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period, their subject matter was representational (though often Symbolist in inspiration), but was design-oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and Art Nouveau. Unlike those types^{[clarification needed]}, however, the artists of this circle were highly influenced by the paintings of the Impressionists, and thus while sharing the flatness, page layout, and negative space of art nouveau and other decorative modes, much of Les Nabis art has a painterly, non-realistic look, with color palettes reminiscent of Cézanne and Gauguin. Bonnard's posters and lithographs are more firmly in the Art Nouveau, or Toulouse-Lautrec manner. After the turn of the century, as modern art moved towards Abstraction, Expressionism, and Cubism, Les Nabis were viewed as conservatives and, indeed, were among the last group of artists to stick to the roots and artistic ambitions of the Impressionists, pursuing these ends almost into the middle of the 20th  century. In their later years, these painters also largely abandoned their earlier interests in decorative and applied arts.

Members and associates

Paul Ranson, Paul Sérusier, and Marie-France Ranson in Paul Ranson's studio, c. 1900

Ker-Xavier Roussel, Édouard Vuillard, Romain Coolus, Félix Vallotton, 1899

Among the artists who considered themselves Nabis was Maurice Denis, whose journalism put the aims of the group in the eye of a progressive audience, and whose definition of a painting – "a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order"^{[This quote needs a citation]} – expressed the Nabis approach. His Théories (1920; 1922) summed up the Nabis' aims long after they had been superseded by the fauve painters and by cubism.

Other Nabis were Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Paul Ranson, and Félix Vallotton. The sculptor Aristide Maillol was associated for a time with the group. The Scot James Pitcairn-Knowles and the Hungarian Jozsef Rippl-Ronai lived together in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century and also turned to glass-blowing and woodcarving. The post-Impressionist styles they embraced skirted some aspects of contemporary art nouveau and Symbolism. The influence of the English Arts and Crafts Movement set them to work in media that involved crafts beyond painting: printmaking, book illustration and poster design, textiles, and set design.

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  Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), le nabi très japonard
  


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  Maurice Denis (1870–1943), le nabi aux belles icônes
  


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  Maxime Dethomas (1869–1929)


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  Meyer de Haan (1852–1895), le nabi hollandais
  


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  Rene Georges Hermann-Paul (1864–1940)


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  Henri-Gabriel Ibels (1867–1936), le nabi journaliste
  


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  Georges Lacombe (1868–1916), le nabi sculpteur
  


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  Lugné-Poe (1869–1940)


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  Aristide Maillol (1861–1944)


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  Paul Ranson (1864–1909), le nabi plus japonard que le nabi japonard
  


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  József Rippl-Rónai (1861–1927), le nabi hongrois
  


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  Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944)


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  Paul Sérusier (1864–1927), le nabi à la barbe rutilante
  


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  Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), le nabi étranger
  


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  Jan Verkade (1868–1946), le nabi obéliscal
  


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  Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), le nabi zouave
  

Other members of the group included the playwright Pierre Veber, the musician Pierre Hermant, and the linguist Auguste Cazalis,^[3] called (by Ranson) le nabi Ben Kallyre.^[4]

Gallery

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  Pierre Bonnard, The Dining Room in the Country, 1913, Collection Minneapolis Institute of Arts
  

  
  

  
  


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  Édouard Vuillard, Self-portrait, 1889
  

  
  

  
  


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  Pierre Bonnard, Self-portrait, c. 1889
  

  
  

  
  


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  Meyer de Haan, Maternity: Mary Henry Breastfeeding, 1890.
  

  
  

  
  


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  Félix Vallotton, The Mistress and the Servant, 1896
  

  
  

  
  


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  Paul Ranson, Nabis Landscape, 1890
  

  
  

  
  


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  Georges Lacombe, Marine bleue, Effet de vagues, 1893
  

  
  

  
  


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  Georges Lacombe, Portrait of Paul Sérusier, 1894
  

  
  

  
  


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  Paul Sérusier, Boys on a Riverbank, 1906
  

  
  

  
  

See also

• Pont-Aven School


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  Henry Lerolle, patron


• Odilon Redon

Notes

References

Further reading

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  Boyer, Patricia Eckert (1989). The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Rutgers Univ Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1380-5. 
  


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  Chasse, Charles (1969). The Nabis and Their Period. London: Lund Humphries. ASIN B001387EYI. 
  


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  Clement, Russell T. (1996). Four French Symbolists: A Sourcebook on Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Maurice Denis. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-29752-6. 
  


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  Dorival, Bernard (1957). Les peintres du vingtième siècle; Nabis, Fauves, Cubistes (in French). Paris: Editions Pierre Tisne. ASIN B000PT18NY. 
  


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  Freches-Thory, Claire; Terrasse, Antoine (2003). Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard and Their Circle. London: Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-011076-3. 
  


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  Kostenevitch, Albert. Bonnard: and the Nabis. London: Parkstone Press. ISBN 978-1-85995-015-9. 
  

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Les Nabis

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  The Prophets of Montmartre, an article on Les Nabis by Alamantra


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  Pierre Bonnard, the Graphic Art, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Bonnard and others in the Les Nabis collective