Woman in a Striped Dress, Édouard Vuillard
Vuillard belonged to a quasi-mystical group of young artists that arose in about 1890 and called themselves the Nabi, a Hebrew word for prophet. The Nabi rejected impressionism and considered simple transcription of the appearance of the natural world unthinking and unartistic. Inspired by Gauguin's work and symbolist poetry, their paintings evoke rather than specify, suggest rather than describe. Recognizing that the physical components of painting -- colored pigments arranged on a flat surface -- were artificial, they considered as false the traditional convention of regarding paintings as re-creations of the natural world.
