QUIET MYSTERIES

EDOUARD VUILLARD lived most of his 72 years in the 20th century, but he was essentially a 19th century man. He achieved artistic fame in Paris before he was 30, soon after 1900 slipped into the critical obscurity that engulfed the last 40 years of his life.

Last week a big retrospective exhibition of Vuillard's work--130 paintings and 28 lithographs at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art--was helping to restore Vuillard to his place among the 19th century masters.

An intimate painter who put mysterious delights in his pictures of commonplace people and things, Vuillard adapted to painting the poetic creed of his friend Stephane Mallarme:"To name an object is to do away with the three quarters of the enjoyment . . . which is derived from the satisfaction of guessing little by little: to suggest it, to evoke it--that is what charms the imagination." The imagination is consistently charmed by Vuillard's subtle, dreamy interiors, in which he weaves motifs as unobtrusively compelling as those in an oriental brocade. Missia and Thadee Natanson (opposite), painted about 1897 when Vuillard was at the height of his sensational youthful success, is full of golden, slightly melancholic elegance. Missia Natanson sits in absolute relaxation and dignity, while her husband Thadee, an editor-friend of Vuillard's, leans contemplatively on a piano that is suggested rather than pictured. The busy, intricate patterns of the wallpaper and piano cover accentuate the peaceful attitudes of the man and woman.

After the turn of the century, Vuillard's quiet, intimate style went out of fashion. About the same time he turned to commissioned portraits and large landscapes, which never reached the level of his interior scenes. In the early days, even the views from his Paris studio were inside pictures; the artist sits within the security of his room, looking out on the rooftops.

A symbolist who worshiped at the literary and artistic shrines of Mallarme and Gauguin, Vuillard brought impressionism into the parlor. Like Manet, Monet and Degas, he covered his canvases with veils of light and shadow. But Vuillard's subjects were domestic--his mother, his friends and the quiet, bourgeois, wallpapered rooms in which they lived. To those everyday themes, he brought the quiet joy of small mysteries.

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