Intimism

Intimism (French intimisme) is a French painting tendency of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that depicts quiet, cosy domestic scenes within the private space of the home: women reading, laid tables, lamp-lit interiors, family rooms. Its most consistent exponents were Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, both associated with the Nabis group. Their canvases are distinguished by a warm, muted palette, a small shimmering touch, a decorative densification of the surface, and close attention to the patterns of wallpaper, fabrics and pools of light. In place of heroic or historical subjects, the intimists raised the everyday and the unremarkable to the level of aesthetic meditation, continuing the interior genre of seventeenth-century Dutch painting while absorbing the lessons of Impressionism. The term stresses not only the chamber scale of the motifs but also a particular emotional closeness between viewer and scene. Intimism influenced the modern painting of everyday life across many European schools, including the Ukrainian.