Interior Prints

Prints focusing on scenes of domestic life, often of women and children, are termed Interior prints. Nineteenth century Impressionist artists including Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Mary Cassatt, are known for capturing scenes of home and family life. Typical interiors prints focus on dining, bathing, dressing, and familiar interactions, and commonly feature female artists as their daily life was often restricted to the home.

Mary Cassatt, an American painter who joined the Impressionist circle in Paris, was highly skilled technically as a printmaker, and experimented with a wide variety of techniques. Her subject matter typically involved women engaged in childrearing and other aspects of interior life.

Pierre Bonnard claimed he could only paint the familiar, and his career focus was on the rituals inherent in everyday life, including intimate scenes of his wife bathing, toweling, and dressing. Bonnard became skilled in printmaking by creating color lithographs for advertisements, or magazine illustrations. His contemporary Edouard Vuillard's interior prints are noteworthy in that Vuillard would render both the figure and its background in flat patterns nearly indistinguishable from each other.

Quick Facts

• Edgar Degas encouraged Cassatt's printmaking experimentation by offering her his studio as a place to create drypoint, etchings, aquatint and other intaglio prints
• Bonnard and Vuillard created the short-lived but influential group called Les Nabis, French for "The Prophets." The Nabis explored decorative patterns and color in their prints and paintings
• Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking heavily influenced 19th century printmakers, particular the Impressionists. They were inspired by the unusual off-center perspective, areas of flat color, and distinctive lines