Paris Collections

Edouard Vuillard and Paul Gauguin are an odd couple: one famous for his depictions of drawn-curtain bourgeois interiors, the other for bare-breasted Polynesian reveries. But the link between them is direct. In 1889, Vuillard joined a band of fellow art students who called themselves Les Nabis — "prophets" in Hebrew and Arabic. Their credo was "the simplification of form and the exaltation of color," and their guru was Gauguin. Now, the two artists are sharing the same roof, in a superb pair of exhibits at...