Quiet, rich, textured, tremulous. The paintings of Édouard Vuillard in his Nabi period—people in rooms, at table, opening drawers—see inner thought and physical presence merging as color. Painted during the years from 1890 to 1905, Vuillard was answering the aesthetic of les nabies (the prophets), whose ideals were memorably summed up by Maurice Denis: “Remember that a painting—before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or an anecdote of some sort—is above all a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order.” And oh the colors and patterns. Go to this show if only to see The Flowered Dress (1891), The Newspaper (1896–98), and Grandmother at the Sink (c. 1890), an old woman almost bursting with blood memory. —Laura Jacobs