Pierre Bonnard
 Pierre Bonnard was not a revolutionary artist but he synthesized several
different styles to create works of striking painter lines and memorably
glorious color. He borrowed a lightness from the Impressionists, a bold palette from the
Post-Impressionists and
Fauves, a compressed dimensionality from
Matisse and
added an immense intensity of his own. Bonnard's artwork combines the poignancy of
Degas with the lyricism and luminosity of
Rothko. Pierre Bonnard was a French painter, lithographer, and illustrator. He
is credited with being a founding member of Les Nabis. Pierre
Bonnard was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses. He led a happy and careless
youth as the son of a prominent official of the French Ministry of
War. At the insistence of his father, Bonnard studied law,
graduating and practicing as a barrister briefly. While still
studying law, which he gave up in 1885, Pierre Bonnard enrolled at
the 'Académie Julian' in Paris, a liberal Parisian art school, where
he made friends with Paul Sérusier, Mauris Denis, Henri Ibels,
and Paul Ranson. Pierre Bonnard soon decided to become an artist.
The five friends formed a society known as Nabiim or the Nabis after
the Hebrew for 'prophets'. Together they studied works by
van Gogh,
Paul Cézanne and
Claude
Monet, but they were most impressed by Gauguin. |
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 The Nabis developed a style characterized by flat
areas of boldly juxtaposed but muted colors and heavily outlined
surface patterns. They were unified by the decorative character of
their work and their dislike of impressionism . In 1891 Pierre
Bonnard said that "painting must be above all decorative. Talent
shows itself in the way in which the lines are distributed."
Bonnard was known for his ability to convey a sense of charm. He
based his work on what he saw around him, depicting the banal,
everyday sights and occurrences of Paris-children at play, a few
animals, or perhaps a brief meeting at an intersection. In 1891 Pierre Bonnard met
Toulouse-Lautrec and began showing his work
at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. He
had five paintings represented there. His first show was at the Galerie
Durand-Ruel in 1896. He began attending to printed graphics and designed
the poster 'France-Champagne'. In 1893, Bonnard met Maria Boursin on a
street in Paris. She was 26 years old and had changed her name to Marthe
de Méligny. According to Whitfield, "She had so effectively erased her
past that not even Bonnard learnt her real name until their marriage in
1925, nearly thirty years after they began living together" and Bonnard
kept their marriage a secret from his family. Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with
small brushmarks and close values. His often complex compositions—typically of
sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family
members—are both narrative and autobiographical. |
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 His
wife Marthe was an
ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at
the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of
paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several
self-portraits,
landscapes, and many
still life's
which usually depict flowers and fruit. Bonnard did not paint from life but rather drew his subject—sometimes
photographing it as well—and made notes on the colors. He then painted the
canvas in his studio from his notesAround
the turn of the century the painter began to move away from the
elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, his earlier unobtrusive color
gave way to a bright, colorful palette and his street scenes were
gradually replaced by pastoral, idyllic scenes, nudes and interiors.
In 1900 Bonnard first exhibited together with 'Nabis' in the
Bernheim-Jeune gallery. Over the subsequent years, Bonnard traveled
to England, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Italy, mostly accompanied by
his friend Vuillard, with whom he also went to Hamburg in 1913 at
Alfred Lichtwark's invitation. During the 1920s the artist developed
his mature artistic style, whose unusual complicated compositions
and delicate and ingenious color schemes go far beyond the label
'Post-Impressionism'. Bonnard's life then entered calmer waters: In
1925 the painter got married and one year later moved to the
southern French town of Le Cannet for good. |
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Large exhibitions followed at the 'Kunsthaus' in Zurich in 1932 and the Wildenstein
gallery in New York in 1934. "Large Yellow Nude"(shown
above) is one of
Bonnard's most famous paintings. The catalogue essay entry for this
painting compares the nude in the painting to the Medici Venus in
the Uffizi in Florence, which is interesting, but certainly that
sculpture had nothing to do with the red and white sheet in the
foreground, a pyrotechnical tour de force. Bonnard often painted
female nudes, usually his wife, Marthe, but this is perhaps the most
elegant and alluring even if the modeling of the left arm is a bit
awkward. This is a great composition and an even more dazzling
painting, one that calls to mind the Rokeby Venus by Velasquez and
the Odalisques of
Ingres for feminine beauty, but which literally
outshines them.
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