– Good morning, and welcome. I’m Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. Thanks for being here for our symposium on this sunny morning. If you haven’t had the chance to view the Bonnard exhibition, your day is about to become even brighter. “Bonnard’s Worlds” is truly a feast for the eyes.
The paintings are dazzling in George Shackelford’s stunning installation. Surely one of the most beautiful exhibitions held in the Piano Pavilion galleries since the pavilion opened 10 years ago this month. The painting that you first encounter head on at the exhibition’s entrance is the large scale panoramic landscape that Bonnard created in 1928
In which the Kimbell acquired in 2018. It depicts the surroundings of the artist’s home and the town of Le Cannet in the south of France that Bonnard had purchased the year before. Although it was originally commissioned to hang in another person’s home, that of a distinguished French collector,
“Landscape at Le Cannet” was, for Bonnard, a very personal depiction of the world that had become dear to him. He even included a portrait of himself reclining in a corner of the painting, as if he is presenting the landscape as his world. This inspired George, the Kimbell’s deputy director,
To conceive the exhibition “Bonnard’s Worlds,” which includes a group of 70 paintings that together present an intimate glimpse into the artist’s life and work. Arranged, not according to chronology, but by theme, “Bonnard’s Worlds” reveals the artist’s deep connection to the places and people around him
As it leads you from the landscapes and cityscapes successively deeper into views of the more private spaces, experiences, and thoughts of the artist. With works from nearly all periods in Bonnard’s career, the exhibition also demonstrates the unique and masterful use of color, light, and composition that place Pierre Bonnard
Among the great masters of French painting. Before I welcome George to the podium I’d like to thank our co-organizers of the exhibition, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, where it will be on view beginning in March 2024. Working with co-curator Elsa Smithgall from the Phillips, George has brought together some of
Bonnard’s most celebrated works from private collections and museums from throughout Europe and the United States, including seven from the Phillips Collection, as well as Australia. We express our deep gratitude to these museums and collectors for their very generous loans. George will now say a few words about today’s program and introduce our speakers.
And in case you’re wondering, I had triceps tendon surgery two weeks ago, so I’m in this funny looking brace. Thank you. – Thank you, Eric, our bionic director. This morning, that’s me so that anybody, when this is recorded, can see who’s talking, this morning we are going to talk about things that are connected to but not necessarily directly shown in the exhibition upstairs. The show, as Eric mentioned, was inspired by the Kimbell’s purchase in 2018
Of the “Landscape at Le Cannet”, almost nine foot wide painting painted for, as a decoration for the home of a man named Henri Kapferer. The painting inspired us to examine Bonnard’s art, not, as Eric says, by chronology or by geography, but instead by the levels of intimacy beginning in the broadest possible landscape
And ending in the most private possible spaces of Bonnard’s domestic world. So, from the “Landscape of Le Cannet,” the “Edenic Landscape” inspired by the world around his home in Valognes in Normandy. Back again to the south of France, Le Cannet and the view just above his house in this wonderful painting from 1945.
We move into the garden and see Bonnard’s family and friends disporting themselves in these intimate worlds before moving even closer to Bonnard’s house, or to the various houses in which he lived over time. Here with his sister and her family at Le Grand-Lemps, a house that they owned in southeast France.
On the terrace of his house at Valognes, “Ma Roulotte”, it was called, “My Caravan”, in Normandy. On the terrace of the house that he bought and called Le Bosquet in Le Cannet, a northern suburb of Cannes, in the very south of France from which you can, in fact see the Mediterranean.
Or a landscape, rather a terrace view probably begun in Normandy and completed in the south of France many years later. We enter the house, but our attention is still diverted by the landscape outside the window, in picture after picture, in which he uses the window or doorframes
To frame views of a landscape beyond and to contemplate the difference between inside and outside. We turn our attention thoroughly to the indoors by turning our view down onto the tabletop, whether it’s in this remarkable painting, “The Lamp” from about 1900, his intimate portrait of his wife, Madame Bonnard, as she was.
They married only in 1925, but they were husband and wife defacto from 1893, with one of their many dachshund dogs, all of whom were named Poucette. Marthe at the cabinet in their living/dining room on the ground floor of their house in Le Cannet, or even a peek inside one of these cabinets in a wonderful arrangement of three paintings depicting the same element of their interior decor. Dogs and cats are central to the life of Bonnard and Marthe,
Marthe Méligny Bonnard, his wife. They loved their animals, and even when you start looking at a still life Bonnard, you may find that there is a cat and a dog at the bottom. Still lives are one of his passions and one of his great talents, and you’ll see a beautiful selection of them from pretty much all across the artist’s career, including this work, the beautiful basket of fruits which is painted in the very last year of Bonnard’s life as a creative artist.
Leaving behind the public spaces of “Bonnard’s Worlds,” we enter what I jokingly call “Bed, Bath and Beyond.” Where we first, literally, move into Bonnard’s bedroom to see his young mistress, girlfriend, I think you could almost say, at this point, in the very early 1890s, posed in her black stockings on the bed, or with no stockings at all lying on the bed around 1900. This is probably a posed model
Rather than Marthe de Méligny, but in this spectacular painting from the Royal Art Museums of Brussels in Belgium. Some of these are supposed to move up and they’re not quite behaving on my slide, but this spectacular picture, almost unknown to American audiences, recently acquired by the Beyeler Foundation in Basel
And shown here, this superb view of Marthe in a bathtub for the first time. She’s previously been depicted bathing in the shallow zinc tubs that lay on the floor before renting an apartment in which there was running water. His influence, the influence of Degas, both his dancers and his bathers,
Is seen in works like this one, the large “Pink Nude”. We move closer even still in this painting by MoMA, and then, I think perhaps, one of the triumphs of this exhibition, is the ability to reunite the three major late bathtub views that he painted of Marthe between the years 1936 and 1946,
The first from the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris, the second, rarely seen, from a private collection in Europe and the third from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. The beyond part is that after this resounding sort of climax of the exhibition,
We take you to a space that’s a little bit quieter and much more lonely. That is to say the mirror in which Bonnard looks at himself and then transcribes his image for us, in a painting like this one, “The Boxer” from the 1930s, exhibited with that title.
It’s not a title that it’s just gotten as a nickname, it was the title that Bonnard gave to it. Or in this spectacular and very moving painting, among the last of the self portraits that he made. Now, in our symposium today, we’re going to go beyond the exhibition of Bonnard’s paintings above
And discuss aspects of his art that are not really represented in the show, but which are important for our understanding of him, globally, as an artist. One of the themes is Bonnard’s distinguished career as a graphic artist. He first made a mark as the designer of this poster,
Which got him, as a very young man, a lot of attention in the early 1890s. A medium which we still are learning more about Bonnard’s mastery of, his photography, which you’ll be hearing about later today. And then, finally, his real mastery of gigantic mural decorations,
Which you’ll hear about in the final talk of this morning. I’d like to begin by introducing Heather Lemonedes Brown, who is the Virginia and Randall Barbato Deputy Director and the Chief Curator of the Cleveland Museum of Art, one of America’s most distinguished collections. She was an undergraduate at Vassar
And did graduate work at the Courtauld in London before completing her doctoral dissertation at the graduate center of the City University of New York. She worked at the Met in print and drawings before moving to Cleveland some decades ago, and there she has done a series of wonderful exhibitions
On aspects of late 19th century art including projects on Monet, Gauguin and Cassatt. Most recently, she was the curator of two exhibitions that touched directly on “Bonnard’s Worlds.” One was, “Private Lives: “Home and Family in the Art of the Nabi,” and the other was “Impressionism to Modernism: “The Keithley Collection,”
Celebrating an extraordinary gift to Cleveland, the collection of Nancy and Joe Keithley, a rich panoply of fantastic works that includes two paintings presented in our exhibition now. We are delighted to have the Keithley’s with us this morning. Today, Heather will help us contextualize “Bonnard’s Worlds” by exploring the artist’s rich and varied experiences
With the graphic arts. So will you give a hearty welcome to Heather Lemonedes Brown? – George, thank you for that very kind introduction. What a pleasure it is to be with you here today. Before I begin, I’d like to thank Eric Lee and George Shackelford and the Kimbell Museum of, Art Museum, for inviting me to speak today and thank you all for coming.
This is such a marvelous museum to visit, I wanna come back again and again, it’s been too long. And I would also like to thank Joe and Nancy Keithley, who you just heard about, the Cleveland collectors who, in March of 2020, gave their collection of more than 100 works of art
To the Cleveland Museum of Art and there are, as George mentioned, two paintings from that collection in this exhibition today. I encourage you to seek them out. What I hope you’ll find with me today is that as Bonnard evolved and it evoked the world that surrounded him in this exuberant, vibrant exhibition
In those paintings, he also did so in his graphic work in perhaps an even more private way. One of the special aspects of his graphic work is that they provide a window into the artist’s process. Bonnard, in this exhibition, is celebrated as a master of color and suggestion whose vocation
Was to depict quiet moments and small pleasures in what he described as the modest acts of life. What we may not recognize today, is that Bonnard’s first memorable work of art was a print, not a painting. It was a poster commissioned in 1889 to advertise Debray’s France-Champagne.
The commission launched his professional artistic career. The design that you see here demonstrates several aspects of his work that would reverberate throughout his long career. Those elements are a simplified design rendered in flat forms, a calligraphic line with meandering forms, a use of humor, particularly in his graphic work, I think,
The ability to capture lively high spirits but in a restricted, almost stringent, but never austere design. Paul Gauguin was a profound influence upon the young Bonnard, as he was for Bonnard’s friends, Paul Sérusier and Édouard Vuillard. They visited the independently organized exhibition of the group Impressioniste et Synthétiste
At the Cafe Volpini on the grounds of the World’s Fair of 1889, where they saw Gauguin’s paintings as well as Gauguin’s first suite of prints, the so-called “Volpini Suite”, which was a series of 10 zincographs, plus a cover design, all printed on canary yellow paper.
The flatness of Gauguin’s forms, his use of black outlining and the way he mingled naivete with sophistication, strongly affected the young Bonnard who later said that he had been, quote, “fired with enthusiasm by the magnificent example of Gauguin.” By borrowing Gauguin’s use of avant-garde yellow and his revolutionary abstract style
And making something entirely his own, Bonnard raised, created a poster design and raised it far above trite commercial or advertisement and entered the world of graphic art. Let us note that Bonnard made this color lithograph when he was 22 years old and a recent graduate of law school.
I don’t know about you, but I was not doing anything very important at age 22. This 100 franc commission was particularly meaningful because it demonstrated that an artist could make a living and affectionately it purchased his freedom from the civil service career that his father had envisioned for Bonnard.
Before moving on, I’ll point out that one more aspect of Bonnard’s first print that it’s worth remembering, his model for this figure, was his cousin and supposed sweetheart at the time, Berthe Schaedin. This highlights another aspect of Bonnard’s work that would continue throughout his career. The closest of family and friends
Were the constant characters that inhabited his artistic dramas. And you find this, I think, in full force in “Bonnard’s Worlds.” Bonnard himself never had children, but his nieces and nephews and the children of his friends occupied a significant place in his life and his art.
A drawing that I find among Bonnard’s most charming, is this infant on a cabbage leaf, likely conceived as a birth announcement. As folklore here, in America, tells us that babies are brought by storks, in France they’re traditionally found under cabbages. Here, again, I know, here, again, we find the highly simplified forms
Simultaneously naive but yet sophisticated, sinuous black outline and a playful sense of humor. No printed form of this birth announcement was based upon this design, or at least doesn’t survive, but Bonnard made other designs for printed birth announcements, such as this announcement for the birth of Marie-Louise Mellerio,
The daughter of Isabelle and André Mellerio, an art critic and publisher of the journal, “L’Estampe et l’affiche”. Using rose colored ink, Bonnard depicted the head of an infant in profile. Her tiny nose is a little button. The viewer has to look to find the baby.
I didn’t see it the very first time I saw the print, and for a moment or two, and this too is another artistic device that Bonnard used in his art, the actual subject of the work, here, the child, is nearly lost amidst the floral pattern on the blanket upon which she sleeps.
Before I show you other works in which families and children play a major role in Bonnard’s art, let us reflect for a moment on the understanding that children in of, that they played in cultural thought in late 19th century France, because I think that sheds some light on understanding these works by Bonnard.
Remember France’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. After that, fears about the declining birth rate animated the political discussion in France and a host of new child rearing manuals instructed parents on how to feed and raise their children for optimum health and moral behavior.
In the marketplace there was a booming trade in toys, storybooks and ready to wear fashion for children that indicated that middle class households were eager to invest in the happiness and the appearance of their children. These interests were reflected in the art of the period. There was literature featuring children,
Music for and inspired by children and, of course, paintings depicting children and all of these proliferated. This was the milieu in which Bonnard and his friends, like Vuillard and Maurice Denis, produced their art that frequently focused upon the family, domestic life, children, gardens, and even pets.
In many of these images, Bonnard adopted a childlike style, employing distortion, collapsing space, and choosing unusual perspectives. By channeling the way that children perceive and even draw their surroundings, he sought to capture, what he considered, the essence of childhood and also to avoid overtones of sentimentality. In the late 19th century,
The interior was considered the cradle of the family and a safe harbor in a country where industry was increasingly prevalent. For Bonnard, images of the home were ideal for depicting what he called these small pleasures and modest acts of life. On the left, I share one of Bonnard’s paintings
Of his mother overseeing her grandson’s enjoyment of cherries in the summertime, and on the right is a lithograph of a similar subject of his mother and her grandchild at a dining table in Le Clos, or The Orchard, a family home in southeastern France that served as a retreat for the artist,
His siblings, their families, and his parents as well as the extended family. He was especially fond of the intergenerational nature of the family meal. His mother, Elizabeth Bonnard, was often featured with one or more grandchildren in his paintings, drawings and prints. And by focusing the viewer’s attention
On the bald dome of the baby’s head and stooped posture of Madame Bonnard, the artist creates a continuum of life across generations. I had to show one photograph here. I know Isabella will talk with you about photography, but I find this photograph so charming, where Bonnard is literally engulfed with children
And a beloved pet, to sort of set the tone. Lamps and lamplight were used throughout Bonnard’s work of the 1890s to evoke the sense of a cozy, warm domestic interior. The child assumes the solo starring role in “Child with Lamp.” Here, a toddler reaches toward toy omnibuses
Placed at the edge of the table. Bonnard uses a series of round and cylindrical forms, the lampshade, lamp, lamp base, the table and the child’s head to establish a balance and rhythm throughout the composition. The cast light is conveyed by white paper held in reserve, or unprinted, blanching the face and arm
Of our little protagonist and creating an enclosed circle of illuminating warmth. Bonnard’s use of multiple points of view, which was another of his favorite techniques, enlivens the image, bringing the dynamism to what, at first glance, might seem like a static scene. The viewer peers down at the child,
But approaches the lamp more directly, an effect that increases the importance of the light source. And just as the viewer must reconcile multiple perspectives, so too we attempt to resolve the emotional tenor that shifts between the quiet reverie of the child at play and a sense of the emotional and physical separation
From the adult world. The red table reappears in this lithograph that was made as a cover for a print album. Collectors could fold it in half and crease it vertically down the center to form a portfolio, and his clever composition, of course, reads well either folded or open.
Bonnard had a penchant for what we might call “meta” today. This is a print about printmaking and print collecting, and by extension it’s a print by an artist who is a printmaker. He made witty references to the print’s use including in the composition, five prints depicting outdoor scenes and interiors,
But far from a serious image about connoisseurship or collecting, a kitten bats a wad of paper across the table that’s strewn with these original works of art. The lithographs, of course, obviously are printed on paper and so is the material of the cat’s toy.
Bonnard’s art is not being treated as a thing to revere, but instead as something to be strewn casually across a table, over which a cat may freely tread. In reducing a bit of crumpled paper to the cat’s toy, Bonnard pokes fun at himself as a print maker
And collectors who would’ve bought his lithograph. As in “Child With a Lamp,” here again, we find a solitary figure in a domestic interior. A lone woman contemplates a print in this image, her back is turned to the viewer protecting her identity and the darkness that surrounds her creates an enclosed space.
The figures illuminated next, and the light cast on the print upon which she gazes, suggests the presence of a lamp, but it is out of our line of sight. I know. The family is the subject of this lithograph, which is called, “Family Scene.” Bonnard’s subject was close to home. His dearly loved sister, Andrée Terrasse, is the mother, seen in the upper right, and her son, Jean, occupies center stage and Bonnard and Andrée’s father is the bespectacled, bearded gentleman at the left,
He’s the grandfather. The surface of the lithograph is insistently flat and decorated with wavy lines and juxtaposed patterns. Bonnard believed in the power of deformation, distortion or exaggeration. He used a willfully awkward style and childlike forms to help communicate his vision and his emotions. Here, the style evokes the subject of his art,
A technique that we frequently see in his graphic work. Bonnard’s friend Maurice Denis, who was the theoretician among the young group of artists who called themselves the “Nabi”, to which Bonnard belonged in the 1890s, described it this, “Gaucherie, or clumsiness, is what I call this kind of awkward expression
Through which the artist’s personal emotion is revealed beyond all conventional formula.” A comparison of this drawing on the left and the color lithograph on the right reveals the evolution of Bonnard’s thinking as he worked on a composition. Again, we see that beloved sister Andrée and her son, Jean.
He selected a narrow vertical format, reminiscent of Japanese hanging scrolls that he so admired, wavy lines of watercolor and graphite suggests Jean’s wiggling on his mother’s lap. Andrée nearly disappears behind her voluminous sleeve composed of checks and dots and rendered in red over blue watercolor,
And by the way, such checked and plaid dresses were very much in vogue at the time, so she was au courant. Graphic arabesques animate the green background as does the wayward curl that escapes from her coiffure. The tight cropping and oblique perspective create the sensation that the viewer
Is peering over the woman’s shoulder during a private moment with her child. But now let’s look at the lithographic version of the composition. Here, he included foliage at the upper left enclosing the space now in a domestic garden. The most significant addition, however, is the inclusion of Bonnard’s
Own profile at the lower right. Immediately recognizable, I think he is, with his round glasses. Bonnard rarely depicted himself in his family scenes, aside from his timid self portraits in his early years, and then, as you see in this marvelous exhibition, the haunting portrayals of his aging physique
Late in his career, Bonnard seldom depicted himself in these scenes, but when present, he is often represented, as here, with just a fragment of a limb. And I love to show you this picture, which I find so mysterious with a, shown as with a fragment of a limb in this painting “Intimacy,”
Where only his pipe holding his hand appears. This is Bonnard in the foreground, just with the hand and the pipe. This charming, subtle painting features one of Bonnard’s regimental friends, the composer, Claude Terrasse hunched up in a sort of thick gray coat. Oh, here, wait, I’m gonna go back here.
Hunched in a sort of thick gray coat, wearing a hat with the brim turned up and smoking a pipe. It must have been cold in these interiors. On the left, deep in shadow, we make out the profile of the sister, Andrée, who married Terrasse in 1890, and in the foreground, Bonnard’s violet hand
Cuts across the painting holding a long pipe from which coils of smoke rise. And, again, these arabesques in these graphic curly cues. The painting reveals a freedom of composition that I think is astonishing. The spirals of smoke from the two pipes and Andrée’s cigarette echo the decorative arabesques of the wallpaper.
All of these elements have the effect of reducing the space, creating an overall atmosphere that is cozy and yet mysterious, claustrophobic, and yet somehow comforting. The emotional and intellectual ties between the figures are palpable. Now, I’ll go ahead here. Music was the most abstract of the arts
And it appealed to Bonnard who was fundamentally concerned with suggesting feelings rather than describing appearances, and music played a significant role in Bonnard’s life, his art, all of it. His sister played the piano and his friend and brother-in-law, Claude, was a composer. Bonnard was especially close to his sister and husband
And spent time in their home where quote, “Waves of music poured from the house.” Bonnard and Terrasse had an amicable friendship. Terrasse was tall, joyful with blue eyes and thick curly hair and a beard. He was an outgoing, while Bonnard was shy,
But they shared a tight bond and a love of humor and play. In the spring of 1891, these two men began collaborating on a musical primer for children. It was called “Le Petit solfège illustré” with text and music by Terrasse and illustrations by Bonnard. After a year of working on the project,
They met in Bordeaux in July, 1892 to show a potential publisher the illustration for the cover, a design Bonnard worked out through several studies progressively simplifying his composition. Bonnard’s natural playfulness and fondness for children came to the fore in this witty and charming design. Although the book was intended to appeal to parents,
Of course, who would buy the book, as well as children for whom it was made, Bonnard took the child’s point of view, inhabiting their mental landscape, while revealing the world of music with wonder and whimsy. Adults, however, are often cast as stern teachers, absurd vocalists with mouths agape and faces contorted with emotion
And willowy conductors with batons held a loft. More than 70 drawings for this project survive, far more than the 32 lithographs that ultimately appeared in the published edition. And, here, I’m showing you just four of the pages. And you’ll note in the lower right a teacher,
We’ll say counseling a child on his musical performance. This is why I still have nightmares about my piano lessons, I think. Here, in a study for the back cover, see the way in which Bonnard has simplified and moved the scene from a study at the left,
Which is a living room with a city view out of doors, into the final lithographic version on the right, into a bedroom with no outside world at all intruding into the quiet scene of Andrée reading to little Jean. It’s very much like the exhibition, I think, where we go from the outside world,
Deeper and deeper into the interior. Bonnard used multiple shades of watercolor for this glorious study that you see here on the left. He loved the effects of color and had hoped to print the book with multiple hues, but, of course, money did come into it
And he was deterred by the printing costs of so many colors. So the published version is more modest in its hues, but retains the charm of his sketches. Throughout the book, Bonnard used the relative age, height, or girth to explain musical concepts. Although this sheet was not incorporated
Into the final lithographic version of the book, it employs easy to grasp concepts in which smaller children symbolize the tonic and median notes and three ample women, here, they represent the dominant tones. And here’s probably my favorite one in the whole book. Typically he constrained himself to the margins,
But here Bonnard’s design commands the whole page printed over Terrasse’s lessons on compound measures. The silhouetted figures may have been inspired by popular shadow theater in Paris. “Le Petit solfège illustré” was printed in an edition of 2,000 copies in the hope that it would be adopted by schools,
But it was not the commercial success the authors had dreamed of, but it did garner critical praise. Bonnard and Terrasse were undeterred and they embarked upon a second partnership just six months after “Le Petit solfège illustré” and here we find a suite of 19 musical pieces
That were composed by Terrasse for the piano, “Petites scènes familières”. Intended for adult pianists this time, the music from little scenes, evoked the comforts of domestic intimacy and childhood and the titles of the songs indicate the attention that Bonnard and Terrasse paid to daily life. No moment was too insignificant.
A toddler’s song, a rambunctious donkey ride or a goat herd leading his flock through a village were all the subjects for songs. Bonnard created brush and ink lithographs for each musical composition, like you see here. Although the publication was a commercial venture, it was still highly personal.
Almost every song was dedicated to a member of the Bonnard/Terrasse family or a close friend and each design that adorned each piece of music contributed to setting the mood. And here, Bonnard captured the melancholic mood of saying goodbye to friends. Bonnard made a study of contrast between the black clad elderly grandfather
With a wrinkled brow as he cradles a baby with his huge gnarled hands. The child, on the other hand, is pale with smooth skin and a white gown and a tiny little fist. He couldn’t be more different from the older man, who was Claude-Marie Terrasse, the composer’s father.
This is a good one too. “Fifi’s First Tune”, Fifi was the nickname for Jean, mimics the music box that slowly unwinds, the tune does. Appropriately, Bonnard illustrates the sheet music was Jean Terrasse holding a music box and singing to a melody. In a letter of June of 1894, Andrée mentions Jean’s music box
And noted that Terrasse quote, “Made a piece of this as his first tune. It’s among the 20 children’s pieces inspired by Fifi, which are all new for this spring.” Berthe Schaedin, Bonnard’s cousin, was the model for this introspective composition and piano piece, “Reverie.” Bonnard used short disconnected strokes
That merged the figure, the floral wallpaper and her abundant curls into a decorative entire surface. Before the mid 19th century, gardening was really a luxury available only to the wealthy. But by the late 19th century, amateur gardening was established as a fashionable pastime. Bonnard grew up in a milieu in which gardens
And their moral and emotional import were an essential part of the lived experience. He depicted gardens as outdoor living rooms, small controlled corners of nature where the drama of the family could unfold. In this watercolor, we find a rigorous reduction of form. The first time I saw it, I mistook
That blue ribbon in the drawing as flowing water. It took me a moment to recognize it as a tree upon which the female figure braces herself as she removes her shoe to dislodge a pebble. The drawing playfully records the pitfalls of a garden walk. Bonnard’s sister’s body is contorted,
Her spine is folded in a slumped curve as she reaches for her slipper. Bonnard eschewed the recession of space and opted instead for flat plains of cool blues and greens and the natural setting of the garden seemed to invite his most impish approach to picture making. I’ve previously alluded to Le Clos,
The Bonnard family home that overflowed with family and relatives, family and friends, and provided such a rich source of subject matter, as you see in “Bonnard’s World.” The land surrounding the house, its garden and its orchard was the setting for all manner of recreation, conversation, dining and sport.
In “Woman with a Dog,” which you’ll see in the exhibition, once again, here we find Andrée and the cousin, Berthe. Schaedin is accompanied by Andrée’s floppy, brown eared canine, Ravageau. The three large yellow flowers, perhaps maybe dahlias or chrysanthemums, locate the scene in the garden and a group of onlookers are summarily
Suggested amid the greenery in the background. Once again, we see Andrée wearing a checkered dress that flattens her form into a series of planes and angles. Berthe’s body is compressed into the upper right corner and her hand rests on Andrée’s shoulder. The two women’s head, one blonde and one brunette,
Are inclined to one another suggesting tender familiarity and the beloved family poodle has a noble aspect. One paw is lifted to touch Andrée’s dress, completing the circle of touch and unity. In the following year, Bonnard revisited the subject of Andrée and her pet in “Woman with a Dog.”
Once again, she wears a plaid dress and her lithe form bends at the waist, compressing her body into the space of the sheet. The canine is animated bearing down on its forepaws as if to invite a chase, while the woman is composed of straight lines and angles,
The silhouette of the dog is drawn with segueing curves. Bonnard represented humanity, bound by the rules of propriety, with straight lines, while the dog is afforded the freedom of unbound mark making. Bonnard was at his most avant-garde in his rendering of pets and children
As if they are untethered to the rules of polite society and thus he gives them artistic freedom. One brown curl blows outward from her, from the figure’s forehead, liberated from her coiffure, linking her to the freedom of nature and her companion. Even when they depicted the bustling city of Paris,
Bonnard favored the intimate, domestically scaled view of the city, quiet parks and street corners rather than images of the nightlife or grand vistas of the capitol and its monuments. In 1899, commissioned by art dealer and publisher, Ambroise Vollard, Bonnard created a suite of color lithographs in which he captured everyday life.
Bonnard worked on this portfolio called, “Some Scenes of Parisian Life” for amazingly over four years. It was commissioned in 1895 but not published until 1899. The cover features the visage of Bonnard’s touchstone city dweller, a Parisian wearing an elaborate hat and lavish collar. She’s juxtaposed with the profile
Of a bespectacled man holding a pipe. And you can see her here and the man right nearby. Behind these quasi-portraits is a densely populated corner in Montmartre with horse-drawn carriage, bicyclist and a crowd of pedestrians passing by a wine shop. And this combination of closeup views of Parisian types
With the vignette of a street scene suggests the portfolio will reveal a humanized version of the city. Not a narrative sequence, the portfolio and prints, plus a cover, were a collection of images based on a general theme, almost like a graphic novel with no text,
And I’ll share just a few of my favorites. The view from an apartment window was an important theme for Bonnard and he used it frequently in the series. “Houses in the Courtyard” features a stylized pattern of roofs, windows, chimneys, and shutters. The one tiny sign of life in the composition
Is a woman shaking linen out of the window and into the courtyard, and you see her here. The lithograph is remarkably similar to a study that he made for it. Charming detail, though, is the sketch of a man’s face that you see in the right margin. That was possibly a self-portrait
And he looks as if he might be peering out of a window. Bonnard seized upon small moments in Parisian life like rainy evenings, conveying them with a striking immediacy that verged on almost upon abstraction. He often focused on intentionally ambiguous interactions and unspoken exchanges in the capitol,
Humanizing the anonymous inhabitants of the city. In this pair of nocturnal compositions, splashes of light define the silhouettes of the passersby and reflected light emanating from shop windows and gaslit street lights, bounce off a puddle illuminating a woman with an umbrella out on a rainy night.
The Parisian in the foreground at the scene of the right also holds an umbrella, a symbol of the bourgeoisie in the late 19th century. I’m going to close now with two of my favorite, and I think two of the most significant, works in Bonnard’s graphic erve.
In contrast to the images of children at play, Bonnard showed a girl at work in “The Little Laundress” that was published in 1896. Girls carrying laundry were commonplace in the streets of Paris by the 1890s and by the mid 19th century, amazingly more than one-fifth of the population of the city
And its environs were employed by the laundry industry. That’s a lot of laundry. Several preparatory drawings preceded Bonnard’s color lithograph. One study in charcoal, seen here, initiates the theme of the girl dwarfed by a laundry basket in her arms. Seen from behind, she trudges up a street in the direction of a carriage
And pedestrians in the background. And in another study, Bonnard honed in on his subject. The laundress now is seen from the back, but she seems younger, really a child, and her figure is schematically rendered. A watercolor showed Bonnard approaching the final composition for the lithograph. Her position on the page and silhouetted form
Are now firmly determined, as is the red shape of the door at the left and now a stray dog walking toward her. Significantly, the pedestrians who were featured in earlier studies have been omitted, she’s now alone in the city. And here is the final lithograph. In the lithograph, she’s a mere silhouette,
Possibly alluding to her ubiquity in contemporary life. Her schematic appearance is reminiscent of the theory that a form must be altered or distorted to realize the true essence of the thing depicted. The almost, but not quite, caricatural figure staggers under the weight of the basket and supports herself with an umbrella.
Now instead of being a stylish accessory, the umbrella is essentially a crutch. The sidewalk cuts through the composition at a sharp diagonal, suggesting that the incline here is steep. The girl is alone except for a stray dog with whom she’s about to cross paths. We have seen Bonnard pairing his sister
With her beloved pet, but here the pairing takes on a darker tone, I might suggest. The laundress is physically and psychologically weighed down by work and the dog, who really should be a playful companion for a child, is distanced. One imagines that they will pass without interaction.
But I will conclude with a joyful and I think remarkable image, the “Nursemaid’s Promenade,” or “Frieze of Carriages.” It consists of four lithographic panels that could be mounted to form a screen, as you see here, bringing urban life into the domestic interior. The subject is a fleeting moment
Of familial interaction in an urban setting. The foreground vignette features a stylish mother rushing across the Place de la Concorde with her daughter and two sons. Maybe they’re just returning from an outing at the Tuileries. Two dogs run with the family. The chaotic activity of the mother and her children
Is contrasted in the middle distance by three nannies who impassively observe a row of horse cabs in the background that frame all four panels. Bonnard was proud of the screen, writing to his mother, in a not very modest way, “I’m making a screen for The Salon des Indépendants.
In any case, it will be for the present time, the Eighth Wonder of the World.” Why not? I will let Bonnard have the last word, as for me, his work is truly a wonder and has provided me, and I hope you, with joy. Thank you so much. – I’m reminded in Heather’s talk of my first real immersion in the work of Bonnard, which was with a wonderful couple, now both gone to us, in Houston, Texas named Virginia and Ira Jackson, whose ambition it was to collect one, at least one, of every print that Bonnard ever made,
From the beginning of his career all the way to the end. And when they got to the end they said, “George, what are we gonna do now?” “We have one of everything, what are we gonna do?” And, literally, just like two days before I had seen a sale catalog for a sale coming up at the Phillips Auction house in New York and I said, “You’re gonna start buying drawings for prints.” Which they did, and the whole collection,
If you ever want to see a complete online survey of Bonnard as a graphic artist, you can go to the National Gallery of Art website where everything was donated by them about 20 years ago, and it’s a wonderful collection. Let’s move on from the graphic art to photography.
Isabelle Cahn, who has been a friend of mine for more years than we would like to mention, made a distinguished career at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris from the time of its opening in the late 1980s until her retirement just a few years ago. In that time, she was deeply involved
With several exhibitions devoted to the art of Paul Gauguin, Bonnard’s early mentor as you’ve heard, including the show that I helped to organize, “Gauguin Tahiti,” seen in Paris and Boston in 2003-2004. She was the curator in charge of the works of Gauguin and the symbolist artists of the end of the 19th century,
Including the Nabi, that group founded by Bonnard, with his friends Vuillard and Maurice Denis. In 2005, she organized for the Musee d’Orsay a stunning exhibition, “Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia,” which rekindled in me a profound love of Bonnard’s art and which certainly made me more sensitive to the glories of such works
As the Kimbell’s “Landscape at Le Cannet” acquired just a few years later. Nobody knows the great collections of Bonnard in Paris better than Isabelle. Those collections include works in every medium, but the works that are unique to the Musee d’Orsay are Bonnard’s photographs, almost all of them
Conserved in the collections of the museum thanks to the generosity of Bonnard’s heirs, the Terrasse family. I’d like to mention, parenthetically, that we are delighted to have, Charles Terrasse, Bonnard’s three times great nephew, with us this morning. In her talk today, Isabelle will explore Bonnard’s own exploration of photography
As a supremely modern medium of expression. Will you please welcome, Isabelle Cahn? – Thank you very much, George, for your presentation and good morning for everybody. I would like to apologize because I am not Englishman so I will read my contents. Like many painters of his time, Bonnard took photographs that had no artistic pretensions. There are family photographs and sentimental souvenirs,
But some of them have connections with the painter’s researches. These connections are what I would like to show this morning. Bonnard never expressed himself on the subject, nor on the use of impact of photography on his art. If it is possible to make connections between his photographs and his paintings,
A big difference remains because Bonnard had photographed what he saw but painted what he thought. I’m sorry. As many painters of his time, he began to use a camera in the half of 19th. Painters in the second half of the 19th century were quick to recognize the value of photography
To the artistic practice, especially from 1888 when George Eastman, director of an image and plate production company, marketed the first flexible film coated on one side with a light sensitive emulsion. This process has eliminated AV metal or glass plates reserved to the professionals. At the same time, Eastman launched a portable camera
That used the new roll format. He called it Kodak. Using the camera was very simple, as the advertising slogan boasted, “You press the button, we do the rest.” Photography became accessible to all and the process was an instant hit in America and Europe. In 1896, Eastman Kodak and Co. in Rochester marketed the folding pocket Kodak, a folding pocket camera with accordion bellows for taking snapshots. It soon becomes a worldwide success. This photograph with of Édouard Vuillard,
Taken by Bonnard, shows how to hold the camera with both hands at mid-bust height to frame the subject. We don’t know when Bonnard bought a pocket Kodak, but it was probably when it first became available in France in the late of 1890s. We counted some 200 known photographs taken by Bonnard,
Which he kept through this life, but there was probably more. From 1905 onwards, photographs by Bonnard became rarer, then disappeared for an unknown reason around 1916. After Bonnard’s death, they passed to the nephew, Charles Terrasse, whose children donated them to the Musée d’Orsay in 1987, when the museum was built.
The collections consist exclusively of black and white photographs no larger than eight by 11 centimeter. Many are negatives from which modern prints have been made. Others exist as both negatives and vintage prints. All the Bonnard photographs used to illustrate this lecture are from the Musée d’Orsay collection. One of the earliest identified shots
Is of Bonnard’s cousin, Berthe Schaedin, taken during a bicycle ride. The dark-colored girl doesn’t look at the lens. Bonnard, who was in love with her, photographed her by surprise. The two bicycles are resting against the embankment. Bonnard took most of his photographs during his stays in the countryside
At the estate of his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Mertzdorff at Le Grand-Lemps in Le Dauphiné. Every summer, he met up with his parents, his brother and sister, their spouses and children. Bonnard had no children but he was very close to his niece and nephews. Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, sometimes, joined Bonnard at Le Clos,
The name of the property at Le Grand-Lemps. Marthe, Bonnard’s companion, also visited, but rarely. Bonnard’s earliest photographs, taken in the ’90s, show his family at the corners during the summer vacation or during the year where Bonnard and his grandmother and parents, who have moved into the house after his father’s retirement. He photographed them as they went about daily business.
You can see here Mrs. Eugene Bonnard, the artist mother, and here, Mrs. Mertzdorff, Bonnard’s grandmother, holding on her lap, Vivette, Bonnard’s niece and Andrée Bonnard sewing. Andrée was his sister. This scene shows Bonnard’s brother, Charles, with his wife, Eugenie. He’s pushing her while she makes a protective gesture.
This the snapshot captured the excitement of the moment. Bonnard photographs scenes in action. The figures didn’t pose for the camera. He photographs their movements, expressions and interchanges. There are snapshots of family joy and carefree fun. Most of Bonnard’ scenes have a joyful, tender quality. Many of them show games in the garden,
In particular scenes of bathing in the pond known as (Isabelle speaking French). This word refers to a kind of shallow open air system where rainwater collects in gardens, linking any other means of watering. You see here Claude Terrasse, carrying Jean Bonnard, Claude Terrasse with Eugenie Bonnard, he’s carrying to the pool and there is also Andrée Terrasse here and Charles Terrasse
And another child, probably a cousin. Here we see a scene of bathing and chasing, caught on the boat by Bonnard at the edge of the pool, the children are in full movement. Their gestures are lively, the water is foaming. The frontal framing gives the impression of participating fully in the action.
As in the Lumia Brothers films, first shown in Paris on December, 1895. With this dog walking towards the lens, Bonnard subjects movement in two ways. On the one hand, the animal and on the other its shadow reflecting the movement seen from another angle. Bonnard was very interested in kinetic effects,
As evidenced by dispensing and prints. His compositions often showed decomposition of movements and their simultaneity, as in this skating scene. Black and white photography relies on contrast in values and variation in light. During the 1890s, Bonnard’s painting was characterized by a dark earthly palette. He used cameos of browns and grays,
Introducing color only in sparing stroke. In this photograph of Charles Terrasse and his grandmother, Bonnard has placed the child in full light, while Mrs. Bonnard, who remains in the shadows, appears as a secondary character. The same device is used in another photographs showing Mrs. Mertzdorff with Robert and Jean in the background.
The great-grandmother virtually disappears into the shadows, while the children are in the light. Bonnard uses the same powerful contrast in this painting of similar subjects, such as his nephew’s meal. In “Luncheon under the lamp,” Marcel, the Terrasse couples first child, is brightly lit by hanging lamp in the background,
While Robert and his mother are in shadow in the foreground. Other photographs of Marcel taken in 1898 in the garden of the house rented by Andrée and Claude Terrasse in the Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand are the only reminders of this child who died prematurely in the following year in 1899.
These photographs were taken in the same year as Bonnard painted “Luncheon under the lamp.” In his photograph, Bonnard was interested in accidents decentering and blurring, all of which deconstructs objective reality. His moving models enable him to introduce visual intrigue into his photographs. Many of his shots show closeup or cut motives,
Subjecting action in progress. Bonnard presses the camera button when he senses that something interesting is going on, as here, when his nephew has just discovered him with his camera. Everything happens in a flash. Charles looks at into the lens and points his finger at Bonnard as if to say, “I’ve seen you.”
In the foreground is Robert in a closeup, cut off and about to go out of frame. You can see here Robert. An interesting parallel can be drawn with a painting made several years before this shot. “Military and Blonde,” painted in 1892, where a young girl in profile, placed in the
Foreground is not immediately visible, as the viewers case first focuses on the soldier in the background. It takes few seconds to make the connection between the two figures. Bonnard’s taste for closeup with which analyzes and enlarges a part of the human body is confirmed in several photographs and paintings.
These details create depths of field and eye movement as Jean-Clair demonstrated in 1984 in his essay on Bonnard’s optics. His paintings are based on a dynamic interpretation of the subject in space. The same process is used in this faded photograph of values characters, picking fruit in the garden of the family estate.
Among them is Andrée Terrasse and in the foreground on the right, a straw hat, which like a scenic dog, such as the presence of another character observing the same. In many photographs, the figures are not posing. Bonnard likes to surprise these models, who seem oblivious of this presence. You see here, Andrée Terrasse,
Charles and the nursemaid, the letter is leaning forward, her body truncated. On the right, Claude Terrasse’s cut figure is also shown from behind, as is Andrées in a suit bath suit, in a bathing suit. None of the figures look at the camera, they ignore the photographer.
In this photograph, a maid carrying a basket taken from the terrace of Bonnard’s house in Vernonnet, the basket deliberately cuts the silhouette of the woman climbing the stairs. This device evokes the figure in his painting entitled, “The Vernon Terrace,” where Marthe appears in burst form, climbing the stairs. Several paintings depicting scenes in
Normandy, feature cutaway figures. Bonnard’s tastes for snapshots, contrast with his work of as a painter, where picture are born of a slow decanting of images. Nevertheless, photography enable him to fuel his reflections on the representation of action and narrative in a fixed frame. At the opposite, some of Bonnard’s photographs
Show people posing at his request. The photographer becomes a director. Here, Bonnard has asked his nephews to line up in order of height and age. The same arrangement of children in ascending order of size can be found in Bonnard’s drawing for Claude Terrasse, “illustré solfège,” published in 1893.
The children appears as note of a scale on a staff. The same idea can be observed in this photograph with the children lined up, one behind the other. Bonnard’s relationship between photography, drawing, and painting is not direct, but as many affinities, especially within family subjects. The same frontal pose of the artist’s grandmother,
Mrs. Mertzdorff, can be seen in the photographs and in the painting and title, “The Grand-mother with Hens.” In both, a silhouette appears as a massive form, treated synthetically with her feet protruding from a dress. And here for comparison. At the end of the 90s, Bonnard planned to premiere the members of his family
In a large collective portrait, depicting the Terrasse family in the garden of Le Cannet. As it was impossible to get everyone to pose at the same time, Bonnard made probably sketches that have not been found and took photographs of everyone in preparation for its composition. These photographs serve as an ed memoir,
But not as direct models. Here we see Mrs. Prudhomme, holding a Vivette on her lap surrounding by Robert, Jean and Charles in 1899. You can see here August Prudhomme, who was a member of Bonnard’s family and Pierre’s godfather, with Charles Terrasse. Another example of the affinities and subjects
Photographed and painted by Bonnard in the late 90s is this large composition entitled “Family in the Garden,” featuring members of the Terrasse family in the Grand-Lemps. The figures and groups of figures has been gathered in the landscape by such supposition, as in the collage. Both the painting and the photograph feature
The same tips of field with the succession of light and dark planes. The framings of the tall trees and coxes is almost identical. The small format of the photograph, as the large format of the painting give the same impression of figures immersed in an abundant of nature.
There is also the same desire to preserve a tender familiar image of beloved ones. In this small canvas, Bonnard reinterpreted another observed subject, “Children Bathing” in the garden space. But he added an allegorical dimension to his subject by depicting his figures naked as in the meteorological scene.
At the same time, Bonnard was working on an illustration for “Longus, Pastorals” and titled, “Daphnis and Chloe,” depicting nude figures frolicking in nature. In anticipation of his work, Bonnard took a series of nude photographs of himself and Marthe in the garden of a house he was renting in Loire Valley near Paris.
These photos has been presented by others showing Marthe naked in an interior. Bonnard began with the first series of photographs of Marthe nude in the bedroom of their apartment on Rue de Douai. The interior shows that a little blurred, due to poor lighting and the model movements.
At the same time, Bonnard planned to paint a series of compositions with erotic subjects as “The indolent woman” and “Siesta.” He does not paint from live models, but relies on drawing studies and probably photographs to create this composition. Bonnard also drew inspiration from his photographs to illustrate Verlaine Paris, a neurotic
And sophic subject in the book of poems and title “Parallèlement, the gallerist and publisher, Ambroise Vollard, has commissioned him in 1896, the year of Verlaine’s death, to produce an illustrated edition to be published in 1900. That year, Bonnard rents a house in Mauville, in the hillside of La Ville-du-Bois
In the western suburbs of Paris. He took nude photographs of himself and Marthe in the garden of the villa. It is Pierre who has chosen the poses. And for his portraits, he asked Marthe to press the camera button. The body’s illuminated by natural light, stand out against the dark background of a greenery,
Which brings out the lines, volumes and clarity of the skin tone. These plainer nudes serve as a starting point for the illustration of “Longus Pastorale.” Bonnard photographed other models in his studio. These overexposed shots with a naked woman standing or sitting in front of a screen are of interesting
Because they show Bonnard’s studio in 1905, probably Rue de Douai. Around 1916, Bonnard took photographs of another unknown model posing between light and shadow in his studio in the (indistinct) in Montmartre. The woman seems familiar enough with the place to pose with Bonnard’s cats in her arms. Nothing is known about this model.
She appears undressing amidst the canvases on the floor and the frames hanging on the wall. A mural reflects the model of lost profile. This full length low angled portrait exudes sensuality and modernity. The framing magnified the young woman’s silhouette. But in both painting and photography, Marthe remains Bonnard’s main model.
A very famous photograph show her in her tub. The scene takes place in the bathroom of Bonnard’s house in Normandy. The small room which was added to the original building had a French window at the back through which the light could enter. Marthe moved her head when the shot was taken,
Her face appears double. Transporting into a painting, the scene used the same black lighting with shadows on the bust and thighs. Bonnard took several photographs of his Normandy house in Vernonnet. The house called, “Ma Roulotte” and its garden, were the backdrop for numerous compositions painted between 1911 and 1936,
When Bonnard sold his property. Bonnard photographed the people he loved and occasionally those who were passing through his home. As here, with Bonnard’s paint printer, Auguste Clot, posing on the front porch of the Grand-Lemps house. Bonnard had collaborated with him from 1895 on the prints for the first album, (speaking french).
This photograph falls into the category of souvenir photographs, as do those taken by Bonnard on his travels abroad. In 1899, he went to Venice with his friends Vuillard and Roussel, who posed for him quite naturally in front of the Doge’s Palace. Bonnard was not particularly interested in remarkable sites.
He preferred to photograph his friends. As his fellow travelers in Spain, Vuillard and and the Bibesco princes on the street in Cordova in 1905. Bonnard has photographed his closest friend, Misia Godebska during cruises on the canals of Europe, the brother yacht. These photographs are almost all framed in
To show off the model and the animals, such as Misia’s griffin or Pierre and Marthe dogs, named Black, visible on the background of a portrait of Cipa Godebski, Misia’s brother. Bonnard’s idea for the painting and title, “On the Yacht,” with Misia reading on the deck of the boat
And her second husband, Alfred Edwards, came from a 1906 cruise through Belgium and Holland on Misia’s yacht. Misia’s boat appears in several of Bonnard’s paintings, both the photographs and painting feature the same diagonal framing, giving depth to the composition. Bonnard first visited Monet with Vuillard in the spring of 1909, after viewing
The Water Lilies exhibition at the de l’Orangerie gallery in Paris. Monet’s paintings would exist an influence in him, especially in his landscape paintings, embracing a large panoramic perspective. Bonnard’s admiration and friendship for the master of Giverny has never ceased. One of the arguments that convinced Bonnard
To buy his house in Normandy was the proximity to Monet, who lived in Giverny, just a few kilometers from Vernonnet. As another master of color, Bonnard admired, was Renoir. He took his photographs around 1916, during a visit to Cannes summer. The two painters had met in the mid of 1890s
Through Marleme and The Revue Blanche circle. These moving light and shadow portraits, shows the artist ill, half paralyzed, his finger ignored by arthritis, he was to die three years later. Back in his studio after his visit, Bonnard drew a pathetic portrait of Renoir from memory, which was engraved on copper.
Bonnard didn’t just realize portraits of his family, friends, and models, he photographed his pets was also, he photographed his pets, who also are only present in his painting, drawing, and etching. In this negative we see Andrée Terrasse bent over, playing with two cats and a dog.
Brother and sister shared the love of animal, which play an important role as a sentimental presence and in Bonnard’s painting and brings a counterpoints of human models. Pets even took parts in family meals. They climbed unto the beds. The name of Bonnard and Marthe’s dogs
Have gone down in history as Abu or Black or, and most of them are very well known, or Poucette. At the time when we are questioning the link between an artist work and his biography, Bonnard’s photographs play a special role. His snapshots are direct witnesses of his life.
They feed our desire to know more and more about the painter, the man and his private life. When the collection of his photographs entered the Musée d’Orsay, the statute changes from that of sentimental snapshot, to that of heritage works. They are listed in the museum’s inventory of photographic collections.
They have been the subject of many analysis and publications. As the title of the conference is Bonnard and Photography, I’d like to conclude with another aspect of Bonnard’s relationship with photography. Bonnard photographed by others. Here you can see also photographs with dogs, these Bonnard’s dogs. Bonnard photographed. There are many portraits of Bonnard
Taken through his life. In the 1890s, Bonnard appears smiling and relaxed as in this early shots taken in the garden at the Grand-Lemps. We don’t know who do them. It could be himself or someone else. Bonnard, ask him here or her to press the button after shooting the frame.
This photograph could be a self-portrait in which the artist calculated the framing and lighting. The frontal pose and the fixity of the feature are remit incent of a useful self-portrait. Bonnard’s photographs, portraits, show the artist in his private life, always elegantly dressed, but Bonnard never took himself to seriously. As in this portrait with Trotty, the donkey, who lived at the Grand-Lemps. Other photographs taken by friend as George Besson or Alfred Athis, one of the three Natanson’s brother, in the privacy of his home, show him as a gardener, as a car driver, as a sailor on the river Seine near Marlot.
George Besson, who took the photograph on the left, was a pipe making contractor, patron and art collector, who often visited Pierre and Marthe in Vernonnet. He was a good photographer and took snapshots with his friends that testify of the painters intimate life in the country. By this time in the 1920s,
Bonnard was a renowned painter with an international repetition. He was visited by famous photographers who wanted to take his portraits. Shyness and modesty make him reluctant, but he allows himself to be photographed by these professionals. In 1937, Rozsa Klein, known as Rogi André, a woman photographer, took several portraits
Of Bonnard in Deauville for an interview with the Swedish journalist, Ingrid Rydbeck. Here Bonnard poses again a backdrop of seaside scenery. A little later, during the winter of 1941, André Ostier photographed him with his (indistinct) as part of a series of portraits of actors and painters living in the south of France.
On four occasions, he visited Bonnard’s villa in Le Cannet, to capture the most intense moment of their encounter. This photograph shows Bonnard au natural, hands in the pocket, in front of one of his nude in a bathtub. “For me, this is the image that brings him back to life,”
Said Ostier, after Bonnard’s death. “I am very proud of it and I know it was the only one that Bonnard kept for the rest of his life.” On February, 1944, the famous photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, known for his communist and anti-fascist commitments, arrived at the door of the villa in Le Cannet.
He took 27 photographs. Bonnard didn’t pose for him, but let him work in silence. “When I took the photos,” recounted Cartier-Bresson, “I don’t know how long I felt in front of Bonnard. Hours, we looked at each other. There was no embarrassment. At what point I pressed,
He looked up and asked me, “Why did you press it at that particular moment?” And I ask him, “Why did you put a yellow here in this picture? He smiled. He didn’t say anything to me. We didn’t have to explain ourselves.” The last photographed portrait of Bonnard
Are color shots on Kodak home or (indistinct) film, taken by Gisele Freund in 1946, just a few months before the painters death. Bonnard greeted the photographer with a warning, “Do what you want, but don’t ask me to pose, I don’t have the time.” This photographs shows him painting. As in his series of self-portrait, he’s dressed in a crisp suit, light colored shirt and tie. While Bonnard’s self-portraits and family photographs reveal the intimate manner, the photographs taken by professionals showed a painter from a distance. These two complimentary visions adapt to a portrait of a paradoxical personality,
Who maintained a complex relationship with photographs. And I would like to finish the conference on one photograph I liked very much, because Bonnard appears in an unusual, relaxed attitude. The photograph was taken in Matisse’s studio where Bonnard poses in a moment of abandon, lying on the bed, using for the other models.
I thank you very much for your attention. – That is just wonderful. I love that photograph of Bonnard becoming an odalisque. Once again, I turned to the a rather personal note to say that I first met Gloria Groom more than 40 years ago in Paris. We were about 10 years old each. And we have been friends ever since. I’m pleased to welcome her back to speak at the Kimbell. She was last here to talk at the time of the Gustave Caillebotte exhibition in 2015. Then she was with us both as a speaker and also as lender of the great
“Paris Street Rainy Day,” from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is a distinguished curator of European art and chair of the museum’s department, devoted to Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Right now, she is back in Caillebotte world, preparing for a major exhibition to be held
At the Getty Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay. But the world that Bonnard inhabited and the innovations that he made are never far from her heart. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas was devoted to Édouard Vuillard, Bonnard’s early best friend and the theme of decoration.
This led to her exhibition “Beyond the Easel,” decorative painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel at Chicago, and the Met in 2001. At the beginning of her curatorial career at the Art Institute, she was one of the specialists behind the great “Gauguin Retrospective” at Washington, Chicago and Paris in 1988, ’89.
In addition to “Beyond the Easel,” she has organized a series of stunning exhibitions in Chicago, including most recently projects devoted to Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and Paul Cezanne. She doesn’t mess around. Today, she will return to the theme of Bonnard and the idea of décoration, the making of paintings with the ambition to go beyond the easel, to fill the walls and even rooms. Will you welcome Gloria Groom? – 40 years? I can’t believe it. Okay. Well, thank you all for being here today. This is incredible. Saturday morning, and you’re still here. It’s wonderful. If you need to get up and move around a little bit, please do. I won’t take it personally. When George asked me to speak about
Bonnard and Decoration, and after having seen the exhibition, and for those of you who have seen the exhibition, it’s all decoration. I mean, it’s just falling off the walls and it’s glowing and immersive and harmonious. But in the 19th century when Bonnard was growing up, it would had a very different meaning.
And so what I’m gonna try to do today is to, kind of walk you through the evolution of the term, décoration, and how Bonnard intersected with it. So I’m starting out with a slide that’s sort of interesting because it’s not about decoration, it’s the Nabi artists in 1900.
Let me see if I can find a pointer here. I’m afraid I’m gonna turn it off. So you have, Vuillard, we’ve talked about him, Maurice Denise and Bonnard in the Gallery of Vuillard and they’re not looking at a giant painting, they’re looking at a Cezanne still life.
And this will become later on in this 40, 45 minute lecture, it’ll be a little more evident why they’re doing this. But it’s not a decoration, it’s an easel painting. And that’s exactly what these artists were against when they started their careers in 1889, ’90,
Was the idea of easel painting being a commodity, showing a window onto nature, being something that was bought and marketed, where as Bonnard says, “All painting is above everything else decorative.” And he said in his first interview in 1892 that, his generation sought an art that would be linked to art,
That would be linked to life and that would have a popular and practical use. And he said, we envision making prints and screens and fans and decors. And I would add to that puppets and marionettes and studies for stained glass windows. It was an art that was linked to life.
And so in 2001, I did this exhibition, George just referred to in the “Beyond the Easel.” And it was largely paintings. And Bonnard really featured grandly in this exhibition. And I’m showing you two panels of a four panel series that was meant to be a screen. These are the studies for it.
But he told his mother that he didn’t, he decided not to exhibit it as a screen because it was trop tableau, tableau being an easel painting, it made too much of a narrative. So what I’d like to do today is just walk through some terms, tableau, meaning easel painting
In Nabi land and decoration and panneau – paravent. So a screen can be divided up into panels. And the decorative painting was something that was all over, but that had a certain, not narrative, not illusionistic, not a window onto nature, not something that was specific. Affiche-peinture, I call it posteresque.
These are the posters that were being made at the time by Toulouse-Lautrec, by Bonnard, by Vuillard, which combine this idea of flatness, of not being specific, of being something that was other than a painting. And décoration and decor, had another term of something larger than what they used for.
That it would be something that would be, that would go beyond the easel and that would be something that would be part of the wall for an architectural setting or as if it was made to fit into the architecture. And finally, Tableau – décoration and this is where I think that Bonnard
Really comes through as an artist who combines the two. It’s a hybrid, it’s a painting, it’s not destined, but at the same time, it has all the characteristics of what they were thinking about when they talked about decoration. And this will become, I hope, more apparent in the next few minutes.
In the exhibition “Beyond the Easel,” we included not only the paintings, decorative paintings, but also some of the screens that these artists made. And Bonnard, especially with his love of all things Japanese, was really, he was called, le Nabi très Japonard, was the king of this, along with his fellow artist Maurice Denise.
And here you see a screen that was made for no other purpose than for his own delight in loving nature, as we’ve seen throughout his life. He did this wonderful screen of the Marabout and then another screen that’s related, and it’s not on canvas, but it was on kind of a,
He was experimenting with felt and with different kinds of support. And he was really thinking, again, of linking art to life. This is a page that he did later on in life and it was known as, “The Life of a Painter.” And he’s showing different phases of his career,
Starting with his involvement with the theater with a friend of his, with whom he shared a studio with Vuillard and Denise, the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, the Theater of Work. And here he is on the ground on his knees and he’s painting a theater decor, which would be large,
Expansive, which would be quickly done and be a backdrop for the actions. So nothing too specific, but something that would set the mood. And that I think plays an incredible role, not just in Bonnard’s work, but in all of the Nabi’s work, their involvement with the Avantgarde Theater.
In the middle, you see him involved with The Revue Blanche. We’ve talked about the Natanson’s, Isabelle mentioned today and Misia, And this was a group that was associated with a very important literary and artistic journal. And Vuillard and Bonnard and Denise, they were all very much immersed, not only in the life
Of this periodical, but in making posters for it and making lithographs, which were published within, but also in the private lives of the Natonson’s. And Heather talked about his very first poster, which was incredibly important, “France-Champagne,” but here on the right is a poster that he made
Three years later for the enterprise of The Revue Blanche. And you can see how flat, you can see how he’s using pattern. And this will be something that during the 1890s, Vuillard and Bonnard are very much interested in. And this silhouetting, which may come from, as Heather said,
May come from the shadow theater that they were also involved with and loved, as a kind of a way out of traditional easel painting. Basically they were looking for a new approach to an art that would be something other than what they had seen. And so they were trying to break away.
Here is the original for the screen of the nannies, and we had it in our exhibition just showing how this idea of art linked to life, how it could be in a practical way as a poster, as a screen, as something that was edited in a hundred copies.
And so that could be bought and put in your house either on the wall or on the floor as a folding screen. But that had another purpose besides being an easel painting. Now, Bonnard was not the first, nor were the Nabi’s, the first to think about an art linked to life.
Gauguin who is, as we’ve said, their mentor, was there first. He was thinking about an art that expanded. He was thinking about woodwork, he was thinking about ceramics. He was thinking about different ways that art could be reflective of life. And here is a design for a bookcase that he did with
Motifs from some of his more recognizable paintings. And we at the Art Institute bought a cabinet not so long ago where, it’s Bonnard working with a younger artist, Bernard and it, again, it is kind of a bookcase. We don’t really know because it’s not beautiful. It’s actually plug ugly,
But it was even worse when we got it because it was covered with black goop. And it took us over a year to get the black goop off. And it’s something very, you know, it’s an artist piece of furniture. This does not exist in Pont-Aven.
This is not something that was traditional at all. It’s him. But as you can see, he’s using the center motif from one of his more famous paintings and a painting that the Nabi’s would’ve known and that would be very influential for where they were going with an art that was not descriptive
And narrative, the “Vision After the Sermon,” where you have the women with their Breton coifs, looking at something that’s happening in another zone, in a more spiritual zone, where the canvas is literally divided, but it’s also through that division, it’s also flattened. And so there is none of the recession into space
That we associate with traditional narrative easel painting. Bonnard also was very interested, as he said, in furniture design and actually submitted this for a contest in the early 1890s. And I’m just showing you, I mean it would’ve been fantastic to have this made, wasn’t,
But you can see how he’s thinking about these ideas of unusual formats of squeezing. Here’s these dogs prancing and not having any kind of narrative, but rather dogs being flattened out in the service of the decorative painting. And when you think about it, it’s easy for dogs
To be flattened out. It’s harder for people. There is a standard of making a person. And that’s why Gauguin was so important to them because he broke the rules and he gave them the freedom to think about lines and colors and forms rather than things and people.
And so here is a way, and you’ve seen this in Heather and Isabelle’s talk, how he’s using these checkered a la mode patterns to flatten out the figure with the line so that it’s, you know, how do you make a person a decoration? Well, here you see it, you compress, very much in,
The dog turns into something that, you know, I don’t know quite what it is, but it’s furry, And then you can see how he’s used the format, which is almost square and he’s just compressed this, what could have been a very narrative subject, as we saw in some of the photographs, into this very small densely claustrophobic space. Again, I think Bonnard was always out there
Just a little bit more than the Nabi’s. I don’t know if it was because of his confidence having had a successful poster early on in his career, submitting furniture designs, really going forth in a way that some of the other artists didn’t.
But I just showing you in the idea of how do you make a woman’s figure into a decoration? Bonnard does it amazingly. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, stop that. Go back, go back, go back. Woo. That was interesting. Just squeezing it in and making the arabesque
And turning her into something that’s female like. But that ends up being pattern, on pattern, on pattern. Whereas you can see his colleague, Maurice Denise, who is the theoretician for the group and who is very much, he’s clear in his ideas of what a decorative painting should be. His is much more readable.
It’s much more what we would associate with a woman having being compressed into a kind of Japanese scroll like format. And he continues that idea of pattern on pattern in order to distort and to flatten the human figure. And he starts working on larger and larger formats.
And this is something that I think is really interesting and I’ll talk about a little bit more, is that Bonnard didn’t need to have commissioned works, as did Denise and Édouard Vuillard, who were the more working class artists of this circle. Bonnard comes from money. His family had a summer home.
And so he’s, in some ways, more confident. And obviously, if he makes a big painting, he can make a big painting and he can spend the money on the materials and the canvas and everything like Caillebotte could do. But he doesn’t have to have it being paid for
By someone right up, he can do it on spec, so to speak. And so here he is showing his family, again, his beloved Le Grand-Lemps, where he would go every summer and the Terrasse family and in this wonderful flattened pattern on pattern. And then these kind of, I’ve got to learn
To use this a little better, by the end of this lecture, I’ll have this dow pat, I’m trying to find, and these, so thinking about the “Vision After the Sermon” that we just saw by Gauguin, where you see this other worldly thing happening, here you have these kind of, again,
Very distorted women in white, sort of abstracted to these kind of cipher like figures that he will do again and again, especially with the children of the Terrasse family. And then the ostensible croquet game, although it was first exhibited under “Twilight”, “Crépuscule,” which has a much more symbolist aspect to it.
And as I believe I mentioned before, the Nabi’s called themselves that, the prophets, among themselves, but to the larger world, they were the inheritors of the symbolist movement that Gauguin had started a few years earlier. Okay, I’m gonna be very careful and look where I’m going.
And as I said, the difference between these two artists who are often linked together up until the, you know, 1960s, there would be exhibitions of Bonnard/Vuillard, as if they’re exactly the same artists, they start very much on the same plane, but by 1900 their past a verge and you can’t say
That they are of the same psychological and artistic highway. But as I mentioned also, Bonnard is the artist who comes from a family of wealth. And Vuillard is not. Vuillard needed to have commissions. He needed to have people ready to buy his art and also Bonnard, you’ve seen these photographs.
I love the one in the center because you’ll see this again and again in his work, the children at the bassin, these little pools that dotted the Grand-Lemps landscape and this one, again, he’s being smothered by nephews and nieces and playing with a goat, goats, cows, hens, all of these farmyard animals
Are very much muscle memory in his works. If you think about Cezanne’s, certain trees that appear again and again, for Bonnard, these are touchstones that you will see even when he is working in a completely different idiom in terms of how he’s making his marks. So Bonnard’s paintings from the summers at Grand-Lemps
Are wonderful, that they have a decoration, they have a mural like quality, they’re large. And that’s one of the reasons I translated all the centimeters into inches. So please note that because that took a long time. And it also gives you a sense because I can’t do centimeters either, and it also gives you a sense of how big these are because you know, you’re seeing everything looks the same. They can be this big or they can be that big. And so these are large paintings
And if you think about it, they’re kind of, in some ways, as if he’s thinking about those three panel screens that we saw. You could almost divide these up according to that tripartite mentality that he had when he was working in the early 1890s. And these two panels that are supposedly unrelated
But obviously related, they are now both in the Pola Museum in Japan. We don’t have any reason why they were made, if they were supposed to be, meant to be a screen and then he separated, as he did the women in the garden that we saw earlier, don’t know, but obviously no horizon,
Really thinking about the flatness and the way that this would hang on the wall like a veil, like a decorative mural painting. Oh, and I should go back just a second. I wanted to point out these two, and again in the center, okay, you have these little figures again with the goat
Or whatever, I don’t know what that is, and the apple picking, these are themes that appear again and again. And then more obvious paintings that are divided up in kind of a screen like way of his family. And we saw those photographs that Isabelle showed,
Which you can just see how this is being transferred into a vision of a large scale decorative painting with no intended destination. And then this wonderful one of the family in the garden from 1901, which is just kind of organized chaos. It’s just what happens when you get everybody together.
But it’s also this square format and formats were very important because easel painting tended to be, as I said, window onto nature, so a rectangle. If you’re working on a column or a panel that’s vertical, if you’re working on a complete square, you’re automatically eliminating, or not eliminating,
But making it more difficult to have a horizon line, to have a foreground, middle ground, background. It really lends itself to thinking differently about how a painting is made. And in his case, he’s going to cover it completely all over. And this is where, so this is 1901,
So you saw the earlier painting of the Nabi’s admiring Cezanne. This is where I think that he is really moving away from Nabi, pattern, on pattern, on pattern, into something that’s much more complex like a Cezanne, where on the surface it looks like an easily accessible painting, but then
You start seeing his playing with space and that things flatten and go back and flat. So you’re looking at it and what you’re seeing is not exactly understandable and it takes you a while to really try to figure out how he did it, where he’s going and why.
And there’s a little girl with a little ball she’s trying to catch. Vuillard on the other hand, as I said, needed commissions and this is one of two paintings that he did for the Natanson family, for the father, the patriarch of the family.
And you can see he’s making it much more like a tapestry, much more emphatically decorative, the Natanson’s own tapestry. So he was trying to fit it in because he knew eventually it was going to be, this is another scale picture, this is at the Getty going in to be worked on.
And while this isn’t the first residence it was made for, it was made for a specific place in an apartment of the Natanson’s patriarch. So there was a reason he was paid for it up front before he went and invested in the eight and a half feet of canvas.
The Natanson’s played a huge role in Vuillard’s life, but also in Bonnard’s. He was friends with Misia for life. He was very loyal to her, but he did not make decorations in the same way for them during the 1890s. It was not until Misia divorced that he gets involved with them.
But Vuillard on the other hand, is making decorations for other people and including Bonnard. So Bonnard has his own country place, Vuillard doesn’t. Vuillard lives in the city. He lives with his mother until she dies in 1928. She makes corsets. He lives in a very, very
Small place with his mom and sister until she moves out. But so, what does he do when he’s painting a decoration, two decorations for a client, (indistinct), a journalist, he paints Bonnard and Marthe, on the property of Misia, who’s there with her brother, as a decorative painting.
It’s a painting that is not, as he said, Vuillard said, in order for a decoration to work, it can’t be too specific. So it’s still people, but it’s now abstracted and just a little bit because of his different kind of technique, which is distemper, which is more of a dry temper painting,
Mixed with hot rabbit oil, rabbit skin, that you get a weird kind of surface that makes it look like it’s craggy and it’s encrusted and it belongs to the wall. So weirdly enough, he’s showing Bonnard and Marthe, who’s known for her fashion, so she’s reading a fashion magazine, this was specific
To an interior, so it was made to fit. A couple of years later he’s still working for the same patron, now he’s doing Bonnard again, talking to the wife of the person who commissioned Anne, commissioned it with these other people. And that the problem with that kind
Of decoration when it’s destined for a certain place is that life changes, divorce happens. I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want that woman. I’m now married to you and now you’ve got this woman talking to Bonnard and you know, forget it. And so Vuillard was forced to change it
And so the personalities changed. And then of course when that woman wants to sell it, she wants it cut in half because nobody wants a painting that big of people that don’t have anything to do with their lives. So that’s the downside of décoration when it’s commissioned for a particular person,
For a particular place and Vuillard above all, knew the pitfalls of that. Bonnard, on the other hand, could do his own family on a large scale in a very decorative way. On the other hand it’s very, it’s almost a caricature because Bonnard is painting for himself. He’s painting for his, to experiment.
He’s trying new things, but he’s also very much a child of this family that he is, you know, so embraced by, and this is the first version where you see he’s, I mean, I just, I can’t, I love that so much. And you know, so this is his family with the
Mr. Prudhomme, that we saw in the photograph. And then another version, equally large, a little bit larger actually, where he’s freer because he knows where he’s going. He’s already done it once and he keeps that one, this one goes to his dealers, the Bernheim’s.
But it’s, you know, it’s a little bit loosening up of the paintbrush of the strokes, the mark making with still the general personage of the family. And again, pointing out the children and the water basin that they are so much associated with in his paintings. And this is the painting that the first,
The Dauberville’s who cataloged all of his works and volumes, this is the first volume it ends in 1905. And this is the painting that they put on it that they felt best represented Bonnard and where he is at the turn of the century. But Bonnard had turned and there was a change.
And that painting of the Nabi’s with Vuillard in the studio and in the gallery looking at the Cezanne, that was a turning point and the Nabis basically, they didn’t disperse in terms of friendships and acquaintances, but they did change in terms of where their art was going and how they were going to,
What would the next decade going to bring. And Bonnard was very much part of these changes. He’s, as Isabelle pointed out, and Heather pointed out, he’s much going back to more thinking about classical as he does the illustrations for Daphne and Chloe. And there’s a whole zeitgeist of return
To order in, in France in general. And this idea that art should also be informed by the classical. So before with the Nabis, it was Japanese art, it was medieval, it was stained glass paintings, it was caricatures, it was puppet theater. It was a lot of different things that they were using
To escape from easel paintings and figure out a new approach to painting. But now Bonnard is kind of retrenching, rethinking what a painting should be and his subject matter for a certain period, he’s really interested in these fawns and these more arcadian pastoral themes. I think here he was just calling it home.
I don’t think he was really trying on these. But anyway, these are paintings that ended up in Henry Kapferer, who’s the owner of the wonderful painting that the Kimbell’s bought recently and they were made to, they were on either side of a door, we don’t know if they’re commissioned or not,
But it’s the only time he worked in this really very set, almost Rococo way of making a panel painting with these Arcadian subjects. In 1914, there was a two volume “Les Décorateur,” “Les Peintres Décorateur,” by Achille Segard, in which he chose three paintings for each one,
Three painters and Vuillard and Denise get included. Bonnard does not. Why is he not considered a decorative painter? Because up until this point, he had not done decorative paintings for destinations as much. You have, Vuillard has already done many, many commissions for the Natanson family. Denise has his own clients and Bonnard,
It’s not until around 1906, 1907, that he really gets going as a commission decorator. And one of his most favorite is the one, the series he does for Misia Godebska. Now she’s divorced, now she’s married to the wealthiest man in Paris. So Pru says, she only knows one way to dress
And that’s expensively. And there she is with her sort of Gobelin tapestry. And Bonnard creates these humongous, you know, 11 foot wide murals for her Quai Voltaire apartment. He has a studio in the same at the time and he works on them over a number of years. And it’s Arcadia, but Arcadia with the twist.
With mag pies and pearls and there’s all kinds of personal innuendos and monkeys, which weren’t at the family property. So this is a new introduction of an animal. And these just wackadoo images of something from Daphne and Chloe, perhaps, also the nymphs there. It’s just in this landscape that’s very indistinguishable
And these crazy borders that linked them all together. This is the way they looked in 2001. We had a couple, just to give you a sense of the immersive huge space they take up. And she must have had an amazing apartment. They were inaugurated by candlelight and Jede came
And all of the who’s who of Paris came. And then he showed them at the salon in 19, Salon d’Automne in 1910. So they were seen and talked about, and really this was quite a, quite a like volt fast for Bonnard who always said, I have a horror of painting for specific dimensions.
You know, he doesn’t like that. As we know, in the last decades of his life, he would just hang up the canvas and work directly on the wall. And when a painting was finished, you can even see in the exhibition here, he would just kind of like, that’s the end
And I’m gonna cut it here, I’m gonna stretch it here. And so now he’s working on these precise dimensions and yeah, it’s very hard to see. This is like some kind of asiatica, I don’t know, sage, whatever. And then these figures that I’m sure come out of the bathing figures he’s done
To the long, just another view. And then this one, the juex, the games where you again see the basin from Le Grand-Lemps making another appearance and figures that, as I said, almost a muscle memory coming back to these. And once again, Misia divorces, right then. So they’re then, they’re in her home
And then this horrible man she had married, they divorce and she can’t afford to keep them. She has no money now. And so they, this panel goes to Henry Kapferer along with the others. So it’s like the story of decoration is never going to be, ’cause they’re not on the wall,
They’re on canvas and they’re glued to the wall or they’re just stretched on stretcher bars and put as a painting, but on the wall to the dimension so that it looks like it belongs architecturally to the interior. But I just wanna point out that at this time
He is very much aware of Matisse. Matisse is already the bad boy of the avant-garde. He’s out there doing these incredible, also archaic pastoral subjects and all over, but in a very different, a different idiom in terms of the linearity, in terms of the collage like quality than something like Bonnard
Who’s making a painting that serves as a decoration that is specific to someone’s taste and someone’s architectural interior. Now speaking of dimensions, Bonnard really messed up when he was commissioned by the Hahnloser’s to make a huge decoration. And I think he must have done what I do sometimes,
Is I use inches instead of centimeters. But this was so big and no way it was gonna fit into their home in Switzerland, which he had not seen, which he had not really measured out. And I think he just didn’t do the math right. And so this was rejected.
I mean, they couldn’t fit it in and he did something different for them. But again, I just want to point out these little figures in the center of these little, sometimes their women, sometimes their children, and they’re just in the center. And the idea of this almost a proscenium
With the curtains, if you think of a stage and you think of the scene unfolding in front of you, and in the front row you have the people that are in the audience. And again, the little people, this time it’s children. This was, so when he shows
The Natanson big paintings that you just saw with the mag pies and the monkeys, when he shows the, at the Salon d’Automne , that’s when he really gets recognized as a peintre décorateur. So it’s now 1910. And Morozov, the Russian collector who was often in Paris, would’ve seen those at the Salon d’Automne
And everyone talked about them. A lot of people were talking about, you know, just how fantastical “1001 Nights,” you know, nights. They were comparing him to these kind of fantasy paintings. And he commissioned a triptych for the top of his staircase in Moscow and so Bonnard never saw it.
He had to work with the dimensions and thankfully this time he did get it centimeters right with the dimensions that Morozov gave him. Never went to Russia and this was the, these are 11 foot high panels and this is the way they looked, this is the way they looked now,
If you go to the Hermitage, which you can’t do, but someday, and again the little, and the sort of stage like, I don’t have a picture of how it would look if you walked up the stairs, but basically you would not really see these as you’re walking up.
This is what the part of the painting that would be most visible. So you’d be walking in this mansion up into this kind of paradise of the midi, because by now Bonnard was more and more spending time in the South. And this is called the “Mediterranean”
And it is just kind of a celebration of the douceur de vivre, that sweetness of life and just the languish, completely different than the rhythms we just saw in the Misia, which were frenetic and claustrophobic and you want out. And this is, you know, almost impressionist in its, that what it’s showing
And very much a part of wanting for this particular patron, a slice of that French Mediterranean lifestyle. And this is from the exhibition that I did, just to show you again, volume and how would they look and how you’d experience them. They were expected to be between, so he had to take out
The foot for these half columns that they had to fit into and he had to cut it around so that the capitals of the columns would be fitted into it. Morozov, the Russian collector, was so enchanted by these that he commissioned other paintings of the artist.
Again, this is an artist who doesn’t like to do things by the dimensions, by this place, but this was quite easier because he’s just talking about these sort of large paintings and Bonnard returns to life in the city. So my thinking is that he’s trying to show this,
Or maybe he talked to him by correspondence, I don’t know, but this is, you know, this is my life. This is my life in the south and this is my life in the city. But he does see city scenes, which really harked back
To scenes that he did in the 1890s when he was working on posters and prints and paintings. Oops, lets try that again. And the apple cart or the cart with cherries appears again and again, it’s like the basin with the children. It’s part of his repertoire, it’s part of his vocabulary.
But these sort of zones of activity that you’re seeing, which will be very important for his landscapes later on. But here he is experimenting with those and the figures in the foreground. And he does at the same time, so this is around 1912, he also gets commissioned by George Besson, Isabelle talked about,
A critic, and one of his biographers, who asked for another city scene. This is the “Place Clichy.” And Bonnard does something really interesting in order to not make it too easy for himself, I think. He does it as a reflection in a mirror. So he’s inside the cafe
And he’s looking in the mirror, which was reflecting the awning, the end of the awning, which becomes kind of this decorative border. So it’s sort of this, play on space that you see with a lot of artists who show themselves reflected
In a mirror, but now it’s a city scene that is being seen by an artist who is looking in a mirror and painting as these figures look. Now, as I said, I think for this, he’s going back to something he had done early on as a Nabi painter.
And I can’t believe you got this, George. This is a, What? – [George] I didn’t get it. – You did get it? – [George] I did not. – But you told me you were getting it. Oh, I just thought I didn’t see it yesterday. I’m like, I can’t believe I didn’t see this. I was waiting for this. Okay. Oh, you sent, well see, and I just got excited about this. But so back to that idea of a screen, a tripartite screen, here’s the carts
That appear again and again, but now it’s that Nabi work. You know, it’s the, pattern, on pattern, on pattern, but they’re very small and they’re all over. And it’s not a specific subject as he’s doing on the larger murals that this was going to be for a particular patron. Oh, I’m so sorry. Pretend that didn’t happen. Nothing hurt. This is a really interesting thing though. It’s over over six feet and it’s like a sketchbook on canvas that Bonnard did. It ended up in the part of the collection that was only realized, that people only knew about in the 1960s.
It’s very schematic, but it’s as if he’s just getting his, it’s like his drawings, you know, it’s just like he’s gonna get everything out there. All these different types of the Parisian streets he’s gonna get out there and the tram that appears again and again, here’s the cart, here’s another cart.
The kinds of people, it’s just messy and it didn’t go anywhere and he kept it in his studio. So it’s more like a repertoire, it’s just an album of things that he might include in his works. His last work, 16 years later for the same collector, George Besson in Besancon, was completely different.
It’s his last, really, his last municipal, his last urban scene, before he, pretty much, retreats either to Normandy or to Le Cannet and it’s even more complicated and here’s where the Cezannian part comes in, because same, this was for the library and it’s called “Place Clichy.”
It’s not Petite Poncet, it should be Petite Poucett, kind of like the animals. But, so this relates to the other two panels that he did where he’s looking from the inside at a mirror outside, but then he’s looking completely directly into it. So you have two different perspective.
One is the perspective reflected in a mirror and the other one is him looking at the diners at their cafe tables, which totally, like a Cezanne when you’re looking at him, totally changes the rhythm, the way you’re seeing, your perception. Very complicated. Imagine him trying to figure this out
And then, you know, recognizable people, the waiter and, but again, that radical cutting off and imagine this blown up to this size. So it’s a painting, but it is a mural painting. And you can think about it in that tripartite screen like format that started from the very get go
With Bonnard’s thinking about painting. My favorite paintings of his decorative career, which continues throughout his life after he’s, after 1906, he works on specific decorations or those he did for his dealers. He didn’t have a contract with them. And this particular commission was just for a foyer.
So it didn’t have exact, I mean it had the same kind of square ish dimensions, and he does just something fantastic, the “Symphony Pastoral,” which again, he brings in his, the animals from Le Grand-Lemps and the goat herd and that kind of pastoral subject matter,
The painting we bought probably 20 years ago now of the “Earthly Paradise,” which I think is so interesting because here, unlike most of his decorative paintings, he’s starting to give you his, he’s inserting himself, we think very much so that this is Bonnard who’s looking out over this Normandy,
This lush landscape and that that is Marthe strewn in front. He’s very much aware of, very much friends with Renoir and Monet at this time and you get this kind of iridescent skin quality in Marthe that reminds us of Renoir’s way of sort of making skin as if it’s got this particular quality.
And then there’s all this other stuff going around. So this was done between 1916 and 1920 for the foyer of their avenue, Ari Martin apartment. And it seems that he’s really thinking about, you know, the war, I mean, you know, this is France ravaged and he’s returning to the pastoral,
He’s returning to this era of innocence because this is, you know, it’s a veiled, not so veiled, Adam and Eve. And if you look around, there’s different things going on. This is, I think this is a for shortened heron, but it could be an artist’s table next to the artist.
There’s a monkey reappearing, there’s this kind of bird of paradise, there’s a turkey. And then, because you’ll never find it, and we tried it yesterday and nobody could get it. There’s a snake. I mean it’s a garden variety. I mean it’s not very big, but the serpent exists.
And then there’s this little bunny down in the foreground. So he’s hidden, he’s camouflaged, these sort of playful, whimsical characters. The other one has to do with antiquity. This is the same four panels that he did for the foyer called “Monuments,” where he’s looking at these manmade buildings of the past
And the sculptures and (speaking french), and it’s just, you know, so fascinating how he’s combining all of these as a continuum in this room that you’re going to have these different times of life, the different times of our civilization. And he pairs monuments with another manmade scene.
This is the workers on the sand, we think it’s an (speaking french) across from La Granja. And you know, again, during the war, the men are older, they’re working, the steam is coming up. It’s a scene and not of Paris, not of the hustle and bustle of Paris, but rather this more,
A darker, starker scene that was going to be seen. And what’s so fascinating is that the same dealers who commissioned this from Bonnard at the same time commissioned Vuillard, to do decorations for their country home. And Vuillard actually just does a, again, he doesn’t have his own home.
He lives through the life of his patrons. Now he’s showing them their wives, he’s showing their property as part of a decoration. And the only way we would know this was a decoration, cause they looked so much just like paintings, was they’re big and you can see that
This would’ve gone under the stairwell of the Bernheim-Jeune’s home. And so Vuillard had to add to it after the fact when they wanted to sell the paintings, when they were taken out of their country home and needed to be sold as paintings. Now I’m going to be ending with some
Of the later paintings of Bonnard that were, this was not destined. This is the wonderful Kimbell painting where, as Georges pointed out, the artist includes himself at Le Bosque, which he had just purchased this property. So it’s this kind of golden age, again,
You can think about it in terms of a three panel screen. It’s this long glowing, amazing painting with a kind of a border up here. So all of those precepts that make a decoration as opposed to a tableau are here, this hybrid. And it was going to go over the chimney
Of this very modern interior of Henry Kapferer, who also had the Misia panel I showed you earlier. This idea, this long panoramic would become one of his other ways of approaching painting in the 20s and 30s and I love this. It’s just like, you could almost think of it
As a painting in the round. Like you’d be in the middle and it would just immerse yourself in that. And then a series of paintings from Normandy and thinking about where he was at that time, going back and forth between the north and the south.
And this is the terrace that the La Roulette that Isabelle showed you a photograph of. And there’s just lusciousness where the size alone becomes part of the experience. It’s not just something you’re looking at and focusing on, rather you’re enveloped by. And this one from Dusseldorf that I just think is incredible.
And at this point, Monet, Monet, Bonnard is very much looking to Monet. Both he and Vuillard, as you saw in the photograph, they’re visiting Monet. Monet literally lives down the path, along the sand from where this house is. And I think very much as many people have said,
He was thinking, he was visiting his artist friend, the older artist who was working on this grande décoration that ends up after his life installed in their l’Orangerie that was commissioned by Clemenceau and that was really a celebration of France, of France’s of nationhood, of what it is and just this immersive mural
Of water lilies from his own garden. Again showing his private paradise as Bonnard was showing at the same time. And two public installations that he did, which I really don’t know much about. But now I want to know, for the Theatre de Chaillot in 1937
After the World’s Fair, he does a 200 square meter, a 200 square inch mural of, that’s going to be in this theater. And you can, it’s so different from what Vuillard, who is also commissioned at the same time, does. So Vuillard does comedy and he includes bottoms from “Midsummer Nights Dream”
And it’s very recognizable and it’s very easily accessible. This is for the entryway, but for the stairwell where you walk down, you had this huge Bonnard where again he’s showing like he’s showing goats and cows and you know, just his world in a public space for the major national theater.
And I just comparing it to that because I think it’s so interesting that his world is always going to trump the world that which it was commissioned for. Except for the Misia panels, where I think he really, really was trying to get into her psyche because he was so close to her.
And then the last commission was for a church, which is unusual for Bonnard, but it was a church that was the priest was asking artists rather than somebody religious and so he was asking les gens, artists of the day that he felt were so important. And Bonnard responds with a saint, Saint Sales,
And in this kind of wonderful, this is, I’m just showing you a detail cause it’s very hard to figure out. So he’s giving the host or he’s had his hand out and then there’s a little boy right next to him. I think it’s somewhere there, very difficult to read,
But it’s an amazing, you can see, so he came there, he glued it onto the wall, it’s still there. And so he would’ve been, now he’s in, you know, he’s in, close in his 70s. And I think it’s really interesting to imagine as one person, as one critic pointed out,
He said that this was a portrait of Vuillard who had died a couple of years earlier. Not sure about that. But I think it is interesting the way you can think about how he’s now conceiving a painting. He’s got the woman Marthe in front,
And then he’s kind of thinking about this rounded edges, another way of changing a tableau into a décoration and the idea of stained glass windows. And this was, not a stained glass window, but it was in an archway in a church, which suggests that and this explosion of color that he takes on.
And then I started thinking about stained glass windows and the idea of décoration and even going back to those checkered dresses that we saw from the very beginning of his Nabi days where he’s flattening it out. And these pattern, on pattern, on pattern and the tripartite division interrupted only by the wonderful dachshund.
And I just think that this is Bonnard’s true gift is that, as he said, “I float between intimism and decoration.” So intimism on one hand is everything about his own life. Decoration is a more universal expression. Intimism can also be compressed space as opposed
To the diffused space of a decoration, a wall mural, something that’s going to fill. But it’s also Bonnard, as George puts it so eloquently in the catalog, it’s also Bonnard recognizing that it is his world that inspired his art. It is, and we look at this and we feel the emotion,
We feel the compassion, we feel the generosity. And we look at this and we know that we are in a universal expression, but we’re also very much in Bonnard’s world. Thank you. – Well, before you all leave, I want to just say on behalf of the Kimbell, thank you for coming this morning. And I want to add a very personal thanks to all of my friends and colleagues who have come today. Many of them will find their place in the footnotes
Of the catalog of the exhibition in my acknowledgements. I thank them all for the work they have done. I want to thank Elsa Smithgall from the Phillips Collection, where the exhibition will be shown next and where she will have the opportunity to show these paintings to a Washington and probably more eastern audience.
The Phillips Collection has been a wonderful collaborator and their generous loan of seven paintings to the exhibition, including, “The Palm” that you just saw, one of my favorite paintings in the whole wide world. So thank you all for coming. Thanks to all of my Bonnardist in the audience, collectors, scholars, curators,
And you have made me a very happy guy here on this early Saturday in November. Thanks very much for coming and come back to see the exhibition again and again and again.
2 Comments
Amazing 😍
What a beautiful lecture on this new figure to me, thank you!