Pierre Bonnard (Fontenay-aux-Roses, October 3, 1867 - Le Cannet, January 23, 1947) was a French painter.
Pierre Bonnard's Biography
The son of a ministerial official, after graduating in law he decided to devote himself to painting: in Paris in 1888 he took courses at the Julian Academy and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
During this period he got to know artists such as Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, with whom he formed the Nabis group (from the Hebrew nabiim, meaning prophets, inspired) and with whom he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants starting in 1891.
The Nabis group of artists was officially born in October 1888, when Paul Sérusier showed them a small oil painting, a landscape painted in Pont-Aven on the lid of a cigar box (preserved today at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris), executed according to Paul Gauguin's advice: it was considered the "talisman" and became the symbol of the group.
Like the other Nabis artists, Bonnard, who within the group retained the title Nabi japonard, drew constant inspiration from the occult sciences and magic: esoteric researches gradually drew him away from realism and Impressionist naturalism and brought him closer to a Symbolist painting, arousing the admiration of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
His stylistic models are the works of Paul Gauguin's Breton period and Japanese prints, from which he assimilates the attempt to distort reality by emphasizing suggestive elements charged with symbolic meanings; his reaction to Impressionism is based on a more thoughtful painting but with a more incisive use of color.
Once his military service was over, he resumed his Parisian activities in Montmartre, in an atelier shared with Denis and Vuillard; he exhibited for the Indépendants, centering his success with the billboard for France-Champagne and executing sketches of costumes and decorations.
In the last years of the nineteenth century, Bonnard also devoted himself to the applied arts: the theatrical sets, lithographs, and illustrations of the period are characterized by figures with sinuous rhythms that draw on Japanese models, art nouveau, and the translation of the new lyricisms of Mallarmé and Verlaine; in this period the artist developed an essentially decorative style, in which lines create a complex network of arabesques and brightly colored spots.
Perspective vision is abandoned and the forms are all brought to the same level, on the pictorial surface. His style arouses admiration and greatly impresses Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who finds in it grounds for inspiration for his posters.
Bonnard's pictorial language is totally different from that of the historical avant-gardes represented by his contemporaries Matisse and Kandinsky: in the wake of the great exponents of Impressionism, Bonnard declares in a writing that he wants to continue and develop their research to "surpass them in their naturalistic impressions of color."
Belonging to the end of the century are a greater attention to the manifestation of the intimate affections of the characters, as in Mother and Child, the visions of Parisian glimpses embellished with vital human presences, as in Les grands boulevards, the female portraits such as the Alexandre Natanson that reveal an immediacy and lightness of brushstroke, a brilliant intuition for the subjects chosen and a capacity for autonomous and personal narrative construction.
From 1900 onward Bonnard continued to exhibit with increasing success and made numerous trips in search of new subjects. In 1926 he bought a house in Le Cannet, on the French Riviera, where he would stay on several occasions.
The light and charm of the Midi and the utopian vision of its landscape as a projection of an ancient paradise mark a significant stylistic turning point for Bonnard: his palette is enriched with more intense and vivid colors, among which the yellow of the Mediterranean sun and the intense blue that indicates the vastness of the open sea predominate.
In this period the artist goes through a new rethinking of Impressionism: the direct grasp of reality is complemented by an atmosphere of melancholic remoteness. His interest in intimate settings, toilet scenes, and female nudes intensifies along with the other central themes of his art, which continue to be landscapes, still lifes, but now become more joyful and at the same time heartbreaking.
His works are characterized in this period by preeminent light relationships between figures and objects, extremely varied colors around mother-of-pearl. In the fusion phase between traces of impressionistic luminescence and elaborate, studied themes, the key to the interpretation and success of his works emerges, namely the symbiosis of figurative narrative and vital rhythm.
He died in Le Cannet, Alpes-Maritimes, on January 23, 1947, 3 months and 20 days after crossing the 79-year mark.
Self portrait, 1945
Pierre Bonnard's Artistic activity
Bonnard also illustrated some books: La 628-E8 (1908) and Dingo (1924), by Octave Mirbeau, and Histoires Naturelles (1945), by Jules Renard.
The works of Pierre Bonnard
- Paris, Rue de Parme on the feast day of the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille (1890)
- The Checkered Shirt (1892)
- Still Life with Red Plums (1892)
- The Hats (1894)
- The White Cat (1894)
- Two Dogs in a Deserted Street (1894)
- The Passer-by (1894)
- Street in the evening, in the rain (1895)
- The carriage horse (1895)
- Nannies' walk, frieze of carriages (ca. 1895-1897)
- Tholozé Street and the Galette Mill (1897)
- The Indolent (c. 1899)
- The Artist's Studio (1900)
- Table set in the garden (1908)
- The Green Table (1910)
- The Mediterranean (1911)
- Dining Room in the Countryside (1913)
- Terrace at Vernon (1920-1939)
- Woman with Dog (1924)
- Bouquet of Flowers (1926)
- Self-Portrait (1930)
- Leaving the Bathtub (1931)
- Nude at bath with small dog (1941-1946)
- Stairs in the artist's garden (1942)
Countryside dining room, 1913
Museums
List that of museums exhibiting works by the artist:
- Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
- Bührle Collection, Zurich
- Institute of Arts, Minneapolis
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice
- Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
- Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi
- Museum and City Art Gallery, Leeds
- Museum of Art, Indianapolis
- Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
- Phillips Collection, Washington
- Tate Gallery, London
- Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
- National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Villa Flora, Winterthur (Switzerland) www.villaflora.ch
- International Gallery of Modern Art (Venice)
Pierre Bonnard
Portrait of József Rippl-Rónai