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Lot Essay
In 1912, Pierre Bonnard purchased a villa near Vernonnet, across the Seine from Vernon, a small town he first visited in 1910. Called "Ma Roulotte" (My Gypsy Caravan), the villa offered the artist panoramic views of the Seine and of the luxuriant foliage hugging its banks, here conveyed in harmonious cornflower blues and soothing yellow-lit greens.
Directly across the river at Giverny, Claude Monet could still be found hard at work. Bonnard became a frequent visitor, and the influence of the older master's late Impressionist style made a significant impact on Bonnard's own treatment of color and form, as evidenced in the present work.
Indeed, Bonnard's seasonal installation at Vernon marked a shift for this painter known for his Clichy street scenes and intimate interiors; he now devoted more time to landscape painting. John Rewald writes of this opening up to nature as a process by which "one feature almost completely disappeared from Bonnard's work: the underlying irony. Instead, a much rarer quality is found in his work, a quality achieved only by the great: serenity" (in J. Rewald, Pierre Bonnard, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948, p. 50). The present work even forgoes the human touches that more commonly people his landscapes: figures in a boat at the edge of a canvas, the distant architecture of Monet's veranda across the Seine, the familiar sight of Bonnard's basset hound. Instead, this pure landscape embraces completely the color, texture and light of the Seine valley. The composition's sole reliance on the framework of tree branch and shoreline harkens back to Bonnard's early fascination with the Japanese print.
Yet even with this new deference to nature, Bonnard could not completely relinquish his devotion to the subject of the interior. Not surprisingly for an artist who grew out of a decorative painting movement, Bonnard's studio habits respected not only his own aesthetic aims but the eventual setting of the work in a collector's home. Rewald explains that, "when painting in hotel rooms, Bonnard frequently tacked his pieces of canvas against walls papered with loud and flowery designs that brutally clashed with his delicate harmonies. It was not that he was unaware of their vociferous presence, but he quietly accepted their challenge, somewhat mindful of the fact that his finished paintings might some day have to contend with similar surroundings on a collector's wall" (ibid., p. 52). Indeed, as the image of La Seine à Vernon hung in situ in Janice Levin's master bedroom shows (fig. 1), the composition's dreamy haze of foliage, sky and river vibrates pleasingly against the boldly patterned walls. By 1926, Bonnard had long ceased creating the art nouveau screens and oversized panels that he and fellow Nabi painters fashioned around the turn of the century; however, the lasting influence of that movement's melding of high art and interior design is nonetheless evident. Rewald goes on to assert that, rather than finding their ideal setting on the white museum wall, "the place for [Bonnard's] canvases is a living-room where friendly eyes can return to them again and again until every luminous patch of color has begun to sing in its proper key" (ibid., p. 53).
(fig. 1) La Seine à Vernon as hung in the Levin master bedroom.
Directly across the river at Giverny, Claude Monet could still be found hard at work. Bonnard became a frequent visitor, and the influence of the older master's late Impressionist style made a significant impact on Bonnard's own treatment of color and form, as evidenced in the present work.
Indeed, Bonnard's seasonal installation at Vernon marked a shift for this painter known for his Clichy street scenes and intimate interiors; he now devoted more time to landscape painting. John Rewald writes of this opening up to nature as a process by which "one feature almost completely disappeared from Bonnard's work: the underlying irony. Instead, a much rarer quality is found in his work, a quality achieved only by the great: serenity" (in J. Rewald, Pierre Bonnard, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948, p. 50). The present work even forgoes the human touches that more commonly people his landscapes: figures in a boat at the edge of a canvas, the distant architecture of Monet's veranda across the Seine, the familiar sight of Bonnard's basset hound. Instead, this pure landscape embraces completely the color, texture and light of the Seine valley. The composition's sole reliance on the framework of tree branch and shoreline harkens back to Bonnard's early fascination with the Japanese print.
Yet even with this new deference to nature, Bonnard could not completely relinquish his devotion to the subject of the interior. Not surprisingly for an artist who grew out of a decorative painting movement, Bonnard's studio habits respected not only his own aesthetic aims but the eventual setting of the work in a collector's home. Rewald explains that, "when painting in hotel rooms, Bonnard frequently tacked his pieces of canvas against walls papered with loud and flowery designs that brutally clashed with his delicate harmonies. It was not that he was unaware of their vociferous presence, but he quietly accepted their challenge, somewhat mindful of the fact that his finished paintings might some day have to contend with similar surroundings on a collector's wall" (ibid., p. 52). Indeed, as the image of La Seine à Vernon hung in situ in Janice Levin's master bedroom shows (fig. 1), the composition's dreamy haze of foliage, sky and river vibrates pleasingly against the boldly patterned walls. By 1926, Bonnard had long ceased creating the art nouveau screens and oversized panels that he and fellow Nabi painters fashioned around the turn of the century; however, the lasting influence of that movement's melding of high art and interior design is nonetheless evident. Rewald goes on to assert that, rather than finding their ideal setting on the white museum wall, "the place for [Bonnard's] canvases is a living-room where friendly eyes can return to them again and again until every luminous patch of color has begun to sing in its proper key" (ibid., p. 53).
(fig. 1) La Seine à Vernon as hung in the Levin master bedroom.