En bateau

Between the years 1910-1913 when En bateau was painted, Bonnard traveled frequently between the south of France and Verdonnet near Vernon in the Seine Valley, where he purchased a house in 1912. During these years, he became close friends with Monet, as Giverny was just across the river from Vernon and Monet was a frequent visitor to his home, 'Ma Roulotte'. Bonnard's palate brightened as a result of his new environment and his brushwork attained a new freedom, a freedom that one sees in En bateau. The artist renders the painting's simple subject matter, a woman with her little dog in a boat, with broad brushstrokes and intriguing nuances of color. Bonnard also plays with the composition's perspective, thrusting the boat diagonally into the distance, against the flat patterning of water which masks the horizon line. The complexities of Bonnard's seemingly simple art create, as a result, an intimate yet dynamic vignette of life in the Seine Valley.

Maurice Denis argued that Bonnard achieved a perfect balance in his work, a harmony between the esthetics of the object rendered and the subjective sensibility of the artist. Denis stated that "The point is that he re-creates every scene or object with an ever-new soul, obedient to his vision, an awakened sleeper, altering values, substituting for nature's logic his own logic, into which he infuses his irony or the tenderness of an awestruck observer. If one compares him with other artists who are endowed with sensitivity to color--for example, Matisse--one is amazed by all that underlies Bonnard's painting" (M. Denis quoted in J. Rewald, Pierre Bonnard, ex. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948, p. 42).