Lot Essay
Best known for his sumptuous interiors and abundant tables laden with all the trappings of bourgeois domestic comfort (fig. 1), Bonnard painted cityscapes and window views throughout his lifetime. Heir to the Impressionist tradition, his work explores the spectacle of modernity and urban experience. Early in his career, Bonnard regularly exhibited his Parisian street scenes and views of Montmartre at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, where they attracted the attention of critics. Claude Roger-Marx once observed Bonnard's facility "for picking out and rapidly capturing the picturesque in every spectacle." (N. Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 40). The same could be said for Boulevard des Batignolles (la pluie), a work of Bonnard's artistic maturity.
Bonnard was mesmerized by the stream of humanity that circulated beneath his studio window, carefully observing the anonymous flow of urban life. Just before his death, he rented a room overlooking the square before the Gare St. Lazare. He commented on the spectacle of city life from this perspective:
What a charming spectacle it is to see this world of
workers escaping from the station like bees from a
hive. They run to make their living, they are going
to search for their fodder. For an elderly man like
myself these goings and comings become touching, they
assume a certain grandeur. From the height of my
balcony they are no bigger than insects, they are
depersonalized, yet represent a symbol of the workforce.
I see them in the morning, they flow like a swarm of
ants, to return in the evening in long processions. I
can imagine that they are carrying home to the cells of
their honeycombs the spoils of their day. Brave little
people, I love them with all my heart. (Ibid, p. 95).
Like his predecessor Monet, who depicted the Boulevard des Capucines from the window of Nadar's studio in a famous painting of 1873-74 (fig. 2), Bonnard views the Boulevard des Batignolles from a vantage point above street level. But here, the formal analogy ends. Whereas Monet's boulevard sweeps diagonally through the painting into deep space, Bonnard radically abridges the perspective by aligning his composition with the horizontal and vertical axes of the picture plane. With the precision and balance of Mondrian, rectangular quadrants of varying size and tonality are carefully adjusted within the dominant structure of a grid, with the tiny windows of the buildings across the street and the vertical accents of the little figures reading like tesserae in a grand mosaic of color and light.
Although the example of Monet, and later Pissarro, gave him license to explore the urban spectacle, Bonnard seemed less interested in participating in the experience of modernity than he was in mapping the boundaries between public and private space. To this end, the presence of the window jamb in Boulevard des Batignolles (la pluie) serves an important mediating function. Like his friend Matisse, who had used the window to great effect in his early views of Nôtre Dame from his studio on the quai des Grands Augustins (fig. 3), Bonnard used the window as a framing device to collapse the distance between the interior and exterior into a unified, continuous surface. As Jean Clair observes:
While the mirror brings the depth of the world up to
the surface of its reflection, the French window condenses
it in the thickness of its glass pane. A completely
transclucent medium then behaves like a completely
reflecting one: it restores reality in a transparent area
such that there is neither projection nor distance,
nothing more than a single luminous surface. (J. Clair,
"The adventures of the optic nerve," Bonnard, the
Late Paintings, Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection,
1984, p. 38.)
Still, Bonnard's intentions are not merely formal, as this radical telescoping of the pictorial space also suggests the proximity of the private to the public, and the way in which the relationship between the interior and the exterior is administered by the "society of the spectacle," to borrow Guy Debord's famous phrase.
It is noteworthy that Bonnard's images of urban life are not direct impressions, painted en plein-air, but are translations of his vision of the city, produced from memory in the intimacy of his studio. As Jean Clair explains:
The Impressionists, in seizing one moment, thought to
capture reality with it--but they were merely capturing
its luminous skin. This was very different from
Bonnard's intention, which, since he was defenseless in
the presence of the subject, consisted in letting
himself be imbued with it, only to revive it later on.
Then, when the distillation of memory had retained only
its finest and most lasting qualities, its light and
and its odor, it would shine again with all its
brightness in the purer air of his memory, giving him
the same feeling of bliss as came to Proust who, on
stumbling over the uneven stones of the courtyard of
the Hôtel de Guermantes, imagined himself transported
to the Piazza San Marco; or, on hearing the sound of a
spoon against a plate, could once again conjure up a
vision of a green and sweet-scented grove springing up
around him. (Ibid., p. 31)
The Mexican artist Angel Zarraga, who visited Bonnard in Cap d'Antibes in the mid-1920s, commented on his working methods:
...on the walls hung canvases of various sizes and
proportions. During my first visit all the canvases
were white. The whole room radiated from them. When
I came back a few days later, I saw on every one of
them a few colorful accents whose pictorial meaning
was not at all recognizable. I guessed in part what
Bonnard then explained to me. When he begins a
picture his composition is not immediately established....
He simply walks back and forth between the white
surfaces, waits for an idea, sets here a tone, there a
brush stroke, puts several streaks on a third canvas.
After a little while...he lays down his brush, calls
his dog, who is always near...and goes for a walk with
him on the beach. He chats for fifteen minutes or a
half hour with acquaintances he meets and then abruptly,
but gently, he breaks off the conversation and returns
quickly to his room. Seemingly at random, he sets
down here and there, on one picture and another, a few
accents which had meanwhile become clear to him and
then goes for another walk in order to relax and gather
his energies for another attack. Weeks, even months pass
in this way. (J. Elliott, "Bonnard and His Environment", Bonnard and His Environment, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, 1964, pp. 24-25).
Although Zarraga's description cannot be taken at face value as a full indication of Bonnard's diverse working methods--he is also known to have made preliminary charcoal sketches on his cavases to establish the broad outlines of a composition--it does provide insight into the way in which Bonnard translated his visual impressions from an aesthetic and temporal distance.
Boulevard des Batignolles (la pluie) was painted circa 1926. This was a period of domestic stability and professional success for Bonnard. In April 1924, he celebrated a retrospective exhibition of his work at the prestigious Galerie Druet. The following year he married Marie Boursin, with whom he had been living since 1893, and purchased a house at Le Cannet in the south of France. It was also around this time that Bonnard began to consolidate his international reputation. In 1926, he served as a member of the Carnegie International jury, and celebrated his first one-man show in New York two years later.
(fig. 1) Pierre Bonnard, Salle à manger sur le jardin, 1931-32,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873-74,
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
(fig. 3) Henri Matisse, Nôtre-Dame, fin d'après-midi, 1902,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
(fig. 4) Pierre Bonnard, Le Boulevard Extérieur, circa 1904,
Private Collection
Bonnard was mesmerized by the stream of humanity that circulated beneath his studio window, carefully observing the anonymous flow of urban life. Just before his death, he rented a room overlooking the square before the Gare St. Lazare. He commented on the spectacle of city life from this perspective:
What a charming spectacle it is to see this world of
workers escaping from the station like bees from a
hive. They run to make their living, they are going
to search for their fodder. For an elderly man like
myself these goings and comings become touching, they
assume a certain grandeur. From the height of my
balcony they are no bigger than insects, they are
depersonalized, yet represent a symbol of the workforce.
I see them in the morning, they flow like a swarm of
ants, to return in the evening in long processions. I
can imagine that they are carrying home to the cells of
their honeycombs the spoils of their day. Brave little
people, I love them with all my heart. (Ibid, p. 95).
Like his predecessor Monet, who depicted the Boulevard des Capucines from the window of Nadar's studio in a famous painting of 1873-74 (fig. 2), Bonnard views the Boulevard des Batignolles from a vantage point above street level. But here, the formal analogy ends. Whereas Monet's boulevard sweeps diagonally through the painting into deep space, Bonnard radically abridges the perspective by aligning his composition with the horizontal and vertical axes of the picture plane. With the precision and balance of Mondrian, rectangular quadrants of varying size and tonality are carefully adjusted within the dominant structure of a grid, with the tiny windows of the buildings across the street and the vertical accents of the little figures reading like tesserae in a grand mosaic of color and light.
Although the example of Monet, and later Pissarro, gave him license to explore the urban spectacle, Bonnard seemed less interested in participating in the experience of modernity than he was in mapping the boundaries between public and private space. To this end, the presence of the window jamb in Boulevard des Batignolles (la pluie) serves an important mediating function. Like his friend Matisse, who had used the window to great effect in his early views of Nôtre Dame from his studio on the quai des Grands Augustins (fig. 3), Bonnard used the window as a framing device to collapse the distance between the interior and exterior into a unified, continuous surface. As Jean Clair observes:
While the mirror brings the depth of the world up to
the surface of its reflection, the French window condenses
it in the thickness of its glass pane. A completely
transclucent medium then behaves like a completely
reflecting one: it restores reality in a transparent area
such that there is neither projection nor distance,
nothing more than a single luminous surface. (J. Clair,
"The adventures of the optic nerve," Bonnard, the
Late Paintings, Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection,
1984, p. 38.)
Still, Bonnard's intentions are not merely formal, as this radical telescoping of the pictorial space also suggests the proximity of the private to the public, and the way in which the relationship between the interior and the exterior is administered by the "society of the spectacle," to borrow Guy Debord's famous phrase.
It is noteworthy that Bonnard's images of urban life are not direct impressions, painted en plein-air, but are translations of his vision of the city, produced from memory in the intimacy of his studio. As Jean Clair explains:
The Impressionists, in seizing one moment, thought to
capture reality with it--but they were merely capturing
its luminous skin. This was very different from
Bonnard's intention, which, since he was defenseless in
the presence of the subject, consisted in letting
himself be imbued with it, only to revive it later on.
Then, when the distillation of memory had retained only
its finest and most lasting qualities, its light and
and its odor, it would shine again with all its
brightness in the purer air of his memory, giving him
the same feeling of bliss as came to Proust who, on
stumbling over the uneven stones of the courtyard of
the Hôtel de Guermantes, imagined himself transported
to the Piazza San Marco; or, on hearing the sound of a
spoon against a plate, could once again conjure up a
vision of a green and sweet-scented grove springing up
around him. (Ibid., p. 31)
The Mexican artist Angel Zarraga, who visited Bonnard in Cap d'Antibes in the mid-1920s, commented on his working methods:
...on the walls hung canvases of various sizes and
proportions. During my first visit all the canvases
were white. The whole room radiated from them. When
I came back a few days later, I saw on every one of
them a few colorful accents whose pictorial meaning
was not at all recognizable. I guessed in part what
Bonnard then explained to me. When he begins a
picture his composition is not immediately established....
He simply walks back and forth between the white
surfaces, waits for an idea, sets here a tone, there a
brush stroke, puts several streaks on a third canvas.
After a little while...he lays down his brush, calls
his dog, who is always near...and goes for a walk with
him on the beach. He chats for fifteen minutes or a
half hour with acquaintances he meets and then abruptly,
but gently, he breaks off the conversation and returns
quickly to his room. Seemingly at random, he sets
down here and there, on one picture and another, a few
accents which had meanwhile become clear to him and
then goes for another walk in order to relax and gather
his energies for another attack. Weeks, even months pass
in this way. (J. Elliott, "Bonnard and His Environment", Bonnard and His Environment, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, 1964, pp. 24-25).
Although Zarraga's description cannot be taken at face value as a full indication of Bonnard's diverse working methods--he is also known to have made preliminary charcoal sketches on his cavases to establish the broad outlines of a composition--it does provide insight into the way in which Bonnard translated his visual impressions from an aesthetic and temporal distance.
Boulevard des Batignolles (la pluie) was painted circa 1926. This was a period of domestic stability and professional success for Bonnard. In April 1924, he celebrated a retrospective exhibition of his work at the prestigious Galerie Druet. The following year he married Marie Boursin, with whom he had been living since 1893, and purchased a house at Le Cannet in the south of France. It was also around this time that Bonnard began to consolidate his international reputation. In 1926, he served as a member of the Carnegie International jury, and celebrated his first one-man show in New York two years later.
(fig. 1) Pierre Bonnard, Salle à manger sur le jardin, 1931-32,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873-74,
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
(fig. 3) Henri Matisse, Nôtre-Dame, fin d'après-midi, 1902,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
(fig. 4) Pierre Bonnard, Le Boulevard Extérieur, circa 1904,
Private Collection