.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
In the early years of the Nabis movement, Bonnard established himself as the most sophisticated of the group of painters, which included Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier, and Félix Vallotton. Bonnard's 'intimiste' figurative pictures of the early 1890s are amongst the most celebrated works of the Nabis movement.
Berthe Schaedlin was Bonnard's favoured model during the early period of flowering. Indeed, the artist was dearly in love with the young woman, even asking her to marry him though she was his cousin. She refused claiming that his trade, painting, would not be enough to support her and told him that if he was ready to choose an honourable career, she would then give him a favourable answer. He proudly responded "nothing would ever push a painter to abandon painting".
Berthe posed for him in Femme avec lapins (fig. 1) and in the portrait titled Portrait de Marguerite (fig. 2). Her fine silhouette can also be seen Femmes au chien and in one of the four decorative panels titled Femmes au jardin.
Many of the finest of these early Nabis works were executed in very small format. By nature these are intimate, intricate works with a characteristic, intimiste, jewel-like quality, not only because of their size but because of the way in which they were painted. The flattened perspective, exagggereated colours and simplified forms of the present picture reflect perfectly the Nabis tenet that a painting is first and foremost a surface. This portrait perfectly espouses Maurice Denis' description of the classic Nabis painting in which the artist strove for: "Expression through decorative quality, through harmony of forms and colours, through the application of pigments, to expression through subject. They believed that for every emotion, for every human thought, there existed a plastic and decorative equivalent, a corresponding beauty" (quoted in: J. Rewald, Pierre Bonnard, exh. cat., New York, 1948, p.15).
Berthe Schaedlin was Bonnard's favoured model during the early period of flowering. Indeed, the artist was dearly in love with the young woman, even asking her to marry him though she was his cousin. She refused claiming that his trade, painting, would not be enough to support her and told him that if he was ready to choose an honourable career, she would then give him a favourable answer. He proudly responded "nothing would ever push a painter to abandon painting".
Berthe posed for him in Femme avec lapins (fig. 1) and in the portrait titled Portrait de Marguerite (fig. 2). Her fine silhouette can also be seen Femmes au chien and in one of the four decorative panels titled Femmes au jardin.
Many of the finest of these early Nabis works were executed in very small format. By nature these are intimate, intricate works with a characteristic, intimiste, jewel-like quality, not only because of their size but because of the way in which they were painted. The flattened perspective, exagggereated colours and simplified forms of the present picture reflect perfectly the Nabis tenet that a painting is first and foremost a surface. This portrait perfectly espouses Maurice Denis' description of the classic Nabis painting in which the artist strove for: "Expression through decorative quality, through harmony of forms and colours, through the application of pigments, to expression through subject. They believed that for every emotion, for every human thought, there existed a plastic and decorative equivalent, a corresponding beauty" (quoted in: J. Rewald, Pierre Bonnard, exh. cat., New York, 1948, p.15).