.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Les baigneurs à la fin du jour is one of the last works painted by Pierre Bonnard. Following the German occupation of Paris in late spring 1940, Bonnard chose to remain year-round at his home 'Le Bosquet' in Le Cannet. Personal tragedy marked the latter period of his life: his wife, Marthe de Méligny, and his close friends Maurice Denis, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Aristide Maillol all died within a few years of each other. Bonnard sought solace in his painting, which became more experimental in its use of a stronger colour palette. The glowing intensity of the horizontal bands of colour in Les baigneurs à la fin du jour, evokes the Mediterranean at the bewitching 'l'heure bleue', as Bonnard called it, holding the eye captive. The sea dominates the space, bordered by a narrow strip of yellow sand and a rich red, mauve and ochre sunset above. The movement of textured colour from the gold and reddish tones of the amorphous bathers reflecting the Mediterranean sunset to the deep blue-green water brings to life this fleeting moment. This highly expressive canvas recalls the cry from a young Maurice Denis, as protagonist of the Nabis, for 'a surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order'.
Recalling their last encounter together, Bonnard's friend, Thadée Natanson 'blessed the last summer that they had spent together in the South of France by the seaside, and the joy of those days when, from the shaded pavement of a small café, together they would watch the ocean and the bodies of the bathers with the sun shining down on them' (J. Czapski, L'Oeil: Essais sur l'art, Lausanne, 1982, p. 56). Bonnard observed keenly but did not confront nature objectively when painting, as he explained in 1943 to Angèle Lamotte, Tériade's collaboratrice on Verve magazine: 'I leave [the subject], I go away to regain my control, then I come a while later. I don't let myself get wrapped up in the object itself. I paint alone in my studio; I do everything in my studio. In short, a conflict arises between the original concept--which is the right one, the painter's own--and the inconsistent, fleeting world of the object, of the subject that inspired him in the first place' (Verve, op. cit., p. 79).
Volume V of Verve was devoted entirely to the 'Couleur de Bonnard', and was published in August 1947, seven months after Bonnard's death. Tériade included a reproduction of the present work in the issue. His admiration for Bonnard also resulted in their collaboration on the publication of Correspondances in 1944. 'The intimate and natural evolution of Pierre Bonnard's work blossoms forth today with the liberty and boldness of Cézanne, Renoir, and Van Gogh. The work of Bonnard consequently situated amidst a vague Post-Impressionism today assumes a particular significance. Far from being a prolongation of Impressionism, it represents an ardent effort to solve on a strictly pictorial plane, the problem of vision and its plastic expression. From the very beginning, this has been the capital problem of painting. With Bonnard, the painter is once more introduced into his painting. No longer does he record his impressions. He himself is present in the plastic action of the image. Objects, space, light--all these bear witness to his presence. Thus it is that light takes on a new value, space reconquers its mysterious reality, and objects recover their "savour". Savour! Bonnard is in the habit of saying that, first and foremost, he seeks to paint the savour of things. This modest ambition has made a great painter of Pierre Bonnard' (Tériade in Verve, vol. I, no. 3, Oct.-Dec. 1938, p. 61).
Recalling their last encounter together, Bonnard's friend, Thadée Natanson 'blessed the last summer that they had spent together in the South of France by the seaside, and the joy of those days when, from the shaded pavement of a small café, together they would watch the ocean and the bodies of the bathers with the sun shining down on them' (J. Czapski, L'Oeil: Essais sur l'art, Lausanne, 1982, p. 56). Bonnard observed keenly but did not confront nature objectively when painting, as he explained in 1943 to Angèle Lamotte, Tériade's collaboratrice on Verve magazine: 'I leave [the subject], I go away to regain my control, then I come a while later. I don't let myself get wrapped up in the object itself. I paint alone in my studio; I do everything in my studio. In short, a conflict arises between the original concept--which is the right one, the painter's own--and the inconsistent, fleeting world of the object, of the subject that inspired him in the first place' (Verve, op. cit., p. 79).
Volume V of Verve was devoted entirely to the 'Couleur de Bonnard', and was published in August 1947, seven months after Bonnard's death. Tériade included a reproduction of the present work in the issue. His admiration for Bonnard also resulted in their collaboration on the publication of Correspondances in 1944. 'The intimate and natural evolution of Pierre Bonnard's work blossoms forth today with the liberty and boldness of Cézanne, Renoir, and Van Gogh. The work of Bonnard consequently situated amidst a vague Post-Impressionism today assumes a particular significance. Far from being a prolongation of Impressionism, it represents an ardent effort to solve on a strictly pictorial plane, the problem of vision and its plastic expression. From the very beginning, this has been the capital problem of painting. With Bonnard, the painter is once more introduced into his painting. No longer does he record his impressions. He himself is present in the plastic action of the image. Objects, space, light--all these bear witness to his presence. Thus it is that light takes on a new value, space reconquers its mysterious reality, and objects recover their "savour". Savour! Bonnard is in the habit of saying that, first and foremost, he seeks to paint the savour of things. This modest ambition has made a great painter of Pierre Bonnard' (Tériade in Verve, vol. I, no. 3, Oct.-Dec. 1938, p. 61).