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Lot Essay
Pierre Bonnard’s Les eucalyptus takes inspiration from the French Riviera and captures the artist’s quintessentially evocative brushstrokes and vibrant colour palette. The present lot creates a window onto the coastal paysage of St. Tropez, including key motifs of the Cote d’Azur such as luscious foliage, maritime imagery and distant mountains, likely the Massif des Maures or the Massif de l’Esterel regions. Bonnard has rendered this scene with an economy of brushstrokes infused with bold, saturated hues that evoke the intensity of the sunlight as it caresses the Mediterranean coast. The composition is fascinating in the series of layers that the artist utilises to build the image; the eponymous eucalyptus leaves peer into view through dark green brushstrokes and frame the vista, immersing the viewer in the verdant atmosphere of this landscape. The circularity of the composition, as well as the rounded forms of the vegetation and clouds are also characteristic of the artist’s style.
An orange buoy floats in the distance and a boat is glimpsed through the foliage at the right centre edge, both complimenting the vibrancy of the turquoise, aquamarine sea. Painted in 1911, this work was created during one of Bonnard’s three trips to Saint-Tropez that year, evoking the charm of this fishing port. Enamoured by this inspiring Mediterranean climate, the artist later moved to Le Cannet with his partner Marthe de Méligny, near Antibes, in 1924. Bonnard often took promenades along the coast, taking inspiration from his natural surroundings, and making sketches while out on these walks. He often later returned to these pieces in his studio, rather than painting en plein air like his Impressionist predecessors.
The French art critic, Gustave Coquiot, cites this exquisite piece in his text on the artist in 1922: ‘When he finds himself in the South, Pierre Bonnard does not cease, in this sweet idleness of happiness, to paint canvases […] where everything is still in nuance […] He thereby painted Les Eucalyptus.’ G. Coquiot, Pierre Bonnard, Paris, 1922, p. 44). This ‘nuance’ that Coquiot is referring to conveys the entrancing and nebulous quality of Bonnard’s works, where the artist often chose to leave parts of his compositions to the viewer’s imagination.
An orange buoy floats in the distance and a boat is glimpsed through the foliage at the right centre edge, both complimenting the vibrancy of the turquoise, aquamarine sea. Painted in 1911, this work was created during one of Bonnard’s three trips to Saint-Tropez that year, evoking the charm of this fishing port. Enamoured by this inspiring Mediterranean climate, the artist later moved to Le Cannet with his partner Marthe de Méligny, near Antibes, in 1924. Bonnard often took promenades along the coast, taking inspiration from his natural surroundings, and making sketches while out on these walks. He often later returned to these pieces in his studio, rather than painting en plein air like his Impressionist predecessors.
The French art critic, Gustave Coquiot, cites this exquisite piece in his text on the artist in 1922: ‘When he finds himself in the South, Pierre Bonnard does not cease, in this sweet idleness of happiness, to paint canvases […] where everything is still in nuance […] He thereby painted Les Eucalyptus.’ G. Coquiot, Pierre Bonnard, Paris, 1922, p. 44). This ‘nuance’ that Coquiot is referring to conveys the entrancing and nebulous quality of Bonnard’s works, where the artist often chose to leave parts of his compositions to the viewer’s imagination.