Pierre Bonnard

Estate of the artist
Private Collection, Switzerland
Thence by descent to the present owner

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors, 2009, no. 45, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre Peint, Paris, 1973, no. 1509, illustrated p. 401

The canvas is not lined. Apart from an area of fluorescence along the lower left edge, probably intrinsic to the artist's material or to the application of a varnish, there appears to be no sign of retouching visble under UV light. This work is in good original condition. Colours: Overall accurate in the printed catalogue.
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Painted in 1933, Nature Morte à la Cruche Orange is a thrilling example of Bonnard's unique ability to express the most subtle nuances of colour. In the present work Bonnard captures the play of the reflection and refraction of light on a group of humble domestic objects with the effect of rendering them beautiful.

The composition itself is closely cropped, with the tray, jug, pot and saucepan assembled towards the background. Bonnard creates space and perspective by skewing the angle from which the ensemble is viewed and by giving the foreground over to the white tablecloth. In doing so he lends the work an expansive quality that belies its scale.

The genre of still life constituted a significant part of Bonnard's oeuvre throughout his career. However, this is especially true of the later decades of his life where he increasingly sought out subjects from the domestic milieu of his home. The workaday objects depicted here and taken from Bonnard's immediate environment have an air of the familiar in their depiction and one senses the presence of the artist as though one were glimpsing a corner of his home. Dita Amory writes 'his discreet presence in the room where he worked gave him a status equal to that of the objects he painted; he was one with the chair, the sugar bowl, the teapot, the saltcellar' (Dita Amory, Pierre Bonnard, The Late Still Lifes and Interiors, New York, 2009, p. 26).