Pierre Bonnard

Estate of the artist

Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners in the 1950s

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Paris, 1973, vol. IV, no. 1608, illustrated p. 45

The canvas is lined. There is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. This work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although slightly brighter and fresher in the original.
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Painted circa 1941, Pêches dans une assiette is a vibrant still-life of fruit representing a colourful celebration of nature. The flattened pictorial surface and the tilted perspective infuse this typically intimiste scene with a modernist spirit strongly reminiscent of Matisse’s painting (fig. 1). Set slightly off centre, the marvellously rich arrangement of peaches on a patterned plate dominates the composition, set on a bright orange table that stretches beyond the borders of the canvas. This abandonment of the traditional approach to depth and perspective, coupled with the remarkably vibrant palette, makes this a truly modern composition.

 

Throughout his career, Bonnard was always enthralled by light and colour, and this fascination received a fresh impetus during the artist’s stay on the Côte d’Azur. As James Elliott observed: ‘Bonnard was essentially a colorist. He devoted his main creative energies to wedding his sensations of color from nature to those from paint itself – sensations which he said thrilled and even bewildered him. Perceiving color with a highly developed sensitivity, he discovered new and unfamiliar effects from which he selected carefully, yet broadly and audaciously. […] Whether in narrow range or multitudinous variety, the colors move across the surface of his paintings in constantly shifting interplay, lending an extraordinary fascination to common subjects. Familiar sights – the pervading greenness of a landscape, the intensification of color in objects on a lightly overcast day – are given vivid life’ (J. Elliott, in Bonnard and His Environment (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1964, p. 25).