Pierre Bonnard

Painted circa 1912, Paysage, soleil couchant reflects Bonnard's intensely creative and prolific relationship with the landscape of Southern France. Strongly aligned with the Nabis school during these first decades of the Twentieth Century, the artist had grown accustomed to using decorative stylistic elements in his paintings, such as flattened patches of color and bold contours. His use of technique was extraordinarily effective in reflecting the variations in terrain. As Nicholas Watkins describes, "Bonnard was struck by the architectural nature of the vegetation in the south... [his] solution to the problem of reconciling depth with the decorative assertion of the surface in the painting was to treat the landscape as a kind of tapestry into which the view was woven."  ( Nicholas Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 156)

Bonnard painted Paysage, soleil couchant amid the dramatic landscape of St. Tropez. A small fishing village at that time, the coastal town attracted several prominent artists such as Signac, Marquet, and Manguin. Bonnard spent many years traveling amongst the towns along the Cote d'Azur before finally settling at Le Cannet in 1926, but the present work presents an earlier and particularly resonant reaction to the landscape of the Southern Coast.  A combination of figures and buildings creates a natural frame for the mountainous terrain and its recession into a colorful sunset. Bonnard found a unique beauty in the light of sunset and its effect on both human figures and large stretches of land and ocean. The figures in the foreground give a sense of the atmosphere and activity that surrounded the artist, while the landscape which stretches beyond portrays the patterns and lines of the Southern Coastal terrain that so dazzled Bonnard. The resultant combination demonstrates Watkins assertion that "Bonnard's landscapes with figures ... are not so much moments of nature as states of the human soul." (Ibid, p. 128)

Fig. 1, Pierre Bonnard, circa 1915