Pierre Bonnard

Mr & Mrs Terrasse, France (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection, France (acquired from the above in 1980)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, 1940-1947 et supplément 1887-1939, Paris, 1974, vol. IV, no. 02010, illustrated p. 322

The canvas is lined and there do not appear to be any retouchings visible under UV light. There is some frame rubbing to the lower left corner with associated paint loss, a fine spot of paint loss and a fine line of rubbing to the lower right corner. Some frame rubbing to the extreme left and upper edge with minor associated paint loss. A spot of pigment loss in two places along the upper side of the right edge and a pin sized spot of paint loss towards the upper left corner. There is a pin-hole to the blue pigment on the roof of the rightmost house. The colours are fresh and this work is in overall good condition.
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Bursting with vibrancy and light, the subject of this painting from 1912 is the house Pierre Bonnard acquired that very year in Vernonnet, a village on the Seine in Normandy to the north west of Paris. This new home, affectionately nick-named ‘Ma Roulotte’ – or My Caravan – with its splendid views of the river, became a much-loved haven for Bonnard and his wife Marthe over the new two decades and the catalyst for the artist’s exploration of landscape painting and outdoor scenes. His decision to acquire a home in Vernonnet was no doubt influenced by its close proximity to Giverny, where his friend and mentor Claude Monet, the man who Bonnard considered had 'liberated French painting', had been living and working since the 1880s. The two painters would spend time much together in Normandy in the years that followed, both finding fruitful inspiration in the gardens of their homes and the surrounding nature. Their correspondence bears witness to their mutual admiration and respect; Monet would regularly solicit his younger counterpart for his opinion, writing in April 1916: 'I would very much like to see you [….] today […] because I would like to show you how I’m getting on with my big projects.' Both artists took a keen interest in gardening, however, unlike Monet, who carefully landscaped an “Impressionist” garden incorporating Japanese motifs in his grounds at Giverny, Bonnard did not attempt to transform or arrange nature according to his own designs.  Instead, he allowed the garden in front of his Roulotte to grow freely into a Romantic wilderness. As Thadée Natanson has observed: 'The house (…) was located in the centre of the garden, where Bonnard greatly liked to hoe and even more dig, water, and do all kinds of gardening except restricting the growth of the plants and flowers' (quoted in Jörg Zutter, ‘Pierre Bonnard: Observing Nature’, in Pierre Bonnard: Observing Nature, exh. cat., Canberra, 2003, p. 54). 

In the present composition, Bonnard brings this wild garden vividly to life with his vivacious application of paint, capturing the riotous freedom of the vegetation within the confines of the canvas. Tight staccato brushstrokes deploy the intense colour palette of the blooming garden, with the different consistency of markings instilling it with a wildness and texture. The leaves of an overhanging tree obscure the upper corners of the canvas, giving the work an unorthodox, cropped perspective which leaves the viewer feeling totally immersed in the efflorescent scene. We glimpse two female figures relaxing in deck-chairs on the veranda at the centre of the canvas: Antoine Terrasse, the artist’s great-nephew, has identified these figures as Marthe Bonnard and a friend, lingering over afternoon tea. The subtle inclusion of these characters transforms the lush outdoor scene into a personal genre painting, and heightens the languorous atmosphere of peace and fulfilment. During the period in which this work was executed Bonnard was detaching himself from the avant-garde and using more traditional impressionist methods. Regardless of this change his ‘canvases created a playground for the eye and mind with tools worthy of the Dadaists and Surrealists: namely a fantasy of painting with light’ (Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Pierre Bonnard, Early and Late, London, 2002, p. 52).

Bonnard’s initial recognition arrived in the 1890s as part of ‘Les Nabis’, a group of avant-garde artists dedicated to creating works of a symbolic and spiritual nature. Bonnard’s work stood out amongst that of other artists affiliated with the group, such as Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard, with his first critical success stemming from a series of illustrations, lithographs and prints. Bonnard travelled throughout Europe extensively in the first decade of the twentieth century, which encouraged the artist to expand his repertoire to include landscapes, Parisian streets, nudes, decorative panels, theatre sets and portraits.  After the acquisition of his house in Vernonnet by the Seine, like his friend Monet, he became fascinated by the enchanting nuances of light of the Normandy countryside, and this was something that went on to define the rest of his œuvre. As he once remarked to a young artist ‘our God is light. A day will come when you will understand what that means’ (quoted in op. cit. p. 7). Ma Roulotte brilliantly entwines Bonnard’s mastery of colour, playful painting style and experimental disposition, while also commanding the difficult, delicate, balance between interpreting and capturing nature.