Pierre Bonnard

Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Paris
Yvonne Printemps, Paris
Seixas & Company Fine Arts, New York
Charles & Rose Wohlstetter (acquired from the above in 1984 and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 8, 2006, lot 468)
Acquired at the above sale

Le Cannet, Musée Bonnard, Bonnard entre amis: Matisse, Monet, Vuillard..., 2012, no. 28, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. III, Paris, 1973, no. 1147, illustrated p. 136

Work is in excellent condition. Canvas is not lined. Slight buckling to canvas at lower right corner. Under UV light: no inpainting is apparent.
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Pierre Bonnard is considered one of the greatest colorists in the history of modern art. From the 1920s he specialized particularly in interiors and still lifes, with the still life becoming a central motif in his oeuvre. In the present work, the palette and surface of the painting are unmistakably the artist's focus, even as the two blue vases and bouquets resting atop the white tablecloth are the primary subjects and focal point of the composition. The palette consists primarily of muted mauves, browns, blues and whites and the treatment of space is well observed. Discussing Bonnard's still lifes, Nicholas Watkins has written "Still-life, being the most manipulable of the genres, proved an ideal vehicle for Bonnard's aesthetic exploration" (Nicholas Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 168). In his twenties, Bonnard, along with Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis, was a part of Les Nabis, a group of young artists who followed the teachings of Gauguin to strip art to the essentials of color, surface and form. Japanese woodblock prints were a critical source of inspiration for paintings such as this one, as Bonnard learned that color could express anything including light, forms and character.

Vase de fleurs illustrates Bonnard's close affinity with Matisse. Many of his works during the 1920s possess an expressive quality reminiscent of Matisse's work, though Bonnard retained the expression of volume in contrast to Matisse's favoring of flat areas of color. Bonnard's technique exhibits a strong feeling for the texture of paint. By painting with thick brushstrokes, the flowers in the vase are blended with the blues of the sky from the back window along with the brown wall in the background, capturing the richness of nature.

Bonnard made his practice of "intimism," what he called "a taste for everyday spectacles" and "the ability to draw emotion from the most modest acts of life," dependent on his ability to foreshorten the space and to frame the encounter (Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late (exhibition catalogue), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. & Denver Art Museum, 2002-03, p. 55). The effect of this led to the flattening of forms and distorting perspective as evidenced in Vase de fleurs, further engaging the imagination and emotion. Bonnard varied the viewing distance, here proximate to the viewer, centered and at eye level, all the while imbuing the vase and bouquets with monumental importance. The foreground is divided from the background and there is no clear statement of time or space. Bonnard has emphasized the rectangular shape of the canvas through the rendering of the window with the thick, brown windowpane cutting vertically through the center of the picture. Bonnard here creates a composition infused with sentiment where time has lost its meaning and the intricacies of nature are captured rather than literally described.