Pierre Bonnard

Acquired by the family of the present owner in the 1960s

Marseille, Musée Cantini, Bonnard, 1967, no. 11

Rome, Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Moderna, Pierre Bonnard, 1971-72, no. 9

As for many of the artists of his generation, such as Renoir (fig. 1), the still life was an important part of Bonnard’s œuvre. He painted items that were familiar to him, often returning to the same objects time and again; the checked tablecloth and floral-patterned jug in the present work reappear in a later still life of 1925 (fig. 2) suggesting objects that were part of the fabric of his everyday life and work. This familiarity was an important element of Bonnard’s practice as he rarely worked from life, preferring to work from memory, with these objects acting as cognitive stimuli. Dita Amory describes the effect of this process: ‘As Bonnard painted his memory of the still life in the other room, he edited out extraneous information, uncluttering the composition. What he rendered permanent was the experience of passing through, say, the dining room set for breakfast…’ (D. Amory in Pierre Bonnard. The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 11).

This process reflected Bonnard’s investigative approach to painting which he summarised in a statement to his nephew Charles Terrasse in 1927, ‘The eye of the painter gives human value to objects, reproduces things as a human eye sees them. And this vision is mobile. And this vision is variable... The eye sees distant masses as having an almost linear aspect, without relief, without depth. But near objects rise towards it. The sides trail away. And these vanishing trails are sometimes rectilinear – for what is distant – sometimes curved – for planes that are near. The vision of distant things is a flat vision. It is the near planes that give the idea of the universe as the human eye sees it’ (quoted in Bonnard. The Work of Art: Suspending Time (exhibition catalogue), Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 2006, p. 57).

Fleurs de champs also highlights Bonnard’s masterful use of colour as a compositional tool. The painting sings with the vivid energy of the red flowers, yet the composition is unified by the clear luminosity of the colouring that pervades the canvas. The effect this produces is characterised by Ursula Perucchi-Petri: ‘The intricately woven tapestry of colour with its warp and weft of figures and objects draws proximity and distance together in a vibrant fabric. This lends the space a floating aspect…’ (U. Perucchi-Petri in Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late (exhibition catalogue), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C., 2002, p. 202). In Fleurs de champs this creates a dynamic between foreground and background that fills the canvas with a sense of energy and emphasises the spaces surrounding the vibrant arrangement of flowers at the heart of the composition.