Bonnard, Pierre

Bonnard, Pierre (pyĕr bônärd`), 1867–1947, French painter, lithographer, and illustrator. In the 1890s he was associated with the Nabis. His delight in familiar views of everyday life was transmitted to canvas with joy and gentle fantasy. Sometimes called an intimist, he explored the play of sunlight in domestic interiors in an exuberant style that was extremely close to impressionism (e.g., Bowl of Fruit, 1933; Philadelphia Mus. of Art). His other favorite subjects include landscapes, nudes, and self-portraits. Bonnard also had a reputation as a lithographer; his well-known prints include Daphnis and Chloe (1902). He also designed sets for the stage.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Terasse (1967); exhibition catalogs of the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (1982), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1990), and the Tate Gallery (1998); monograph produced by the Hermitage and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville Paris (2006); studies by C. Roger-Marx (1952), J. Elliott et al. (1964), A. Fermigier (1970), and N. Watkins (1994).

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Bonnard, Pierre

(born Oct. 3, 1867, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Fr.—died Jan. 23, 1947, Le Cannet) French painter and printmaker. He studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts (1888–89). In the 1890s he became a leading member of the Nabis group and came under the influence of Art Nouveau and Japanese prints. With his friend Édouard Vuillard, he developed the intimate domestic interior scene, a genre known as Intimism, depicting fashionable Parisian life in the years before World War I. He also produced still lifes, self-portraits, seascapes, and large-scale decorative paintings. In 1910 he discovered the south of France and began a series of luminous landscapes of the Mediterranean region. He was fascinated by perspective, which he employed in paintings such as The Dining Room (1913). From the 1920s he specialized in landscapes, interiors, views of gardens, and bathing nudes. He produced illustrations for the celebrated journal Revue blanche and decorative pages for Paul Verlaine's book of poetry Parallèlement (1900). Bonnard was one of the greatest colourists of modern art.

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Bonnard, Pierre 

Born Oct. 3, 1867, in Fontenay-aux-Roses; died Jan. 23, 1947, in Le Cannet. French artist.

At the end of the 1880’s, Bonnard studied at the Fine Arts School and the Julian Academy in Paris. He came under the influence of Japanese engravings and P. Gauguin. Bonnard’s landscapes, genre scenes, interiors, nudes, and still lifes (The Beginning of Spring [Little Fauns], 1903–04, Hermitage, Leningrad; and the wall panel Autumn; Garnering Fruit, 1912, Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), which are related to the decorative qualities of latter-day impressionism (the works of C. Monet and A. Renoir), are distinguished by a lyrical, contemplative quality. His posters and color lithographs, with their stylized contours and sharp drawing, subtle views of Paris of the 1890’s painted in muted colors, and the very light pictures and decorative wall panels painted in the 1900’s and 1910’s, are close to the modern style. Bonnard’s works painted from the 1920’s through the 1940’s are notable for their warm and intense colors.

REFERENCE

Terrasse, A. Bonnard. Geneva, 1964.