Bonnard and the Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch
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Milliner collection, Paris), the first of the artist’s small genre scenes set in Paris, each of which is unique in its own way. This picture is the prototype for Morning in Paris and Evening in Paris, paintings now in the Hermitage.
Street and another painting of this period, Woman in the Garden (Private Collection, Paris), show that Bonnard not only was well acquainted with Impressionism, but he ventured into its territory as a polemist rather than a timid pupil: here characteristic Impressionist motifs are treated in a far from Impressionistic manner. It was only a short time before Bonnard painted these pictures that the Nabis learned the lesson taught by Gauguin. However, Bonnard and Vuillard with him were influenced to a lesser degree by Gauguin than their companions. While sharing Gauguin’s opposition to Renoir, Pissarro and Raffaëlli, Bonnard and Vuillard drew support not from Gauguin, but from oriental art, mainly from Japanese prints. French artists had become interested in Japanese art even before Bonnard was born. The influence may be traced in Manet’s work and particularly in all the early works of the Impressionists. Originally it was no more than a taste for the exotic, but in the latter part of the 1880s this interest became more profound, and France was swept by a real wave of enthusiasm for Japanese art. Comparing French paintings of that period with Japanese prints, art historians have discovered that Monet, Degas, Redon, Gauguin, Seurat, Signac and others borrowed both motifs and elements of composition from these prints. Van Gogh painted his own versions of Japanese prints. He even went to Provence hoping to find a second Japan there. To one degree or another, all the Nabis used devices prompted by Japanese woodcuts. Yet it was no coincidence that one of them was singled out for the nickname “the Highly Nipponised Nabi” (Nabi Très Japonard). It is quite reasonable to link Bonnard’s early urban scenes, including his Street, and the works not only of the Impressionists, but also of Japanese artists – all the more so because the Impressionists themselves had been influenced by Japanese art. A painter of the city, Bonnard undoubtedly owed a debt to Hiroshige and Kiyonaga.
Pierre Bonnard, Man and Woman, 1900. Oil on canvas, 115 × 72 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Japanese prints were by no means a rarity in Paris when Bonnard studied at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. One exhibition of Japanese art was held at the Ecole itself in 1890 and there can be little doubt that Bonnard was among its most frequent visitors. Japanese prints were cheap enough for Bonnard and his companions to be able to buy the odd one. Naturally, these were the latest impressions which differed considerably from the originals. In his old age Matisse would recall: “I knew the Japanese only from copies and prints of poor quality which could be bought in the Rue de Seine by the entrance of the shops selling engravings. Bonnard said that he did the same and added that he was rather disappointed when he saw the originals. This may be explained by foxiness and faded colours of the early print-runs. Perhaps if we had seen the originals first, we would not have been as impressed as by the later prints.”[14]
“When I came upon these somewhat crude popular pictures,” Bonnard said, “I realised that colour could express anything without resort to relief or modelling. It seemed to me that one could render light, shape, typical properties by colour alone, dispensing with values.”[15] In order to understand Bonnard’s first creative endeavours, it is essential to know that he, like the other members of the Nabi group, considered Japanese prints to be examples of folk art. At that time, he thought of creating not masterpieces for museums but popular art suitable for reproduction; in other words, something that was to an extent mass art. “During that period I myself shared the opinion that artists should produce works which the general public could afford and which would be of use in everyday life: prints, furniture, fans, screens and so on.”[16]
Only a few of Bonnard’s undertakings in the field of applied arts actually came to fruition. Among them were a stained-glass panel called Motherhood, which Tiffany’s made from his cartoon, several screens, some of them painted, others decorated with colour lithographs. These screens and the design for a small cupboard with figures of two frisky dogs – probably Bonnard’s only attempt to try his hand at furniture – clearly reveal a Japanese influence. Japanese prototypes are also in evidence in Bonnard’s lithographs. Even his earliest print A Family Scene (1893) immediately brings to mind Utamaro, Sharaku and Kunisada. The works of these Japanese artists taught Bonnard the kind of stark simplicity and refinement that he could never have acquired at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Above all, they taught him to abandon the ideas of perspective, he had been taught to be bold in composition, to build up his picture as an arrangement of flat silhouettes, to appreciate the expressive power of a generalized patch of colour, at times unexpectedly giving close-up views and at times, on the contrary, arranging the composition in a frieze-like manner. The free and at the same time energetic use of colour in Japanese woodcuts also brought Europe much, both in graphic art and in painting. “As for painting,” Bonnard wrote to Suares, “I learned a lot working in colour lithography. You discover a great deal when you explore the relationship between different tones, with only four or five colours at your disposal, placing them next to or over one another.”[17]
Pierre Bonnard, The Dressing Gown, c. 1890. Oil on quilted canvas, 154 × 54 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.
Pierre Bonnard, Nursemaids’ Promenade, Frieze of Carriages, 1894. Tempera on canvas, 147 × 54 cm each panel, Private Collection.
Incidentally, even before Bonnard turned to lithography, he tried to make do with a limited number of colours, applying them in a flat manner. The most telling example of this practice is The Parade Ground (1890, Private Collection, Paris). It would be hard to find a small painting in the battle genre to match this picture for richness of colour and decorativeness, although the work both belongs to and, with its Japanese features, parodies the genre.
With time the colours in Bonnard’s paintings became more and more subdued. To some extent this was probably due to his work in lithography. By the middle of the 1890s the artist obviously began to prefer colour combinations in which grey and brown tones predominated. Vuillard was moving in the same direction.
A typical example of this manner is Bonnard’s Behind the Fence (1895, Hermitage, St Petersburg). What is particularly interesting about this picture? It does not depict an amusing incident; the fine draughtsmanship is absent. We see some very ordinary brown-coloured houses, dark winter tree-trunks, and a monotonous fence running across the whole composition. The viewer does not immediately notice behind this fence the solitary figure of a woman, who for some unknown reason has come out into the cold. Only the white splotches of snow which has just fallen and is already beginning to melt enliven the scene that does not catch the eye at all. Has this woman come out to call in a child still playing in the gathering twilight? Perhaps. She is not dressed to go far in such weather. But all these thoughts are unlikely to enter the viewer’s mind. The painting is too generalized to enable us to read something in the woman’s face. The main thing is, however, that the artist does not assert that the scene he presents has some kind of narrative to it. It is just an unassuming corner in the outskirts of Paris made beautiful by the subdued colouring of the picture, with its shimmering grey tones.
Pierre Bonnard, The Tugboat on the Seine, 1911. Oil on canvas, 49 × 53 cm
Pierre Bonnard, Bonnard with Marthe (centre) and Suzanne Bernheim de Villers, c. 1913. Private Collection.
Although Bonnard’s painting lacks bright colour accents, it is nevertheless highly decorative. This effect is primarily achieved by the fence with its diagonal lines. As early as the 1890s the artist was fond of compositions where prominence was given to grids of lines crossing at right angles. Usually this is seen in a woman’s dress, sometimes in a scarf. (Let us recall that Natanson specially noted Bonnard’s love of check fabrics). The artist’s innate talent as a decorator revealed itself above
H. Matisse,
A. Terrasse,