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Lot Essay
En barque is the first of two versions of this subject which Bonnard painted when he settled in Vernouillet in 1907. The painting perfectly illustrates the significant shift of technique adopted by Vuillard, and the other members of the Nabis group, at the turn of the century; after 1900, Bonnard turned to the Impressionist precepts, which he had so strongly reacted against during his youth, and progressively became more concerned with outdoor space and light.
The second and final version of En Barque, housed in the Muse d'Orsay, Paris (fig. 1), incorporates the elaborate and accentuated spatial experiments already present in our picture: "The revolution in painting brought by Bonnard was that, for the first time, a painter attempted to translate onto the canvas the data of a vision that is physiologically 'real' ... He was the first artist to have attempted to portray on canvas the integrality of the field of vision and so bring nearer to the eye what classical perspective had kept at a distance" (as quoted in exh. cat., J. Elderfield, Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 33).
The second and final version of En Barque, housed in the Muse d'Orsay, Paris (fig. 1), incorporates the elaborate and accentuated spatial experiments already present in our picture: "The revolution in painting brought by Bonnard was that, for the first time, a painter attempted to translate onto the canvas the data of a vision that is physiologically 'real' ... He was the first artist to have attempted to portray on canvas the integrality of the field of vision and so bring nearer to the eye what classical perspective had kept at a distance" (as quoted in exh. cat., J. Elderfield, Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 33).