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Lot Essay
The present work depicts the lush vegetation near Bonnard’s house, Le Bosquet at Le Cannet, the villa he had bought in 1926 which would provide him with a ceaseless source of inspiration for the remainder of his life. The artist had been captivated by the intense light and saturated colors of the Côte d’Azur since the summer of 1909, which he spent in Saint-Tropez. As Nicholas Watkins has described, “For a realist from the north like Bonnard, southern light was a prerequisite for his emerging art of color” (Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 124).
Bonnard depicted the landscape around Le Cannet in more than two hundred canvases in the latter decades of his career. During his daily walks in the countryside, he made sketches of the terrain, often annotated with notes of weather conditions and lighting effects, which served as the point of departure for his paintings. In 1940, he reported to Edouard Vuillard, "I am very much interested in landscape, and my strolls are full of considerations in this regard. I am about to understand this land and no longer try to find what isn't there, since it conceals tremendous beauties. To establish the different conceptions to which nature gives birth from this perspective, that is what really interests me" (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, Observing Nature, exh. cat., National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2003, p. 62).
Bonnard spent the duration of the Second World War at Le Bosquet. Like other artists, he was affected by major changes in the art market at this time, most notably the 1940 aryanization of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, with whom he had had a multi-decade business relationship. The present work was painted circa 1943, while Paris was still occupied. The rich tapestry of brushwork, brilliant colors and freedom of handling demonstrate the manner in which the house and its surroundings provided the ideal retreat and work environment for the artist to perfect “the wedding [of] his sensations of color from nature to those from paint itself” (J. Elliott, Bonnard and His Environment, New York, 1964, p. 25).
(fig. 1) The artist at Villa du Bosquet, Le cannet, 1941.
Bonnard depicted the landscape around Le Cannet in more than two hundred canvases in the latter decades of his career. During his daily walks in the countryside, he made sketches of the terrain, often annotated with notes of weather conditions and lighting effects, which served as the point of departure for his paintings. In 1940, he reported to Edouard Vuillard, "I am very much interested in landscape, and my strolls are full of considerations in this regard. I am about to understand this land and no longer try to find what isn't there, since it conceals tremendous beauties. To establish the different conceptions to which nature gives birth from this perspective, that is what really interests me" (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, Observing Nature, exh. cat., National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2003, p. 62).
Bonnard spent the duration of the Second World War at Le Bosquet. Like other artists, he was affected by major changes in the art market at this time, most notably the 1940 aryanization of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, with whom he had had a multi-decade business relationship. The present work was painted circa 1943, while Paris was still occupied. The rich tapestry of brushwork, brilliant colors and freedom of handling demonstrate the manner in which the house and its surroundings provided the ideal retreat and work environment for the artist to perfect “the wedding [of] his sensations of color from nature to those from paint itself” (J. Elliott, Bonnard and His Environment, New York, 1964, p. 25).
(fig. 1) The artist at Villa du Bosquet, Le cannet, 1941.