The C C Land Exhibition: Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory Opens at the Tate Modern
Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory opens at the Tate Modern, London, until the 6th of May 2019 — the first major exhibition on the French painter in 20 years. He was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism with a bold use of colour that became his trademark. Bonnard alongside Matisse have been claimed as the two greatest colourists of the early 20th century.
Balcony scenes, bathers and still lifes on the kitchen table – was there more to Bonnard than mere depictions of happy domesticity? This enthralling exhibition focuses on his mature works from around 1900, when Bonnard was in his early 30s, until his death in 1947, and explores chronologically the development of his work and stylistic influences across 13 rooms.
The title of this exhibition is apt: the creative use of colour was throughout his life a dominant influence in his paintings and his methodology relied on memory – he did not paint en plein air but preferred to draw sketches at the scene with annotations of the colours he saw, before producing the work in his studio. He would also return to a work over a period of months or even years to hone colour and mood.
Pierre Bonnard, born 1867 in Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, was a member of the post-impressionist movement alongside his life-long friend Henri Matisse. Under parental influence he trained as a lawyer but painting was his love through his adolescence, taking classes at the Académie Julian during his law studies. While receiving his certificate to practise law, he failed in the examination to be included in the registry of lawyers and his future path was set.
In 1888 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he met the painter Édouard Vuillard. With friends from the Académie Julian he founded Les Nabis, an informal group of artists with common artistic ambitions and became influenced by the bold patterning and changing perspectives of mass-produced Japanese woodcut prints – something that would become a feature of his interior scenes.
Throughout his life he would return to familiar domestic scenes at his house in Normandy, often featuring his life-long partner Marthe de Méligny. But Bonnard travelled through France each year to paint, capturing the vibrant colours of southern France, and further afield with his friend Vuillard. In Hamburg at the invitation of the Director of the Kunsthalle, Bonnard returns to one of his favourite scenes – a bustling crowd. The energetic brushwork captures a sense of immediacy while the dominant figures in the foreground – a common feature of Bonnard’s compositions – are positioned so we can see through to the regatta taking place in the background.
Around 1912, Bonnard’s explorative use of colour became more pronounced, influenced by contemporary artists known as the ‘fauves’ (wild beasts) due to their use of raw colour, among them Henri Matisse. This led to his use of more intense colour combinations, while still adopting the bold geometric patterning present in Japanese prints.
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Bonnard was 46 years old and still eligible to serve in the French army but he continued to focus on his art. The compositions were mostly the familiar domestic ones, leading one critic to describe him as the ‘artist of happiness’, yet he was not oblivious to the bloodshed going on around him. A Village in Ruins near Ham 1917 records the devastation along the Somme, the watery technique reflecting the desolation Bonnard felt while visiting the war zone. The contrast between this painting and others produced around the same time depicting rural tranquil is marked – it is almost as though it represents a yearning for peace to replace the ravages of war.
Following his mother’s death in early 1919, Bonnard explored more innovative compositions and colour palettes, approaching his depictions of the everyday with new and challenging perspectives. The Bowl of Milk captures the strong Côte d’Azur light flooding into a room de Méligny and he rented in Antibes, leaving many details in shadow, yet the colours chosen are more subtle than in his earlier work.
Bonnard began a love affair in the early 1920s with Renée Monchaty, one of his occasional models, putting in jeopardy the domestic situation that formed the inspiration for much of his painting. He and Monchaty visited Rome together and he proposed marriage, only to break off the engagement and marry de Méligny in 1925. Shortly after, Monchaty took her own life.
A number of works in this exhibition are displayed outside their frames, reflecting how they would have appeared to Bonnard as he was painting them. He eschewed the artist’s easel, instead pinning his canvases to the wall and painting close to their edges. This enabled him to work on several pictures at the same time, side by side, as well as allowing him to roll them up and take them with him on his travels through France and providing space for the compositions to grow.
‘Yes, it annoys me if my canvas is nailed to a stretcher. I can never know in advance what dimensions I will adopt.’
Nude in the Bath is one of a series of paintings Bonnard made over twenty years, addressing the familiar European art theme of the reclining female nude, but introducing the novel element of showing how the body looks different under water. Here, the composition can be divided into a series of verticals – the length of the bath, de Méligny’s reclining figure, the bath mat and drapes, and the mysterious figure entering on the left.
The early 1930s were marked by a deterioration in de Méligny’s health alongside an economic slump and rising nationalism in Germany. Bonnard’s painting began to take on elements of abstraction both in the interplay of horizontal and vertical lines and a more experimental, expressive use of colour. An exhibition room is dedicated to photographs of Bonnard in his studio by Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Ostier, amongst others, and other archival material, helping to add context to his paintings and his philosophical approach.
On the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Bonnards retreated to a house, Le Cannet, they had purchased in the south of France. Confined to the local area by travel restrictions, Bonnard painted landscapes in addition to domestic interiors. De Méligny died in 1942, leaving him without his life-long companion, but he continued to seek solace in nature and the familiar environs of home. Still Life with Bottle of Red Wine shows his continued sense of inventiveness during a troubled period of his life, with rich reds and yellows giving a sense of optimism despite the ongoing travails. In one sense, the domestic scenes remained familiar, yet everything had changed.
The C C Land Exhibition: Pierre Bonnard: The Colour Of Memory
Tate Modern
Until 6 May
£18/ £17 concessions — Free to members
For more information, please visit its website on https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/cc-land-exhibition-pierre-bonnard-colour-memory
