In the last decades of his working life, Bonnard created works of poignant introspection – self portraits and scenes of his daily life – and others of majestic scale and joyous colour, celebrating the luminous landscapes around Le Cannet, the town near Cannes on the French Riviera where he and de Méligny lived.įor Pierre Bonnard, the NGV has commissioned celebrated architect and designer India Mahdavi to design the exhibition’s scenography. A rich selection of the warm and vibrant interior scenes and still lifes recorded by Bonnard following his move to the south of France form an important part of the exhibition.
Visits to the south of France from 1909 onwards brought a new intensity of colour to Bonnard’s art, ‘this colour that drives one wild’ as he put it. Alongside his intimate studies of their domestic life, Bonnard undertook campaigns of landscape painting, engaging with the legacy of French Impressionism.
As Bonnard and de Méligny shared their life together, this led to longer periods spent in the countryside for the latter’s health.
#La fenetre ouverte matisse series#
Films by the Lumière Brothers are screened alongside dynamic urban scenes Bonnard produced during this period.īonnard’s meeting with Maria Boursin (who chose to be called Marthe de Méligny) in 1893 led to his own domestic intimacy, culminating in a remarkable series of nude studies, both lithographs and paintings. He also embraced photography and cast his artist’s eye over his family circle to capture moments of unexpected movement and impromptu composition. Influenced by his friendship with the pioneering filmmakers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, he became one of the first artists to draw inspiration from the new medium of cinema in his art. Paintings by Vuillard and Vallotton will be shown alongside prints by Denis.ĭuring this period, Bonnard recorded daily life in the streets of Paris in an immediate and startlingly close manner, observing what he called the ‘theatre of the everyday’. Calling themselves the Nabis, the young artists Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Ranson, Paul Sérusier and Félix Vallotton banded together in the early 1890s, and saw themselves as the Prophets of a new art that they envisaged encompassing every sphere of modern life – interior design, furniture, fans and textiles, stained glass, and commercial illustration and advertising. The first sections of the exhibition explore Bonnard’s central role within the Nabi circle of artists, as well as his interaction with the contemporary worlds of music and theatre. Developed in partnership with Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the exhibition is largely drawn from the museum’s impressive holdings of works by Bonnard alongside significant loans from other collections in France and beyond. Paintings, drawings, photographs, folding screens and early cinema will bring modern France to life with startling beauty and vivid colour. A kaleidoscopic exhibition, Pierre Bonnard features more than 100 works by the celebrated French artist, spanning the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
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