Searching For Light Late in Life
“The French Window (Mourning at Le Cannet),” an oil on canvas from 1932.
Over the course of 24 years, Pierre Bonnard painted the familiar, simply furnished rooms of his home at Le Cannet in southern France. All are interiors or still lifes or, best, a hybrid; all were made from 1923, when Bonnard was 56, to the end of 1946, a month or so before his death.
“Corner of the Dining Room at Le Cannet,” 1932
Although his subjects were close at hand, he rarely painted directly from life, relying instead on memory. He preferred the simplicity of pencil drawings sketched rapidly in little diaries. So detailed were his notations that he laid out idiosyncratic marks as reminders of color, tone, intensity, and contrast.
The White Interior of 1932
Bonnard’s paintings often convey a feeling of forbidden sights, as if one is trespassing among private or intimate settings. In Before Dinner (1924), the figures, though physically present, are emotionally absent.
“Before Dinner,” 1924
Working in his modest house overlooking the Mediterranean, Bonnard’s paintings transformed the rooms and objects that surrounded him into dazzling images infused with intense light. It is these luminous late interiors that define Bonnard’s modernism and prompt a reappraisal of his reputation in the history of 20th-century art.
“Breakfast,” circa 1930
“Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors” is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.org, through April 19.
“The Table,” 1925.
“Dining Room Overlooking the Garden” 1930-31.
from the TV quiz show “Jeopardy,” here’s an easy one for all the painting fans of the errant aesthete. The category being British painters. “Tennyson called this British painter the Shakespeare of landscape.” no cheating .. you’ve got 30 seconds .. start the music.
Joseph Mallord William Turner.