Pierre BONNARD (1867-1947)

Lot 8
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Estimation :
80000 - 120000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 149 050EUR
Pierre BONNARD (1867-1947)
La Charmille, 1901 Oil on cardboard laid on cradled panel Signed with the signature stamp [Lugt 3886] lower left Oil on cardboard laid on cradled panel, stamped with the artist's signature [Lugt 3886] lower left 27,8 x 36,2 cm - 18 x 21 1/8 in. PROVENANCE Wildenstein & Co, New York Arthur Tooth & Sons, London Private collection, Switzerland Sale, Sotheby's, London, 30 March 1988, lot 109 Private collection, Israel (acquired during the previous sale) Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 13 November 1996, lot 169 Georges Bemberg Collection, France (acquired in previous sale) Sale, Sotheby's, London, 25 June 2015, lot 548 Private collection, United States (acquired from previous sale) BIBLIOGRAPHY Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint révisonné et augmenté, Tome 1 (1888-1905), Paris: 1992, no. 263, p. 257 (reproduced in black and white) Bernard Mérigaud, "Un art à part sans prise aux courants", in Télérama hors-série, Pierre Bonnard au Musée d'Orsay, March 2015, pp. 24-25 (reproduced in colour) EXHIBITIONS Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, The Origins of Modern Art in France 1880-1939, 1998, n°9 (reproduced in the catalogue) Madrid, Centro Cultural del Conde Duque, Una mirada sobre Pierre Bonnard, 2001, PIERRE BONNARD La Charmille Nicknamed "the very Japanese Nabi" by Félix Fénéon, Pierre Bonnard experienced the famous Exhibition of Japanese Engraving organised by Siegfried Bing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1890 as a real revelation. He immediately began acquiring Japanese prints which, along with photography, which he practised with great passion, would become a major source of inspiration for his paintings, in particular for La Charmille which he painted in 1901. Behind a screen of greenery, the bower that gives its name to the painting and which echoes Edouard Vuillard's La Cueillette, Bonnard presents us with two female figures facing each other. They are probably members of the painter's family, caught in conversation in a garden bordered on his right by a gravelled path. These figures, who are barely visible, are dressed in the same long, pearl-grey dress, belted at the waist like a kimono without any volume, while they themselves seem to float in a space freed from the traditional constraints of central perspective. The absence of depth conferred on the pictorial field, in the manner of a small self-sufficient world, and the rejection of the plasticity of the bodies are not the only characteristics of the Charmille to be credited to Bonnard's Japonism. There is also the boldness of his palette. A cameo of green, which gets its luminosity from the addition of ochre and white, and allows him "to express everything without the need for relief or modelling". The painter adds: "It appeared to me that it was possible to translate light, forms and character with colour alone, without calling upon values." All of these elements make La Charmille the high point of Bonnard's Japanese score from the 1892 Croquet Game (Musée d'Orsay), and they did not fail to attract the attention of one of its august owners, Georges Bemberg, the greatest collector of Bonnard's works of his time. "For me, Bonnard is a painter who has created a body of work to which one must return again and again. He has been of great importance to my work and I often find myself looking at his paintings again when I am thinking about what I am going to do. The Tate exhibition in 1998 gave me and Chris Ofili the opportunity to see his work over and over again, as we went there several times. I was very impressed by what the paintings gave off - unbeknownst to them, in fact: something open, unfinished. In our previous conversation in Düsseldorf, I spoke of unspectacular painting, meaning that his subjects seem banal, or rather that there is something intimate about them, about the painter and his world; however, to a large extent, this is the strength of his work. I was surprised to see how much this one touched young artists. It has a dark side that became clear to me when I visited the exhibition, a poignant melancholy that grows stronger the more you look at it. I went back to see the exhibition with other artists, mostly students. The painting we see nowadays often displays its skill. This is not the case with Bonnard. The work doesn't tell how it was made, even though that absolutely determines what it is; there is a kind of 'openness'. Since I've been teaching in Düsseldorf, I've noticed that a lot of students' work leads to
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