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The Inaugural Exhibition, 26 June – 25 September 2011
Bonnard and Le Cannet, in a Mediterranean light
The exhibition is to bring together some forty paintings and around twenty works on paper divided into
4 sections and is to cover the entire exhibition space.
Essential master pieces such as The Boxer (self-portrait), Studio with Mimosa, The Sunlit Terrace, Nude
in the Bath or Almond Tree in Bloom are to be a part of this first event.
"This painter",wrote his nephewCharles in 1927, "who only wished to paint happiness, is not the cheerful man you might think. […]. His view of the world does not spare him any of its pain, any of its unfathomable laws". Neither of the two World Wars through which he lived or the depression in the Thirties are evoked in this masterful oeuvre which runs parallel to the passing of time.
Bonnard's unclassifiable work is timeless and removed from time. Its rereading and the creation of a
museum dedicated to him play a part in its recognition.
1. Discovering the South of France
Pierre Bonnard discovered the Midi very early on, in 1904 at Saint-Tropez where his friends Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel were staying. He visited Valtat
and Signac, who the same year was also visited by Matisse and Derain en route to Fauvism. Invited by
Manguin, Bonnard was to return to Saint-Tropez for a longer stay in the summer of 1909 which enabled him to paint a few canvases. He was to continue his trips to Paris, Normandy and the South
of France up to 1914.
Bonnard discovered new light and vegetation in the Midi; the colour of the eucalyptus, olive and almond trees and the mimosa revealed in the Mediterranean light. This had an immediate impact on him and he wrote to his mother, making an observation that has since become famous: "It struck me like the Thousand and One Nights. The sea, the yellow walls, the reflections as full of colour as the lights…".
2. Inner life – nudes, still lives and interiors
Pierre Bonnard chose Le Cannet in 1922 for stays lasting several months a year and for soaking up the atmosphere of its light and its colours in different seasons. However it was not until 1926 that he purchased Le Bosquet, a house on the hills around the town which offered him a clear view over the bay of Cannes and the Estérel hills.
This house, to which he made some alterations such as the creation of a bathroom, an atelier, a balcony, etc., was to be an auspicious setting and provided him with the subjects for a number of paintings, some of which are numbered amongst his classics.
Certain recurring themes, plays on mirrors and reflections, a lived-in atmosphere, etc., everything goes to suggest the depth of feelings and unspoken thoughts.
3. Landscapes – a world of sensations
"I have acquired the soul of a landscape painter insofar as I have been able to free myself of everything picturesque, aesthetical or any other convention that has been poisoning me […]", wrote Bonnard to his friend Vuillard in 1935.
Landscape played a very important role in Bonnard's style of painting and it was through this genre that the painter stood apart from the various avant-garde movements. His first landscapes painted at Le Cannet show to what extent the painter had a simultaneously classic andmodern vision, steadily acquired by osmosis.
Each painting bears witness to his original approach to the subject, to the format which is rarely standard, to the importance given to colour and to light, in the same way as the expression
of feelings.
4. Colour and the power of abstraction – the last works
Landscapes and self-portraits
The final landscapes painted by Bonnard in the middle of the War show no trace of the crisis in Europe. Against this particularly sombre background, and as if to ward off reality, there was never so much yellow and dazzling colours in his painting. Contrarily his selfportraits, created for himself alone, show his dark side. "He who sings is not always happy", he wrote three years before his death. These self-portraits, painted at key times in his development, were often the product of times of crisis. Four of the mare to be shown in the exhibition. Unlike Marthe's body, that of Bonnard in the paintings grows old, betraying the marks of passing time and dreams.
Whereas he stayed on the surface of Marthe's skin, he entered the folds and wrinkles of his own body, as if to get under his own skin. These self-portraits are rightfully considered indisputable benchmarks for this genre in the history of 20th century art.
Bonnard struggled with himself and with painting, while still marvelling with coloured brushstrokes before the beauty of the Le Cannet landscapes all around him and his haven, his house.
"A picture is a series of interconnected marks that finally form the object, the area over which the eye travels without a hitch", Bonnard told Tériade in 1942.
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