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PIERRE BONNARD
La fenetre (1925)
Oil on canvas
108.6cm X 85.6cm/42 3/4 in X 34 7/8 in

An acute observer of light values, though a rather conservative painter by twentieth-century standards, the Post-Impressionist Pierre Bonnard was born in 1867 in Fontenay-aux-Roses. As a young man he first studied law, and then painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and Academic Julian. He joined a group of artists associated with Gauguin who were called Nabis (a Hebrew word meaning 'Prophets'). His first success was a poster France - Champagne (1891).

Bonnard's early career covered many aspects of design including furniture, poster and theater commissions and many important book illustrations, in particular for the novel
Marie by Peter Nansen, which was published in La Revue Blanche in 1898 (and which appears on the table in La fenetre). These lithographs were singled out for praise by Renoir. From about 1905 Bonnard concentrated increasingly on painting in the Post-Impressionist tradi-tion, uninvolved with the avant-garde.

In 1925 Bonnard moved to Le Cannet near Cannes. La fenetre is a view from the window of his house Le Bosquet, where he died in 1947. Bonnard required the white priming in this canvas to act in two ways: firstly, left un-covered, it is used as a tone or shade of white in several parts of the picture, such as some house sides; secondly, it gives the colors addi-tional radiance, if they are applied thinly enough, just as watercolors gain their bril-liance from the whiteness of the paper.

Bonnard's technique was also linked to his instinctive discipline for color which came from his experience of poster and print-making, especially lithography: 'I have learned much about painting proper from making lithographs in color, when one has to establish relations between tones by ringing the changes on only four or five colors, super-imposed or juxtaposed, one makes a host of discoveries.'

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) had been a strong influence on Bonnard's lithog-raphic work. The two painters, like many others including Monet, were fascinated by
Japanese prints with their powerful composi-tions and purity of color. In La fenetre this influ-ence can be seen in the almost flat diamond pattern of the tablecloth, and the abstract rhythm of the green shutter slats which have a tendency to flatten out the perspective of the composition and make the distant colors jump forward with surprising strength.

Bonnard used a palette of about eight high-quality colors which he applied, for the most part, very thinly. They were made to perform a great number of functions. A scarlet vermilion was applied pure, speckled beneath the green window bar. Bonnard often mixed it with a
Venetian red which appears in the cover of the portfolio on the table. Mixed together they make a warm pink (with the additionof zinc white). An expensive cobalt violet produced a near rose pink when mixed with the vermilion and white in the writing box at left, and a cool brown when combined with the colors of the window frame at the top left of the picture. This same violet adds a coldness to the sky next to a cerulean blue, and is a powerful dark when touched into the hair of the woman.

Only two blues were used. The cerulean can be seen pure in the distant hills running in from the left and in dashes on the right of the window frame. There are only small amounts of the cobalt blue, often applied with a finger to add a particular depth, such as in the tiny area between the chin and arm of the figure.

Two yellows are discernible. A lemon cad-mium appears with rare impasto over some foreground roofs and thinned with white for glazes in the foreground cloth. Yellow ochre complements the lemon to provide some drawing around the red book. Vermilion and lemon were put side by side to color the roof-tops 'orange'; a common Divisionist device.

Bonnard used viridian to great effect. He thinned it with zinc white to create the trans-parent acid green of the shutters and in the angled window bar. It was also used in the heavy green of the clumps of woodland.

White is one of the keys to an understanding of Bonnard's technique in La fenetre. A flake white was used in the thickly applied pure white sheet offered to view, which then calls across to the pure whites and primed can-vas of the houses, creating a set of optical stepping stones into the distance.

Bonnard also employed a black in a similar way. It was applied very pure, not to darken any of the colors artificially. This was a practice inherited from Monet. Ivory black can be found in the ink pot and in the dark areas of trees which draw the eye into and across the distance; like opening a Japanese fan.

Bonnard's planning of this painting is com-plex, and would have taken a long time in order to record color and light precisely while, at the same time, sacrificing nothing of its transparency and depth. There is evidence of the meticulous brushwork which achieves such results in places such as the grid of the tablecloth, and in the house roofs and in the verticals at right. The only area which is truly opaque is the rectangle of sky. Much of the painting was applied with rags rather than brushes. This technique creates an unfocused appearance yet allows a strong sculptural quality in the 'architecture' of the painting.

Bonnard's slow, planned application of color next to color or superimposed one on the other, forces the viewer to actually do the color mixing and see the world in skilfully contrived contrasts. The result is a sophisticated color 'mechanism' which convinces with painterly deception, as Bonnard himself confessed: 'll faut mentir' (one must lie).

Bonnard is best known for his 'intimist' paintings. In La fenetre he has made the randomly placed articles on a desk top echo the pattern of the village below. These mundane elements are elevated by Bonnard's slow and meticulous assembly of brushed and wiped color and glazes to bring out a compelling mesh of abstract color relationships.

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