Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947), View from the Artist's Studio, Le Cannet, 1945. Oil on canvas, 37 1/2 × 49 1/2 in. (95.25 × 125.73 cm). Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. M1952.7. Photo: Cleber Bonato. © 2024 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York.
With his fellow Nabis (an artists group that favored decorative over academic qualities in art), Pierre Bonnard became devoted to the properties of color and flat surface patterning. His canvases are to be experienced rather than “read.” After settling in 1926 in Le Cannet on the Côte d’Azur in Southern France, Bonnard painted over three hundred works that are imbued with the seductive light and color of Southern France. Created only two years before his death, this late landscape approaches abstraction, as the jeweled atmosphere dances across the surface so tantalizingly that the golden road leading into the background seems more like a dream than a pathway.
Excerpt from Collection Guide: Milwaukee Art Museum. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 2004, pp. 49, 72, cat. 81.
