Bonnard and the Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch

      The nature of Bonnard’s relationship with Impressionism, a key factor in his art, reveals itself most vividly in the subjects he chose and in his compositions. The Parisian townscapes may serve as an illustration. In comparison with his early pictures of Paris, the urban scenes executed in 1911–12, representing one of the peaks in Bonnard’s art, are remarkable for their more complex composition. They contain more human figures, more space and more light, and they are richer in colouring. These features place them close to the works of Monet, Pissarro and Renoir. An Impressionistic flavour is strongly felt in his city scenes Morning in Paris and Evening in Paris, a pair of works painted for Ivan Morozov and seemingly bearing all the marks of a casually observed scene. In fact, of course, this was not the case. Both pictures were painted from memory, as was Bonnard’s usual practice. In these two townscapes Bonnard was particularly attentive to composition and in this respect, as before, he demonstrated a closer affinity to Degas rather than to Monet and Pissarro. Indeed in his very conception of street scenes Bonnard also followed Degas, or perhaps even Caillebotte, while Monet and Pissarro, the founding fathers of the Impressionistic townscape, were absorbed with a desire to show street life with its unceasing movement from a distance and avoided close-up or even middle-ground views of pedestrians. Yet unlike Degas (Place de la Concorde, 1873, Hermitage) and still less like Caillebotte (A Paris Street in the Rain, 1877, Art Institute of Chicago) Bonnard does not focus on the human figures and avoids depicting them in detail. The soft, subdued patches of colour affect the viewer before he has become aware of what this or that patch actually represents. Bonnard’s wonderfully orchestrated colour arrangements are not arbitrary. In Morning in Paris, the blue and pink tones of the sky and the cool hues of the foreground are so true to life that they alone, even without the scurrying pedestrians and the coal-merchant’s cart with its early-morning load, clearly indicate the time of the day. But even after we realise the significance of the colour, that does not reduce its charm; quite the contrary, it is increased. The patches of colour do no more than “name” the objects depicted. They are sufficiently autonomous, and the beauty of their combinations could serve as a powerful justification for their independent existence.

      At the same time, each masterly brushstroke and each patch of colour possess a wonderfully keen and expressive force. The vagueness of Bonnard’s painting does not reduce but intensifies that expressiveness. For example, the patch of colour representing a dog in Morning in Paris shows only its body and tail, but these details are enough to reveal the animal’s behaviour with a striking liveliness and precision. In the same picture, the silhouette of the coal-merchant’s donkey heavily and hurriedly moving its slipping legs may serve as another example. There is no animal painter of modern times who understood the character of animals better than Bonnard. With the alert eye of a master, Bonnard also catches a person’s way of walking or behaving. The old flower-seller in Evening in Paris moves in a manner typical of her alone, unhurriedly measuring each step. The children fooling about a bit in the street move as only children can.

      The details of the picture are so arranged as to give an impression of the Parisian way of life. In Morning in Paris in the foreground the artist depicts people who have to rise early – the old coal merchant, a group of young girls hurrying to work, a little boy loitering on his way to school. In Evening in Paris the movement of the figures is quite different. Here people are out for a stroll. In the first picture, Bonnard depicts a square, a junction of different streams of movement; in the second, a boulevard. In the first case, the artist needs an open space; in the second, a closed space. In the morning scene it is important to show the sunrise colours of the sky and the walls of houses catching the first rays of the sun; for the scene at dusk other details are necessary. “What is beautiful in nature”, said Bonnard, “is not always beautiful in painting, especially in reduction. One example is the effects of evening and night.”[25] They say that Félix Fénéon, the manager of the Bernheim Gallery, once casually remarked to Bonnard that his Parisian street scenes were a Success, after which the artist stopped painting them.[26] This may have taken place in 1912, when the series of works commissioned by Morozov was on display for the first time at the gallery. Bonnard was always mistrustful of success; to his mind, it made an artist repeat himself. Whatever the truth of the matter, Bonnard’s last picture of this kind, Place Clichy, is dated 1912 (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon). It is a large painting which appears to be a sort of synthesis of the motifs in the Moscow works. The liveliness, the unassuming simplicity of the subject, an apparently casual composition which, however, always has a “framework” (Bonnard’s word) and is well balanced, the mobility of texture, with each brushstroke vibrating in every patch of colour – all these elements are characteristic of an easel painting. It would seem from this that Bonnard had no special talent for monumental art, yet his large decorative