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Lot Essay
Guy-Patrice and Michel Dauberville have confirmed the authenticity of this work.
When asked to consider some pleasing ensemble as a potential subject for a painting, Bonnard confessed, “I find it very difficult even to introduce a new object into my still-lifes… I haven’t lived with that long enough to paint it” (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, The Late Still Lifes and Interiors, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, pp. 8 and 26). Yet Bonnard’s quotidian objects seem to pulse beneath his transformative color: the mundane is not conventional, the inanimate is not entirely inert. Charles Sterling has concluded, “Bonnard’s still-lifes are assortments of fruit on tables or in cupboards exposed to the sun; but departing from the Impressionists’ literal-minded naturalism, he gives them an air of strange enchantment. His objects are pervaded by the light and heat of the sun, whose rays seem to melt down the fruits to a colored essence of their flesh and their taste; his interiors are fragrant with it” (Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981, p. 124).
The present work depicts a beautiful bouquet of flowers resting upon a tabletop, with a radiant warmth cast across the background and over the flowers and vase. The vibrant pigments applied in painterly brushstrokes recall the artist's frequent correspondence with Henri Matisse on the importance of color. In 1935, he wrote to Matisse, "I agree with you that the painter's only ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged" (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, Early and Later, exh. cat., The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2002, p. 44).
Vase de fleurs sur une table exudes an exciting feeling of energy, one that is reminiscent of Bonnard's gardens at Vernonnet, which were hardly tamed and deliberately rambling. He even referred to his garden as his "jardin sauvage," as in the title of his celebrated canvas (also known as La grande terrasse; now in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.). These compositions allowed Bonnard to reconcile his intense interest in color with the rendering of form, capturing the scenes before him with an absorbing intensity. This effect is heightened in the present work by the rapid brushstrokes which make up the background and complement the colorful and lively blooms.
When asked to consider some pleasing ensemble as a potential subject for a painting, Bonnard confessed, “I find it very difficult even to introduce a new object into my still-lifes… I haven’t lived with that long enough to paint it” (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, The Late Still Lifes and Interiors, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, pp. 8 and 26). Yet Bonnard’s quotidian objects seem to pulse beneath his transformative color: the mundane is not conventional, the inanimate is not entirely inert. Charles Sterling has concluded, “Bonnard’s still-lifes are assortments of fruit on tables or in cupboards exposed to the sun; but departing from the Impressionists’ literal-minded naturalism, he gives them an air of strange enchantment. His objects are pervaded by the light and heat of the sun, whose rays seem to melt down the fruits to a colored essence of their flesh and their taste; his interiors are fragrant with it” (Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981, p. 124).
The present work depicts a beautiful bouquet of flowers resting upon a tabletop, with a radiant warmth cast across the background and over the flowers and vase. The vibrant pigments applied in painterly brushstrokes recall the artist's frequent correspondence with Henri Matisse on the importance of color. In 1935, he wrote to Matisse, "I agree with you that the painter's only ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged" (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, Early and Later, exh. cat., The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2002, p. 44).
Vase de fleurs sur une table exudes an exciting feeling of energy, one that is reminiscent of Bonnard's gardens at Vernonnet, which were hardly tamed and deliberately rambling. He even referred to his garden as his "jardin sauvage," as in the title of his celebrated canvas (also known as La grande terrasse; now in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.). These compositions allowed Bonnard to reconcile his intense interest in color with the rendering of form, capturing the scenes before him with an absorbing intensity. This effect is heightened in the present work by the rapid brushstrokes which make up the background and complement the colorful and lively blooms.