.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘His friends crossed the whole history of art to express themselves; he simply went to his window without even crossing the street. They stuffed themselves with lofty thoughts, Bonnard looked at all ideology with horror. Some of them went searching for the Middle Ages in Brittany, others travelled in Italy, he spoke in French to the wandering dogs of the boulevards, to the emaciated horses, to frail Parisian women and it is him whom we listen to’ (J. de Laprade, quoted in Bonnard, exh. cat., Martigny, 1999, p. 60).
Capturing a quintessentially Parisian scene in 1904, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) belongs to a series of cityscapes Pierre Bonnard executed in the early 1900s. At the time, the artist was living in rue Douais, a street away from the Moulin Rouge and the bustling nightlife of Pigalle. The area provided a profound source of inspiration for Bonnard, who painted the Place and Boulevard de Clichy a number of times. Portrayed as though glimpsed from a window, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) expresses Bonnard’s fascination for the spectacle of modern life that the streets of Paris offered at the beginning of the century.
Depicting a rainy day on a Parisian boulevard, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) illustrates Bonnard’s talent in capturing evocative light effects and in turning seemingly simple, daily scenes into intricate, dynamic compositions. The painting is centred on the reflection of artificial light on the wet pavement, reverberating like a luminous mirror in the middle of the wintry greys and icy blues of the city. While a few black silhouettes, tilted against the wind and rain, hustle in the foreground, the bright light in the centre of the composition evokes the warmth and energy of a café, which is echoed in a few windows above and beyond.
To Bonnard, scenes of modern life as depicted in Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) constituted a fascinating, exciting subject. Since Charles Baudelaire had celebrated the modern artist as a flâneur in his essay Le peintre de la vie moderne in 1863, urban life had become a favourite subject among the Parisian Avant-garde. Bonnard himself was a passionate flâneur: preceding breakfast, his day would start with a stroll through Paris (U. Perucchi-Petri, ‘Le paysage des grandes villes: Rues, places et jardins publics’, pp. 75-87, in Nabis 1888-1900, exh. cat., Paris, 1994, p. 75). In 1899, the artist had completed a series of lithographs on the theme of Parisian life for Ambroise Vollard, who published them under the title Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris. Bonnard had found this experience invaluable. Bonnard explained: ‘Making colour lithographs taught me a great deal about painting. When one is forced to study the relationships between tones, playing with only four or five different colours that can be superimposed and juxtaposed one discovers many things’ (quoted in A. Terrasse, Pierre Bonnard, Paris, 1967, p. 44). Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) may owe something to Bonnard’s experience in lithographs: surrounded by the muted tones of the grey city, the brilliance of the light elicits an all the more vibrant, enthralling spell.
Capturing a quintessentially Parisian scene in 1904, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) belongs to a series of cityscapes Pierre Bonnard executed in the early 1900s. At the time, the artist was living in rue Douais, a street away from the Moulin Rouge and the bustling nightlife of Pigalle. The area provided a profound source of inspiration for Bonnard, who painted the Place and Boulevard de Clichy a number of times. Portrayed as though glimpsed from a window, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) expresses Bonnard’s fascination for the spectacle of modern life that the streets of Paris offered at the beginning of the century.
Depicting a rainy day on a Parisian boulevard, Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) illustrates Bonnard’s talent in capturing evocative light effects and in turning seemingly simple, daily scenes into intricate, dynamic compositions. The painting is centred on the reflection of artificial light on the wet pavement, reverberating like a luminous mirror in the middle of the wintry greys and icy blues of the city. While a few black silhouettes, tilted against the wind and rain, hustle in the foreground, the bright light in the centre of the composition evokes the warmth and energy of a café, which is echoed in a few windows above and beyond.
To Bonnard, scenes of modern life as depicted in Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) constituted a fascinating, exciting subject. Since Charles Baudelaire had celebrated the modern artist as a flâneur in his essay Le peintre de la vie moderne in 1863, urban life had become a favourite subject among the Parisian Avant-garde. Bonnard himself was a passionate flâneur: preceding breakfast, his day would start with a stroll through Paris (U. Perucchi-Petri, ‘Le paysage des grandes villes: Rues, places et jardins publics’, pp. 75-87, in Nabis 1888-1900, exh. cat., Paris, 1994, p. 75). In 1899, the artist had completed a series of lithographs on the theme of Parisian life for Ambroise Vollard, who published them under the title Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris. Bonnard had found this experience invaluable. Bonnard explained: ‘Making colour lithographs taught me a great deal about painting. When one is forced to study the relationships between tones, playing with only four or five different colours that can be superimposed and juxtaposed one discovers many things’ (quoted in A. Terrasse, Pierre Bonnard, Paris, 1967, p. 44). Paysage parisien (Boulevard de Clichy) may owe something to Bonnard’s experience in lithographs: surrounded by the muted tones of the grey city, the brilliance of the light elicits an all the more vibrant, enthralling spell.