Late Summer Idyll with Pierre Bonnard

Loving landscape and pure, bright colors as I do, naturally I am absolutely crazy about the landscapes of Pierre Bonnard. He has been variously called Neo-Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and the Nabis. Nabi was named the Hebrew word for “prophet” because Bonnard and the other artists changed the way they perceived color under the influence of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Whatever stylistic term you want to call Bonnard’s work is fine with me—I just call it plain Gorgeous. How’s that for a technical art history term?

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947, France), Woods in Summer, 1927. Oil on canvas, 26" x 23 7⁄16" (66 x 59.6 cm). The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (PC-24boars)

In 1912, Bonnard bought a home near Vernon, France, not far from an important artist friend who influenced his work greatly, Claude Monet (1840–1926). Monet lived across the river at Giverny. Bonnard lessened his time painting Paris street scenes to focus instead on landscapes. The landscapes Bonnard produced of the Seine Valley and, subsequently, in the south of France, were of two types: panoramic and those that were either fenced off or enclosed in framing windows or terrace doors. 

The landscapes of Bonnard tend to be organized in horizontal layers. His palette includes colors that are all very close to the same value so that he used color to define volumetric form or depth. While he was as passionate about gardens and landscapes as Monet, his landscapes are not meant to capture the reality of them based on the light and time of day (like the Impressionists). Rather, they depict a perception of nature (like Gauguin). This personal, emotional approach to landscape separated Nabi landscapes from the ocular emphasis of the Impressionists. He never painted landscapes outdoors, rather making energetic sketches that he later translated in the studio. There were augmented by personal memories and sometimes photographs.

Like most major art movements grounded in strict theories, Impressionism ran its course as a ground-breaking art movement between the 1870s and the 1880s. By that time, some artists rejected the limited theory of Impressionism that neglected psychological depth and emotional involvement in the work of art. The variety of styles—Symbolism, Pointillism, and Nabis—that resulted are grouped under the umbrella term Post-Impressionism. Light and color were still major concerns of the Post-Impressionists, but they rejected the momentary, detached mood of Impressionism that emphasized the technical (and optical) aspect of the work of art rather than the subject.

Post-Impressionism was transitional to the highly subjective strains of avant-garde art of the 1900s. The Post-Impressionists reinvested the subject matter with importance by using it as the focal point of studies in what the very nature of subject and composition should be. Gauguin's painting was highly influential on several groups of artists, including those now known as Symbolists. 

Symbolism was an avant-garde movement of artists who rejected the naturalist and materialist emphasis in Western art. They preferred subjects that expressed emotions or personal ideals. Gauguin’s work freed color from imitating observed nature (like the Impressionists) and distorted form for purely visually expressive purposes. Some Symbolists combined Impressionist color with symbolic subject matter.

Born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, Bonnard studied law in Paris from 1885 to 1888. He briefly practiced law in a government office. At the same time, he was taking painting classes at the School of Fine Arts and then the Academy Julian in 1889. There he met future fellow Nabi artists Maurice Denis (1870–1943), Paul Sérusier (1864–1927), and his lifelong friend Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940). By 1890, he quit law to be a painter.

Bonnard joined Les Nabis. They abandoned three-dimensional modeling in favor of flat areas of color, preferring more subjective compositions than the adherence to visual fact of Impressionism. They still maintained the brilliant palette of that movement. Japanese art influenced the Nabis, as well as the painters of the Pont-Aven art colony who, under Gauguin, divorced the color of forms from visual reality.

In 1891, Bonnard began showing in the annual Salon of Independents (artists) in Paris. He also designed lithographs for La Revue Blanche magazine. Around 1900, he was painting landscapes in the style of Impressionism and Gauguin. In 1910, he left Paris for southern France. His work gradually evolved from a subdued Impressionist palette to the full luminosity of high-key colors and fragmentation of brushstrokes that probably reflect the influence of Pointillism and Fauvism. He preferred scenes of domestic interiors and gardens that were both narrative and self-referential. In 1926, he moved to the French Riviera near Cannes, where his palette reached its zenith of bright color.

Correlations to Davis programs: Explorations in Art 2E Grade 1: 4.5; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 2: 1.4, 1.6; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 3: 5.5; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 4: 3.1, 3.2; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 6: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3; Experience Art: 4.1; The Visual Experience 4E: 8.13