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Provenance: Jos Hessel, Paris.
Daniel Varenne, Paris.
Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zürich (acquired in 1971).
Mr. and Mrs. Neison Harris, Chicago (acquired from the above, 10 April 1974).
By descent from the above to the present owner.
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Exhibited: Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou; Washington, D.C., Phillips Collection; and Dallas Museum of Art, Bonnard: The Late Paintings, February-November 1984, p. 190, no. 42 (illustrated in color, p. 191; dated 1930-1932).
London, Tate Gallery; and New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Bonnard, February-October 1998, p. 172, no. 60 (illustrated in color, p. 173; dated circa 1930-1932).
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Literature: J. and H. Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1920-1939, Paris, 1973, vol. III, page 174, no. 1206 (illustrated; dated circa 1923).
M. Feilchenfeldt, 25 Jahre Feilchenfeldt in Zürich, 1948-1973, Zurich, 1973, no. 24 (illustrated in color).
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Notes: Property from a Private American Collection
In 1912, Bonnard purchased a modest, two-story residence at Vernonnet, a picturesque hamlet in the valley of the Seine not far from Giverny. Following his move, the artist increasingly turned for his subject matter to the rooms in which he lived, painting intimate still-life and interior compositions. Far from fleeting impressions, these paintings are complex and searching meditations on the people, places, and things that comprised the artist's environment. As he explained, "The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world--the picture--which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., London, 1998, p. 9). Likewise, Nicholas Watkins writes about Bonnard's work from this period, "Paintings begun in the memory of a visual experience were transformed through color into a rich, immensely varied surface made up of a tapestry of brushstrokes, glazes, scumbles, impasto, highlights, and pentimenti. Objects were not so much painted as felt into shape within the surface over a long period. 'The principal subject is the surface,' Bonnard maintained, 'which has its color, its laws over and above those of objects. It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting'" (Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 171).
The present canvas is one of the largest and most complex examples from a series of still-lifes that Bonnard painted at Vernonnet, depicting a voluptuous assortment of foodstuffs arranged on a white tablecloth (fig. 1). A tall compotier overflowing with apples, oranges, and bananas anchors the center of the composition, surrounded by six painted ceramic platters filled with cherries and other vibrantly colored delicacies. The glossy finish of the dishes and the velvety surfaces of the fruit create an intricate dialogue of reflections, transforming the chalky white tablecloth into a subtly variegated tapestry of mauve, blue, pink, orange, and yellow. The tabletop tilts precipitously forward, lending the whole ensemble an ethereal, floating quality. The lower area of the composition is framed by a cat's face, peering into the scene inquisitively at the left, and by the head of "Pouce", one of Bonnard's beloved dachshunds, cropped at the nose. At the top of the canvas is a narrow, horizontal band of decoratively patterned wallpaper, which echoes the ardently sensuous colors of the array of edibles. In several paintings from the same period, Bonnard positioned the white expanse of tabletop within a clearly defined interior setting, viewing it either head-on (fig. 2) or from above (fig. 3). In the present version, however, he has stripped away all incidental décor, intensifying the expressive qualities of the still-life objects themselves. Charles Sterling has written, "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" (in Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981, p. 124).
A particularly noteworthy feature of the present picture is its masterful depiction of light. The front left corner of the scene is awash in bright sunlight, streaming in through an unseen window, while the back right portion of the canvas swims in transparent blue shadows. Bonnard spoke of the importance of light to his art, telling a visitor to his studio in 1941, "It is enough for the painter if windows are sufficiently large to allow the full radiance of daylight to penetrate, like lightning, so that all its nuances can strike everything it happens to encounter" (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., London, 1998, p. 23). A photograph of the artist's studio from around the same time shows a group of small, creased sheets of silver paper tacked to the wall alongside several reproductions of the artist's favorite paintings. When Pierre Courthion asked Bonnard what function "those papers with shimmering colors" served, the artist replied that they allowed him to study the effects of light: "They help me to find my sparkles [mes brillants]" (quoted in ibid., p. 43). Discussing the function of light in Bonnard's mature work, Watkins comments, "From the evidence of his paintings, Bonnard was fully aware of the complex issues involved in the representation of light. Light, in combination with color, becomes a key factor in the organization of a painting. Objects are broken up by light in patterns of color across the surface, and the dialogue between object and color, color and pattern, pattern and surface, surface and pictorial depth becomes part of the content of a painting" (op. cit., p. 171).
Compotiers et assiettes de fruits also reveals Bonnard's studied assimilation of a host of artistic influences. The tipped-up tabletop, for instance, is a key compositional device in Cézanne's celebrated still-lifes of the 1880s and 1890s, as well as in the proto-Cubist compositions of Picasso and Braque from 1908-1909. In contrast, the vivid color, painterly brushwork, and decorative patterning of the painting reflect Bonnard's frequent correspondence about aesthetic issues with his close friend, Henri Matisse. In 1912, Bonnard purchased Matisse's brilliantly colored Fauve canvas, La fenêtre ouverte à Collioure, which he kept for the remainder of his life. The two painters also exchanged letters about the importance of color: "I agree with you," Bonnard wrote Matisse in 1935, "that the painter's only solid 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 Late, exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2002, p. 44).
Another critical source of inspiration for the present painting is Japanese graphic art. Bonnard first encountered East Asian woodblock prints at the dealer Siegfried Bing's sweeping survey of the medium at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1890. The exhibition made an enormous impression on the young artist, who began searching Parisian department stores for examples of Japanese art: "There for the price of just one or two pennies, I found crépons and rice papers in astonishing colors. I covered the walls of my room with them" (quoted in ibid., p. 190). He later identified these prints as a key source for the vivid palette of his own art: "It was through contact with these popular images," he explained, "that I realized that color could express anything, with no need for relief or modeling. It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values" (quoted in ibid., p. 202). The unconventional perspective of the present painting--in particular, its steep viewpoint and unexpected cropping--may also derive from East Asian imagery. Commenting on the influence of Japanese art in Bonnard's work after 1912, Ursula Perucchi-Petri has written, "Bonnard's late paintings blossom into freely executed color compositions that follow no law but their own. The intricately woven tapestry of color with its warp and weft of figures and objects draws proximity and distance together in a vibrant fabric. This lends the space a floating aspect, which is a continuation, albeit in another form, of the floating world inspired by East Asian art in his early works" (ibid., p. 202).
(fig. 1) Pierre Bonnard, Le compotier (La table garnie), 1924. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. BARCODE 23661806
(fig. 2) Pierre Bonnard, Nature morte à la levrette, circa 1923. Sale, Christie's, New York, 12 May 1999, lot 38. BARCODE 23661813
(fig. 3) Pierre Bonnard, La table, 1925. Tate Gallery, London. BARCODE 23661820
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