Garden with a Small Bridge (Jardin au Petit Pont)
Pierre BONNARD
(French, 1867-1947)
Garden with a Small Bridge (Jardin au Petit Pont)
Date1937
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionsoverall: 39 × 48 7/8 in. (99.1 × 124.1 cm)
frame: 49 3/4 × 59 3/4 × 3 3/4 in. (126.4 × 151.8 × 9.5 cm)
crate: 69 × 75 × 19 in. (175.3 × 190.5 × 48.3 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Bequest of Wright S. Ludington
Object number1993.1.1
Subject(s)
- garden
- landscape
- dog
Collection
- 20th century French
On View
Not on viewCollections
Label TextBonnard was a member of the group known as the Nabis. Along with Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, these younger artists embraced the example afforded by their ringleader, Paul Gauguin, who wielded vivid hues applied in flat planes of color with strong contouring lines, freed from normative conventions of description. By the time that Bonnard executed this tapestry of color, he had fully assimilated the lessons of Impressionism, with its adaptation of high-keyed colors and a non-hierarchical flattening of space derived from Japanese woodblock prints. However, unlike the Impressionists, Bonnard’s art was invested in experience as colored by recollection, rather than the instantaneity of direct perception. This landscape is not a record of a specific location, but a composite of several elements of parks and gardens in Le Cannet, the Riviera town where he had lived since the 1920s. Bonnard’s lack of concern with spatial coherence makes it difficult to locate the “small bridge” specified by the title, though it could be articulated by the curved forms outlined in black at the composition’s lower right corner. Thinly painted in jewel-like tones, as if using oil to accomplish the translucency of watercolor, the image has the shimmering ambiguity of a dream.
