Pierre Bonnard's painting critical response
Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nude in Bathtub (c 1938-41), oil on canvas, 121.9 x 151.1 cm, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. The Athenaeum.Pierre Bonnard is famous for his use of colour and how well he was creating lights and shadows in his art. Bonnard was a member of Les Nabis which was a group of artists creating at that time. These people were seeing themselves as modern artists and liked bold and simplified style of painting. In his early career he was painting a lot of domestic paintings including his friends and family at usual activities of the day. However, painter is the most known for his nudes. He was mainly drawing his wife and muse - Maria Boursin, often in the bathtub because of her daily shower routine she had to go through. It quickly became their every day activity so Pierre started to document some of his wife's bath sessions.
Bonnard rarely painted live paintings. He was mostly sketching the outline of the idea and then finishing the piece in his studio. This allowed him to focus more on different aspects of his work than artist normally do. Because of this practice his colour palette differ from other artist's and his style also focuses on other aspects of the characters instead of being realistic and represent life one to one.
Bonnard's work was criticised by Picasso in private conversation where Matisse was admiring his paintings. Even now, Bonnard's art generates opinions that are splitted into two completely different directions.
Artist died on 26 January 1942 in his villa at La Cannet.
'Nude in bathtub' by Pierre Bonnard is painted with the mix of warm and cold colours. Artist is putting a lot of effort into creating lights and shadows with the use of different colours instead of darker and lighter tones. The character presented while taking bath is Bonnard's wife and muse Maria. Artist did not paint her face with much details and proportions of her body is also changed for the purpose of achieving certain vision that artist had at that time. Even though artist is hanging some aspects of the real world while drawing we can read his interpretations of the objects and distinguish water in the bath tub from the Maria's body. Walls in the bathroom on the Bonnard's painting are also not straight lines but curves that create floor tiles in many colours.
As I am looking at this painting I can feel the time that is not rushing but flowing slowly and giving the woman time to enjoy her bath. I can see how relaxing this time is for her and how well Pierre caught it in just one frame to express the atmosphere with his colourful style of painting. In my opinion this piece has almost dream like feel to it and shows only perfect side of this situation.
sources:
Some good research and commentary from yourself here - now how do you relate this to your own work - you should be able to relate this in terms of colour, light etc
ReplyDelete