Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory

Pierre Bonnard: The Garden 1936 Museé d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

Pierre Bonnard (1867 – 1947) was described by critics in his native France as a ‘painter of happiness’. In the 1930s, a time of economic slump and political extremism, his works were more popular that those of Picasso and Matisse. And visiting this exhibition on a cold, grey winter day, you can understand why. The glorious colours of his landscapes and domestic interiors give an immediate boost to the spirit.

Pierre Bonnard 1941 by Andre Ostier National Gallery of Australia, ©Andre Ostier Estate

Born into a comfortably-off middle class family, the early phase of his artistic career was with a Paris group of young rebels, the Nabis (Prophets), whose bold, simplified style was inspired by Gauguin. His decorative and fashionable work brought success. But gradually, he developed a painting style that was emphatically his own. Around 1912, in his mid-forties, he began to explore the possibilities of colour in a very individual way, perhaps influenced by the vivid colours used by the Fauves (Wild Animals) - painters such as Matisse and Derain. In Dining Room in the Country (below) light pours through the doorway while the woman’s red top extends the interior colouring out into the garden.

Pierre Bonnard: Dining Room in the Country 1913. Minneapolis Institute of Art

Unlike the earlier Impressionists, he preferred to work indoors, from memory, seeking to capture the spirit of the moment, and then working and reworking the result to rediscover the original experience and bring it into the present without losing its place in the past. The exhibition focuses on his mature work, displaying some 100 paintings, suffused with colour and often with unconventional angles (below).

Pierre Bonnard: Coffee, 1915. Tate

In 1911 he bought his first car, and with his lover, model and later wife, Marthe de Méligny, explored the countryside around Paris and visited southern France, where he revelled in the intense light. In 1916 they bought a house in the village of Le Cannet, just outside Cannes, and divided their time between winters there, and summers in their house in Normandy. His paintings express moments lost in time – the view from a window, an empty room at the end of a meal, a path through the garden. Marthe also features in many of his works. She suffered from various illnesses throughout her life, treating these with what was then called hydrotherapy, and is most frequently portrayed in a bath.

Pierre Bonnard: Nude in the Bath 1936. Museé d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

Although Bonnard didn’t fight in World War I, in 1917 he captured the legacy of the terrible struggle along the Somme in A Village in Ruins (below). Between a despairing seated figure on the right and French troops on the left, you can see a Red Cross vehicle.

Pierre Bonnard: A Village in Ruins near Ham. Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris

Hanging beside it is another painting, done around the same time. In Summer (below) he imagines a lush landscape of safety and ease, perhaps offering a vision of the peace that all hoped was to come.

Pierre Bonnard: Summer 1917. Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght, Saint-Paul-France

Bonnard would work on several paintings at a time, the canvases just pinned to his walls so they could be rolled up and easily transported as he travelled around. One room of the exhibition seeks to replicate this (below). The five paintings removed from their frames give a clear idea of his working methods - you can see how he painted very close to the edge of the canvas, sometimes putting in a line around the edge to show where the frame would be.

With World War II looming, he and Marthe sold the house in Normandy and retreated to Le Cannet. It was a time when restrictions were placed on movement, and shortages had artists borrowing paints and other materials from each other. Marthe died of a heart attack in 1942. “You can’t imagine my grief,” Bonnard told his friend Matisse. His world shrank, forcing him to explore the local area more closely. His approach became more abstract, enriching colour while reducing details in his paintings.

Pierre Bonnard, The Studio with Mimosas, 1939-46, Musee National d'art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris

One of the most powerful works from this final period is The Studio with Mimosa. In a characteristic interplay between interior and exterior, the brilliant yellows of mimosa blossom can be seen through the studio window. 

It’s 20 years since the last Bonnard exhibition in London, so it’s fitting that this event opens with Young Women in the Garden, from 1921 - 23. Typically, he then put it aside and what we see is his final version, completed just over 20 years later.

The CC Land Exhibition Pierre Bonnard, Tate Modern, to May 6, 2019. £18 (concessions available).

Gainsborough's Family Album

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly. Thomas Gainsborough, c. National Gallery.

Today, surrounded by images of family and friends, it’s easy to forget how rare it was for people in the 18^th c to have any form of likeness of those close to them. Royalty and the rich could commission portraits for posterity, but the majority of ordinary people went unrecorded. This is what makes the paintings in the National Portrait Gallery’s latest exhibition so unusual – and special. Gainsborough’s Family Album brings together for the very first time virtually all of the artist’s images of himself and his extended family across the years – some 50 in all. The curators have gathered them from far and near – one was rediscovered in private hands just weeks ago, having last been seen in public in 1882. We see affectionate portrayals of his daughters Margaret and Mary as they grow from little girls chasing a butterfly, to their transformation into young ladies, sumptuously dressed and ready to take their places in society. His wife, also Margaret, is there, growing greyer over the years, and his brother John, known as Scheming Jack because of his many failed money-making schemes, also puts in an appearance, along with the family’s dogs.

Tristram and Fox, by Thomas Gainsborough, Image c.Tate London

Thomas Gainsborough (1727 – 88) was one of Britain’s most successful eighteenth century portraitists, a favourite of royalty,  but in his private correspondence he lamented the need to earn his living from an endless parade of ‘damn’d Faces’ when he’d have preferred to concentrate on landscapes. However, the faces were where the money was. His father, a Suffolk clothes merchant, had been forced into bankruptcy, and had to be rescued by a wealthy nephew. The shadow of this must have played a part in young Thomas’s pursuit of fame and fortune. He began young. Having shown some artistic talent, he was apprenticed when he was 13 to an illustrator in London. By the unusually early age of 16 he set up his own studio in Hatton Garden, and three years later met and married Margaret Burr, the illegitimate daughter of Henry, 3^rd Duke of Beaufort, whose family gave her an annuity of £200 for the rest of her life. He celebrates his new family in a rural setting with their first child, who died while young.

The Artist with his Wife Margaret and Eldest Daughter Mary, Thomas Gainsborough,c National Gallery, London

The couple returned to Sudbury where two more daughters were born. Gainsborough quickly realised that there were not enough potential customers for his paintings in the little town, and in 1752 the family moved to nearby Ipswich, where he developed a moderately successful practice. He experimented artistically, using the family as subjects.

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough with a Cat c.National Gallery, London

 By 1858 he was running out of potential clients, so spent a trial season in fashionable Bath. The following year he settled there with his family, leasing a house in a stylish part of town. This was large enough to accommodate other members of his extended family, including his widowed sister, Mary Gibbon, who set up a millinery shop in part of the building. It also served as a showroom. Prospective customers could see examples of his work on the walls, including portraits of the artist and his wife Margaret (who acted as his business manager), enabling them to compare art with life. Work prospered and he took on his one and only apprentice, his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, whom he also painted, looking as if he’d just stepped out of the court of Charles I.

Gainsborough Dupont, the Artist's Nephew, by Thomas Gainsborough Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)

But a serious illness reminded him of life’s precariousness. He arranged for his daughters to have art lessons, not just as a ladylike accomplishment, but to enable them to earn a living if necessary. He captured them practising their drawing, although it seems none of their work survived.

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, at their Drawing by Gainsborough c Worcester Art Museum

Having been a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768, Gainsborough’s final move was to London in 1774, and a magnificent new residence at Schomberg House in Pall Mall. Here he mixed with the highest in the land – not bad for a provincial painter from Sudbury. This formal, full-length portrait of his girls greeted visitors – proof that they, and their family, had arrived.

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, by Gainsborough. Private Collection

His wife, Margaret, was enjoying their new life as well. She's shown dressed in the very height of fashion, wearing an elaborate lace cap and a fur-lined wrap.

Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Wife, by Gainsborough. Courtauld Gallery, London

By now it was time for her daughters to marry, and Mary fell in love with an oboist, Johann Christian Fischer, of whom her father apparently didn't approve. The marriage lasted a matter of months. Mary was having mental health problems, and she moved in with Margaret, who cared for her for the rest of her life. The grand double portrait is the only one of the family paintings to have been completely finished by Gainsborough. As we see in the exhibition, with these he usually concentrated on the face, hands, and garments, and filled in the background with a sketchier treatment. It may have been his way of saying these were private, and not for sale, but perhaps could also reflect the pressure put upon him to get back to the money-making business of commissioned portrait painting. (The freer brush strokes crept into some of these paintings as well, prompting complaints from clients.)

Self-portrait by Gainsborough 1758 - 59 c. National Portrait Gallery

In 1788 he realised he was suffering from terminal cancer, and began to put his affairs in order. He wrote to his life-long rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds, inviting him to visit, and confided his great regret of dying before, as he saw it, his talents had reached their full potential. Wishing to control his posthumous image, he identified the self portrait he wished to have engraved as his memorial, and asked posterity to judge him by the standards of the artist he most revered, Sir Anthony van Dyck.  He died with an earlier, unfinished painting of his nephew on an easel by his bed, in the hope that he would be his artistic heir. Sadly, Dupont outlived his uncle by just a decade.

Gainsborough Dupont, the Artist's Nephew, c.Tate, London

Gainsborough's Family Album is at the National Portrait Gallery until Feb 3 2019. £12.50 – £16.00