Earthly Paradise

1916 · Art Institute, Chicago

other

Following a period spent producing Parisian scenes in the style of Édouard Vuillard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard virtually reinvented his art around 1905. The artist's new emphasis on large-scale compositions, bold forms, and brilliant colours shows his awareness of the work of his contemporaries Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as does his focus on Arcadian landscapes, a theme he had not previously explored. Part of a series of four canvases painted for his dealers, Josse and Gaston Bernheim, between 1916 and 1920, Earthly Paradise demonstrates Bonnard's new, daring investigations of light, colour, and space.

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About the Artist

Pierre Bonnard

1867 – 1947

French painter, lithographer and designer. He is known particularly for the decorative qualities of his paintings and his individual use of colour. Initially, he studied law, but from 1886 he also attended the Acadmie Julian in Paris and subsequently the coe des Beaux-Arts. In 1889, he and his friends Maurice Denis, Paul Srusier, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Edouard Vuillard joined Paul Gauguin 's Nabis group of artists, whose works are generally grouped under Symbolism. After his first great success as an artist (a poster for France-Champagne in 1890), Bonnard gave up the law. From 1910, he lived alternately in various cities (mainly Paris) and rural regions of France (Dauphin, Normandy), as the subject matter of his pictures shows. In his painting, which comprises portraits, landscapes and still-lifes, Bonnard went back to Impressionism, which he extended by constructing his pictures in a completely new way and adopting a different palette. As a member of the Nabis group, Bonnard designed sets, costumes, and program vignettes for sundry French theatres and did illustrations for several periodicals, including La Revue Blanche. His lithographical works strongly influenced modern book graphics.

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