Promenade à Paris, circa 1911
Oil on canvas, estate stamp in the lower left corner.
40 x 60 cm
Provenance :
Pierre and Marie-Françoise Vernon Collection
Bibliography :
Dauberville Jean and Henry, Bonnard, Vol. IV, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, 1974, reproduced on p. 312 under no. 01992.
Exhibitions :
Pierre Bonnard, A. Tooth & Sons, London, June 17-July 12, 1969, reproduced in the exhibition catalog under no. 8.
Matisse e Bonnard. Viva la pittura!, Rome, 2006, reproduced in the exhibition catalog (ed. Skira) on p. 340 under no. 125.
Bonnard, Le Cannet, une évidence, Musée Bonnard, Le Cannet, 2020, reproduced in the exhibition catalog on p. 42.
Certificate of authenticity issued by Pierre Vernon.
The construction of this work by Pierre Bonnard recalls that the artist was also a photographer, experimenting with bold and unconventional framing.
While his painting may seem to capture the fleeting moment, it has nothing in common with the realistic, still tentative photography of the early twentieth century. Composed entirely of color and sensation, it builds a fragile world of subtle harmony.
Just before embracing the South—before unleashing the Mediterranean light into bursts of color across his canvases—Bonnard explored a more subdued, inward sensuality in the early 1910s, at a time when he was working in a studio in Paris, not far from the avenue depicted here. The “very Japonist Nabi,” as his companions from the group of his youth used to call him, knew how to make color whisper on the canvas, how to suggest the secrecy of a letter.
On one side of the painting, cool tones—juxtaposed blues and violets—stand in contrast to the russet hues of this autumnal Parisian avenue. From this interplay emerges, in the foreground, beneath a hat bathed in light like a reinvented halo, the bowed face of a reader. Her eyes are hidden, absorbed in her reading. Although she has removed her gloves, she likely no longer feels the sharp chill of this November afternoon…
Elegant figures glide through the landscape; yet they linger—together with this heroine in her hat—on our retina and in our memory, like accomplices to a shared intimacy, lasting only as long as the reading of a love letter.
This painting, unseen on the art market since the 1960s, has been shown in several museum exhibitions, most recently in 2020 at the Musée Bonnard in Le Cannet, dedicated to the artist.