Pierre Bonnard - Nude in Bathtub
Pierre Bonnard, oil on canvas painting 'Nude in Bath' (c. 1938)
According to his biography from Tate's website, Pierre Bonnard was a member of an avant-garde group 'Les Nabis'. His use of different bright colours made and ornamental quality of his work made him one of the leading artists during the conversion between impressionism and modernism.
While looking at this painting without knowing the background or a style of Bonnard, we could not fully understand what masterpiece this painting truly is. There is no realism or right proportions, colours do not match and everything emerges into one confusing piece. But when we understand that the artist was an avant-gardist we can see how amazing this painting is.
His work started to slowly change when in 1909 he moved to South of France and ''compared the scenery, irradiated by a blazing sun, to the magical spectacle of One Thousand and One Nights'' as he wrote in a letter to his mother. He abandoned his old, calm and realistic style of painting for more dream-like paintings that could show the world as he saw it. He mostly did paintings that showed a normal life but tried to make them look more interesting. His work is excellent when it comes to showing interiors and sun lighting up the rooms. The person that we can see the most in his works is his wife Marthe, who was his biggest muse but at the same time a reason why he could not live a normal life, as she suffered from paranoid delusions and truly believed that bathing will help her cure her illness. Having this information creates a different view of Bonnard's art. His paintings of his wife, once beautiful and showing his love, now turns into paintings of a nightmare and struggling due to poor mental health and fear that exists constantly in a mind of a beloved woman.
Looking at this painiting I feel like I should work more on my shadows and reflections of light and how the light works in general. Also I could experiment more with the colours, because as we can see here, there is more than obvious colours mix. I can see myself creating a stylization that would be inspired by Bonnard's work. It would be colourful and a little mysterious as we can feel that there is more to this painting than what we see.
Sources:
I think stating that this looks like its by a student when you are talking about a great master of art is somewhat naïve! This is style of painting that requires much skill and if ever I saw student work as good as this I think I might fall over...as you said you obviously realised that it was a masterpiece - you have added some facts about the painting which I assume you have para phrased from your references but you do need to add citations if you have done this. Also you have not stated what you have learnt from this painting or how this would inform your won work - why are you looking at this and what have you learnt?
ReplyDelete