PIERRE BONNARD

(1867-1947)

La plage à Arcachon

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Guy-Patrice and Floriane Dauberville. This work will be included in the forthcoming Pierre Bonnard catalogue raisonné, currently being prepared.

Provenance
Richard Doetsch-Benziger Collection, Basel (by 1956).
Hanover Gallery, London, no. G 12/20.
Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles (by 1965).
Victor Waddington, London (by September 1966).
A. E. Goldberg Collection, New York & London (acquired from the above in the late 1960s).
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Exhibited
Basel, Kunstmuseum, Sammlung Richard Doetsch-Benziger: Malerei, Zeichnung und Plastik des 19. und 20., June 9 – July 8, 1956, no. 19.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bonnard and his Environment, March 31 – May 30, 1965, cat. add. no. 11.
(possibly) London, Victor Waddington, Bonnard, 1867-1947: drawings, gouaches, watercolours, September - October 1966.


"One must feel that the painter was there, that he was aware of things in their own light, conceived from the beginning."
- Pierre Bonnard

Executed in 1925, La plage à Arcachon is a colorist composition of the modern vision of paradise and leisure in southern France. Glowing with light and warmth, bathers relax in their cabanas and stroll the sandy beaches of the deep turquoise Mediterranean. Long attracted to the significant art historical associations of southern France, Pierre Bonnard was fascinated with the intensity of light notable to the region:

"He was devout, in his own way, about landscape, ever-renascent light, and the spectrum in everything; these, indeed, were fundamentals of his lifework. To use an old formula of the philosophers, he put his faith in the "coherence of Nature and Art'; and, of course, in his experience and pictorial predilection, human nature was a part of the whole – indoors and outdoors constantly communicating" (J. Elliott quoted in Bonnard and His Environment, New York, exh. cat., p. 16).

Bonnard's technical superiority as a colorist is revealed in his earlier works created while living in northern France. By the 1920s, Bonnard was spending an increasing amount of time in the southern region of the country, and in contrast to his earlier, more realistic works, his later works contain an almost Arcadian-like sense of classicism; as beach-goers stroll, socialize and swim amongst the enticing waters of the Mediterranean.

In the present lot, Bonnard has condensed a scene of leisure into just a few horizontal bands of color, executed in gouache and watercolor. The endless blue of the ocean immediately captures the viewer's attention; its rich expressiveness reminiscent of Matisse and the Fauvists, a movement which Bonnard had ostensibly brushed aside. In the distance, the geometric and obverse rocky landscape recall the visual idiom of Paul Cézanne. With no glimpse of sky to be found, it is the sea, framed by near and distant land, that is the main focus of the composition. Rather than a large blue field in the upper portion of the composition, Bonnard structures the scenes with fields of color that stimulate visual activity, completely breaking with previous landscape tradition. The work is indeed reminiscent of the artist's time spent with Les Nabis: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a female nude or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order" (M. Denis quoted in 'The Definition of Neo-traditionalism' in Art et Critique, August 1890), so began Maurice Denis's manifesto for the symbolist group, who sought to use color to express their subject's essence. While the present lot is executed far after Bonnard's participation in the Symbolist movement, La plage à Arcachon evokes the heat, light, and vibrancy of southern France, and reveals the artist's invincible superiority throughout his oeuvre to translate his experiences, or memories, through color.

The present lot boasts impeccable provenance and exhibition history, previously belonging to Richard Doetsch-Benzige, the prestigious art collector who largely contributed to the twentieth-century collection at the Basel Kunstmuseum. In 1956, the museum exhibited numerous paintings, drawings and sculptures from his collection, including works by Paul Klee and Edouard Vuillard, as well as the present lot. The work was then exhibited in 1965 at the monumental show Bonnard and his Environment at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A joint exhibition with the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, the show surveyed over 130 paintings, drawings, and prints by Pierre Bonnard dating from 1891 to 1946. Shortly thereafter, La plage à Arcachon was acquired from British art dealer Victor Waddington by a private collector, thence remaining within the same family for more than six decades.