Pierre Bonnard Lot n° 26

Pierre Bonnard Le jupon écossais (Le modèle au grand chapeau) 1907 Oil on canvas 58.5 x 64.5 cm Framed. Signed 'Bonnard' in brown lower right. - In fine condition. Dauberville 479 Provenance Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, acquired directly from the artist in 1907; Christie's London, Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture, 3 April 1989, lot 17; private collection, Switzerland Exhibitions Antwerp 1920, Salon Triennal d'Anvers; London 1954 (Galerie Wildenstein & Co.), Paris in the Nineties, no. 7; Paris 1961 (Musée Jacquemart-André), Collections particulières, no. 107; Paris 1966 (Galerie Maeght), La Revue Blanche Literature Bulletin de la Vie artistique, Vol. I, No. 16, 15 July 1970, p. 464 (with ill.). "It has often been said that Bonnard is the most painterly painter of his generation [...]. For he overcomes all difficulties seemingly playfully; and he always finds the means to be taken seriously, although he cultivates the wittiest and most imaginative art in the world," Gustave Coquiot wrote of Pierre Bonnard in 1914 (quoted in: Irina Fortunescu, Bonnard, Bucharest 1980, p. 10). Other contemporaries also praised the artist's humor and nonconformity. These characteristics are clearly evident in his interior scenes of the early 1900s. The artist captured situations in private spaces in which the protagonists seem barely aware of the outside observer. The female figures, absorbed in themselves and often only carelessly dressed, are rendered in a relaxed and informal manner; carelessly discarded pieces of clothing emphasize the casual intimacy of the situation. By means of unconventional pictorial means, Bonnard achieves the effect of a seemingly unintentional and spontaneously captured moment. Our work also bears witness to Bonnard's delight in playing with representational conventions. The only half-dressed woman, who has withdrawn to her private rooms to read, nevertheless could not bring herself to take off her elegant hat creation; her wandering gaze is neither on her reading nor on the viewer. The garments carelessly laid down on the armchair claim a position in the picture almost equal to hers. The tartan skirt that gives the title stands out as the most striking element in terms of colour, taking up the white, green and black of the other fabrics and adding red accents to them. The restrained colouring of the interior brings out these colouristic details all the more pointedly, creating a lively atmosphere of particular immediacy.