Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard was born on October 3, 1867, in Fontenay-aux-Roses into a lower middle-class family, son of Eugène Bonnard, chief clerk at the Ministry of War, and Élisabeth Mertzdorff. Passionate about drawing since childhood, he nevertheless pursued law studies and obtained his degree in 1888, even taking the lawyer’s oath in 1889 before definitively turning to art. He studied at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he met Édouard Vuillard and participated in founding the Post-Impressionist group the Nabis, receiving the nickname “Nabi japonard” (very Japanese Nabi) due to his fascination with Japanese prints. Revering the Impressionists, he nevertheless charted his own personal path away from the subsequent avant-gardes—Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism—and achieved success from the turn of the century. A great traveler in love with nature, he divided his life between Paris, Normandy, and the South of France, settling in 1927 in Le Cannet with Marthe, his companion and model for nearly fifty years. A painter, decorator, illustrator, and lithographer, he favored classical genres—landscape, still life, portrait, and female nude—in interior scenes drawn from daily life. He died on January 23, 1947, in Le Cannet.

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