I have to admit, and not for the first time in my life, that it is distinctly possible that I do not know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, I am compelled to recognise that I do not understand Pierre Bonnard.
I believe that there has not been a major exhibition of his work in the UK since 1966, so that the decision of the Tate Modern to put on a large show of his painting has excited a good deal of attention in this country. Having the opportunity to spend two days in London during the past week I decided that I had to take the opportunity to fill what I acknowledged to be a significant gap in my knowledge of art history. The experience has left me profoundly mystified. Why has he been so highly esteemed? I read that he is regarded as “the most important ‘pure’ painter of his generation” (he died in 1947) and compared as a colourist to figures such as the great Venetians and Delacroix. What am I missing?
Of course, I have to acknowledge that the review of his work we have been offered at the Tate is a very selective coverage, missing entirely his contribution to stage and poster design, for example, as well as his achievements as an illustrator. The claims that are being made on his behalf, however, go well beyond these fields. Just what am I failing to see?
The programme for the Tate show commends Bonnard as the painter of the “snatched moment” of domestic routine, and I can certainly see this in his selection of casual and intimate details of daily routine and his domestic setting. (Young Women in the Garden is a good illustration of this.) Elsewhere he has been described as an intimiste. What defeats me, however, is his reputation as a painter. His many nude studies of his wife Marthe seem to me to lack the passionate engagement with the relationship between form and colour that characterises the depiction of similar motifs by Degas. Bonnard is indeed somebody who gives primacy to colour, over form, and yet this is almost invariably colour without a sense of light, as appears far too often in his landscapes. His human subjects often (to my mind) appear to be poorly observed, lacking in motivation, and sometimes not convincingly located in space.
I am encouraged to think that my difficulties with Bonnard are not entirely idiosyncratic. The review of the exhibition by Alice Sprawls (London Review of Books, 21 March 2019) clearly also conveys its author’s reservations. Nevertheless, I have to recognise that my impressions do seem to be out of line with critical orthodoxy, and I would welcome pointers which could enable me to see what at the moment I cannot see. Comment would be very welcome.