Pierre Bonnard

Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1928)

Jean Bloch, Paris (acquired from the above)

Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Paris

Private Collection, Paris

Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, October 29, 1951, lot 68

Sam Salz, New York

Acquired from the above on March 3, 1952

Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, Bonnard, 1933, no. 10

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Paintings from Private Collections, 1955

New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Loan Exhibitions of Paintings by Pierre Bonnard, 1956, no. 13, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Masterpieces, 1961, no. 48, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art & Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Bonnard and His Environment, 1964-65, no. 44, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Collects, 1968, no. 9

New York, Wildensten & Co., Inc., Nature as Scene: French Landscape Painting from Poussin to Bonnard, 1975, no. 3

Zurich, Kunsthaus & Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut und Stadtische Galerie, Bonnard, 1984-85, no. 99, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Normandy, 1994, illustrated in color the catalogue

Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Bonnard, 1999, no. 40, illustrated in color in the catalogue

"The Museum of Modern Art: Paintings from Private Collections," The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, XXII, no. 4, Summer 1955, illustrated p. 17

Annette Vaillant et al., Bonnard ou le bonheur de voir, Neuchatel, 1965, illustrated p. 207

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1920-1939, Paris, 1973, vol. III, no. 1127, p. 122, illustrated p. 123

The work is in excellent condition. Original canvas. Under UV light no inpainting is apparent.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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This sprawling panoramic of the idyllic countryside in the Eure Valley was the subject of several of Bonnard’s most impressive canvases of the 1910s and early 1920s. The vista is one that Bonnard encountered on his walks through Vernon, the region surrounding his house “Ma Roulotte.” The artist’s nephew Charles Terrasse described the setting, which is depicted in this monumental painting from 1922: “It stood between the river and the road that led from the village of Vernonnet to Pressagny, like a hyphen between road and river… [Bonnard] described the view from his window, or from the top of the neighboring hill: the pale green and golden fields of early summer; the riverbanks lined with poplars, elms, ash trees, and the silvery patches of willows; the majestic river itself, alive with boars, and blue in the sunshine or lead-gray in the rain” (quoted in Pierre Bonnard, Early and Late, (exhibition catalogue), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and the Denver Art Museum, 2003, p. 37).

The landscapes that Bonnard painted in the 1920s, including the present work, marked a turning point in the artist’s style. As Nicholas Watkins explains, “Bonnard’s art was always very much based on reality, but a distinction can be made between his northern and southern landscapes: whereas in the former he was more concerned with capturing the transient effects of weather, in the latter the permanence of atmosphere drew him into an alternative Mediterranean vision of a classical Golden Age. Cézanne and Renoir, rather than Monet, became his mentors in the south. The greens of his first terrace decoration at Vernon gave way to the pervasive golden light of his two main southern decorations of the 1920s, La Palme, 1926 and Paysage du Cannet, 1928” (Nicholas Watkins, op. cit., p. 156). The present work, which showcases that intense greenery of Vernon, exemplifies the best of this production before the artist headed south for the Midi.

Through his involvement with the Nabis at the beginning of the century, Bonnard had grown accustomed to using decorative stylistic elements in his paintings, such as flattened patches of color and bold contours. In his depictions of the southern French landscape, his use of this technique was extraordinarily effective in conveying the variations in the terrain. In the present work, he uses interlacing patches of color to form the mountain range, the dense forest and the field in the foreground, with the fluffy-tailed hare running in retreat.