Pierre Bonnard: Simple Scenes in Outstanding Color

Pierre Bonnard - The Letter - 1906 - Oil on canvas - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a member of the group known as Les Nabis (prophets or seers) which was part of the broader group of Symbolists. Les Nabis painters subscribed to a doctrine of abandoning three-dimensional modeling in favor of flat color areas.

Although Bonnard was a member of this group, he was not interested in obscure Symbolist subject matter and was not a mystic. Rather, he took delight in painting the scenes of simple daily life that surrounded him. Color was an end in itself for him—a way of experiencing the world. He would sometimes go back and touch up his other paintings with a new color he’d formulated. He even once persuaded his friend, artist Édouard Vuillard, to distract one of the guards in a museum while he touched up a work that had been completed years before!

Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: “The Painter for France”

Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes - The Pastoral Life of Saint Geneviève, 1879 - Oil on canvas, triptych - Left panel: 53 x 32 1/4 in. - Center panel: 53 x 35 1/8 in. - Right Panel: 52 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. - Norton Simon Museum - Pasadena, CA (click photo for larger image)French painter Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) attempted to recreate something of the monumental Italian fresco style in his huge decorative canvases, painted in oils. He kept his images flat and pale in color—and simplified the drawing—to give something of the effect of fresco. He decorated many Town Halls and other official buildings in France.

The work featured here revisits, at reduced scale, a large mural he painted between 1874 and 1979 at the Parisian Church of Sainte Geneviève (today known as the Panthéon). 

An officially sanctioned and commercially successful artist of the late nineteenth century, Puvis de Chavannes nevertheless inspired admiration among the radical artists of the Nabi Generation. Les Nabis was a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine and graphic arts in France, in the 1890s.

Paul Ranson - Les Nabis

Paul Ranson - Christ and Buddha - c. 1890 - Oil on canvas - Height: 66.7 cm (26.26 in.), Width: 51.4 cm (20.24 in.) - Private Collection (click photo for larger image)French painter and writer Paul Ranson (1864-1909) was an important member of Les Nabis, a group of Post-Impressionists who became very important in the realm of graphic arts. The language of that movement was put forth by Ranson, and he and his wife eventually set up an academy for teaching the ideas and techniques of the Nabis. Philosophically, they believed that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an “artist's synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols.” Les Nabis paved the way for the early 20th century developments of abstract and non-representational art. 

Maurice Denis: Where the Symbolists and Les Nabis Meet

Maurice Denis - The Muses in the Sacred Wood, 1893, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay at Paris (click photo for larger image)French painter and writer Maurice Denis (1870-1943) was a member of both the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. (Nabis means prophet and refers to new forms of expression in art.) His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.

Denis was among the first artists to insist on the flatness of the picture plane, one of the great starting points for modernism, in the visual arts. In a famous proposal for the definition of painting, offered in 1890, he stated: "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."

In 1898, he produced a theory of creation that found the source for art in the character of the painter: "That which creates a work of art is the power and the will of the artist." Denis was an important precursor of abstract art, although he was far more interested in finding the divine in the everyday. Many of his later works are devotional images.

Les Nabis: The Prophets

Paul Sérusier (French, 1863-1927), The Talisman, 1888, oil on wood panel (cigar box lid), 10 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches (27 x 21.5 cm), Musée d'Orsay, Paris. This painting is generally considered the first Nabis work.An avant-garde group of French painters and poets, active during 1888-99, were persuaded to reject naturalistic representation and, instead, to paint in flat areas of pure color. That advice came from the Post-Impressionist art Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903) and was given to the French painter, Paul Sérusier (1863-1927). This group called themselves “Les Nabis” from the Hebrew word Nebiim, meaning "prophets."  Also influenced by the Symbolist movement, the Nabis felt that a painting should not imitate reality but parallel nature, creating a world unto itself. They stressed the importance of subjective and sometimes mystical perceptions. Along with painting, they worked in theater design, book illustration, posters and stained glass. Piérre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) and Edouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940) were important painters in the group, along with Aristide Maillol (French, 1861-1944), Maurice Denis (French, 1870-1943), Paul Ranson (French, 1864-1909), Ker-Xavier Roussel (French, 1867-1944), Félix Vallatton (French, 1865-1925), Henri-Gabriel Ibels (French, 1867-1936), Jozsef Rippl-Ronai (French, 1867-1944), and Sérusier.