The city as theatre
Bonnard saw the vibrant French capital as a theatre of everyday life – a spectacle for the passer-by. He was an aficionado of modern French drama and designed stage sets and programmes for avant-garde theatres. The buildings and streets along which the Parisians move in Bonnard’s prints can also be read as living stage sets.
Pierre Bonnard, Boulevard, 1899
Japanese colours
Bonnard’s friends called him ‘the very Japanese Nabi’. He later said of a visit to an exhibition of Japanese prints:
‘It was through contact with these popular images that I realized that colour could express anything, with no need for relief or modelling.’
His love of Japanese printmaking inspired him to create his own colour lithographs with bright expanses of colour and decorative lines.
Pierre Bonnard, Family Scene (Scène de famille), 1893
Pierre Bonnard, In the Street (Dans la rue), 1900
Further reading
- Francis Bouvet, Bonnard. The Complete Graphic Work, Paris 1981
- Colta Ives, Helen Giambruni en Sasha M. Newman, Pierre Bonnard. The Graphic Art, New York 1990
- Patricia Eckert Boyer, The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde, New Brunswick 1988
- Claire Frèches-Thory en Antoine Terrasse, The Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard and Their Circle, Paris 1990