Bonnard and the Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch

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      Around the same time Bonnard painted his Man and Woman (1900, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), a work with a psychological dramatism quite unexpected for the artist. The psychological aspect of the work is not a piece of fiction or illustration of the then fashionable subject of the conflict between the sexes; it is a self-portrait of the artist with Marthe, his constant companion and model, in every respect a deeply personal work. Of course, this painting is not typical of Bonnard: there is no irony here; we are witnessing a dramatic episode easily identified as biographical. Both this work and the portrait of the Terrasse family are worthy of attention, because they show Bonnard not only as a subtle painter but also as a very complex personality. Meeting Marthe brought many changes to Bonnard’s life. This girl, who had come to Paris in search of work and a new life, did not belong to the same social milieu as Bonnard, and in comparison with him and his friends she was practically uneducated. Yet she became the artist’s muse. In her Bonnard found an inexhaustible source of inspiration. She did not sit specially for him, and “there was no need for this because she was constantly with him. Her movements flowed out of one another with a naturalness that can be neither learnt nor forgotten. Some of Bonnard’s most brilliant pictures were prompted by some pose of her body which he had noticed.”[10] The presence of Marthe, the mistress of the house, is unexpectedly revealed in Mirror in the Dressing-Room, now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. In the mirror we can see the reflection of a small room in which Marthe is drinking coffee, completely ignoring the model who is in the act of removing her clothes. They say that it was Bonnard’s wife who compelled him to lead a secluded life, striving by one means or another to keep him away from his friends and from Paris. With the years she indeed became an intolerable person. But there is no evidence that Bonnard ever complained or expressed dissatisfaction. He was a patient man, and his love was a wise one. Perhaps he lacked firmness of character. “He was always afraid of her, her tactless behaviour,” Matisse recalled. “She tried to cut him off from everyone. True, she received me, saying, ‘Oh, Matisse is only concerned with his painting.’ I suppose she thought I wasn’t dangerous.”[11] Bonnard’s friends were definitely convinced that he was under Marthe’s thumb. But in actual fact he submitted himself to the imperatives of his art and Marthe never infringed upon them. He found it convenient to live in rural solitude and devote all his time to his work. After the First World War, if he visited Paris at all, he never spent more than two months in any year in the capital. “I go there to see what’s happening, to compare my painting with that of other artists. In Paris I am a critic, I can’t work there. There is too much noise, too many distractions. I know that other artists become accustomed to that kind of life. I find it difficult.”[12] Bonnard had indeed changed; he seemed to have forgotten what fascination the rush and bustle of Paris had once held for him. Bonnard visited many foreign countries, but his travels left no noticeable traces in his art, which had grown on French soil, in a French atmosphere. Paris and the Ile-de-France, Normandy, the Dauphiné, and the Côte d’Azur were places where Bonnard worked. In summer he usually went to some little town or village in one of these French provinces. He was particularly fond of Vernon and Le Cannet. Bonnard was an artist of unusual integrity. A scholar attempting to divide his work into periods would find himself faced with a formidable СКАЧАТЬ