With the Kimbell Art Museum’s first exhibition of the works of French painter Pierre Bonnard opening on Sunday (Nov. 5), museum officials provided members of the media a tour of an extraordinary collection of paintings that have seldom been displayed together.
Bonnard’s Worlds brings together 70 paintings by Bonnard (1867-1947) from museums and private collections across the country and around the world. It is the first major exhibition of Bonnard’s works in Texas in 40 years.
The exhibit offers a glimpse into Bonnard’s life, from public places in Paris to the private spaces of his gardens and homes.
“The general public is often unaware of Pierre Bonnard and his influence on the trajectory of 20th Century art,” stated Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “A friend of both Monet and Matisse, Bonnard is a bridge between the impressionism and post-impressionist movements that followed.”
“He is a painter who forged his own visual style, marked by a uniquely nuanced master of color, shaped by complex and evocative compositions, and built around representations of the natural spaces, intimate interiors and people that comprised his world,” Lee said.
The exhibit was inspired by the Kimbell’s 2018 acquisition of Bonnard’s Landscape at Le Cannet, a sweeping oil on canvas landscape from 1928, in honor of Kay Fortson, who served as president of the Kimbell Art Foundation from 1975 to 2017. The acquisition, which serves as the gateway to the exhibit, led George T.M. Shackelford, deputy director of the museum, to the idea of creating an exhibit that would bring Bonnard’s works to Texas.
As lead curator of the exhibit, Shackelford collaborated with Elsa Smithgall, co-curator and chief curator of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which holds the most significant collection of Bonnard’s works outside of France.
Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection, purchased his first Bonnard painting nearly 100 years ago and then became the artist’s leading champion in the United States.
Besides paintings from the Kimbell and Phillips Collection, the exhibit includes Bonnard’s works from 16 other leading U.S. museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Contributing international museums include the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and four other art institutions in France, the Tate in London, the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada, and Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Belgium.
The exhibit also includes paintings lent by private collectors, including the family of the late Robert H. Dedman, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist from Dallas.
After the Kimbell exhibit closes on Jan. 28, 2024, the works will go on display at the Phillips Collection. Opening in March, it will be the first major Bonnard exhibition at the museum in 20 years.
Born to a middle class family, Bonnard spent his childhood in Paris and a large country house in the southeast countryside of France. His father had wanted him to pursue a career in law but he chose to become an artist, earning early success as a graphic artist. After 1900, he concentrated on painting and began experimenting with use of light and color.
The exhibit presents paintings throughout Bonnard’s career, when he lived in Paris, Normandy and the French Riviera. The collection includes landscapes, still lifes, self-portraits and paintings prominently featuring his wife, Marthe.
“Bonnard’s work without any desire to be autobiographical, nonetheless both chronicles and exposes his life, because every work of art he ever made was in large part inspired by the world in which he lived, and by his place in that world,” Shackelford states in the introduction to the exhibit catalogue.
For instance, the Kimbell-owned painting, Landscape at Le Cannet, was a commissioned painting for a client but Bonnard includes a figure of himself and his property, making his work very personal, Shackelford noted as he led a tour of the exhibit for members of the media.
Unlike artists who paint on-site, Bonnard “made observations and little notes” in a pocket notebook and then painted in his studio “from what was in his head as he remembered it and his little scribbles,” Shackelford said.
The exhibit presents Bonnard’s paintings as a personal perspective of his life and his observations in spaces such as his garden, his dining room, his living room, the bedroom and the bathroom.
The most intimate section of the exhibit showcases the bedrooms and baths, highlighted by nude paintings of Marthe. Painted in the early 20th century, the paintings reflect the influence of impressionist masters such as Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. Bonnard was also influenced by the work of Henri Matisse, a contemporary French artist and friend, who was known for his use of color, Shackelford said.
Highlighting this groups of paintings are three large paintings of Marthe in the bathtub between 1936 and 1946. The paintings, last shown together in the United States 25 years ago, present Bonnard’s mastery of saturated color, Shackelford said.
“I am pleased to introduce Pierre Bonnard to new audiences in a way that is so deeply engaging,” Shackelford stated. “I think visitors will learn a great deal, just by looking, and will enjoy the journey through the worlds of this influential painter.”
Bonnard’s Worlds is one of three new exhibitions that the Kimbell recently announced will be opening in the coming months. The others are: Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries, June 16-Sept. 15, 2024; and Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Nov. 10, 2024-Feb. 9, 2025.
Admission to Bonnard’s Worlds is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, K-12 educators, students, and military personnel, $14 for ages 6-11, free for children under 6 and $3 for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. Admission is half-price all day on Tuesdays and after 5 p.m. on Fridays. Admission to the museum’s permanent collection is always free.
The museum is open Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Fridays, noon-8 p.m.; Sundays, noon-5 p.m. the Kimbell is closed Mondays, New Year’s Day, July 4, Thanksgiving and Christmas. For more information, call 817-332-8451 or visit the museum’s website.