Avenue du Bois. Avenue in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. by Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947

Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947
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Avenue du Bois. Avenue in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris.

Original lithograph in colours. 1898/99. Proof for the edition of 100 impressions. This impression with variant colour tones, as is sometimes the case (see note below). Issued in the series: Quelques Aspects de la Vie de Paris - Aspects of Parisian Life, 1899. Drawn at the studio of Clot, Paris 1898. Commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, 1898.
Ref: Bouvet - Bonnard Graphic Work no 59. Roger Marx no 57

Excellent impression with very rich warm unfaded colours. On pale cream light wove paper. Excellent condition; slight trace of old mount hinges on the reverse. Full margins.
Image overall: 12 1/2 x 18 1/4ins (318x462mm).

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Sunday morning in the Bois de Boulogne. Families are strolling along the avenue or resting on the park benches; children play on the sandy ground, dogs rush around. This wonderful lithograph by Bonnard is a marvellous evocation of the relaxed lifestyle of the period and so typical of the way that he sought his most effective subjects in the simple everyday events of domestic life, capturing their qualities of intense but private emotion in patterns of colour and shape.

The handling of the colours and the pattern of the forms is absolutely characteristic of Bonnard's interpretation of the Nabis concepts of emotion expressed through symbolism and poetically expressive distortions of shape. The colours, beautiful tones of red-brown, olive, ochre and yellow (see note below), and the movement in the shapes of the figures with the lines of carriages in the background, show how Bonnard had absorbed ideas from Gauguin, from the symbolists and from Japanese art, to create, along with his friends in the 'Prophets - Les Nabis, Vuillard, Denis, Roussel etc, a new visual language in the last two decades of the 19th century.

Avenue du Bois was drawn by Bonnard in 1897/98 and issued for him by Ambroise Vollard in the famous series: 'Quelques Aspects de la Vie de Paris - Aspects of Parisian Life.' Bonnard worked on the lithographs at the studio of Clot and experimented greatly with the colours, not printing a 'standard' edition but constantly changing the colour tones. This impression has a particularly warm and sunny tonality which is very pleasing.