Artist: Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
Title: La chemin secret (The Secret Path)
Medium: Color heliogravure after the original oil on canvas.
Year: Atelier Draeger Freres
Signature: Signed in the Plate, lower right.
Dimensions: Image Size 6 x 7 1/2 inches
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 13 1/8 x 14 5/8 inches
Framing: Gallery Matted and Framed in a New Solid Wood Moulding
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis. Bonnard preferred to work from memory, using drawings as a reference, and his paintings are often characterized by a dreamlike quality. The intimate domestic scenes, for which he is perhaps best known, often include his wife Marthe de Meligny. Bonnard has been described as “the most thoroughly idiosyncratic of all the great twentieth-century painters”, and the unusual vantage points of his compositions rely less on traditional modes of pictorial structure than voluptuous color, poetic allusions and visual wit. Identified as a late practitioner of Impressionism in the early 20th century, Bonnard has since been recognized for his unique use of color and his complex imagery. Bonnard is generally regarded as one of the greatest colourists of modern art.