Pierre Bonnard Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

The painter Pierre Bonnard settled in Paris in 1888, where he learned at the Academie Julien and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Although he had graduated with a law degree and had practiced a short time, his entry into the art school changed his mind as to what he wanted to do and decided to become an artist. With Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard, with whom he shared a studio, he was impacted by Paul Gauguin's expressive utilization of color and formed the group known as Les Nabis (the Hebrew word for Prophet) and later the Intimists.

While other artists at the end of the nineteenth century were tending towards abstraction, Pierre Bonnard was impacted by Japanese prints and focused on landscapes and interiors which sought out unobtrusive impacts in light and shading to the detriment of viewpoint.

When the new century rolled over, he was moved by the force and enthusiasm in the works of art of Vincent Van Gogh and this drove him to become a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903. at that point, he was influenced by Les Fauves (the wild beasts), whose strident colors and distorted images he restrained and harnessed to his own style.

A Pierre Bonnard and a Paul Gaugin for only $40.00!

Pierre Bonnard's record price for artwork in a public sale was for Terrasse à Vernon, sold by Christie's in 2011 for $11,578,056. In 2014 his oil painting La Femme aux Deux Fauteuils (Woman with Two Armchairs), with an estimated value of around $800,000, which had been stolen in London in 1970, was discovered in Italy. The painting, together with a work by Paul Gauguin known as Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog had been purchased by a FIAT worker in 1975, at a railroad lost property sale for just US$40.00 for both! The canvases were hanging in his the buyer's kitchen, he did not know that who painted them not their value. Gauguin's painting is now valued at $45 Million Dollars! At an auction in New York in 2018, his oil painting Femme Nue Vue de dos (Naked Woman Back View) sold for US$1,575,000. The model for this and other nudes he painted was a young woman named Marthe de Meligny, whom he met in Paris in 1893 and in 1925 they got married.

Art Movement History: Post-Impressionism, Intimism, Les Nabis.
Artists Influencing Pierre Bonnard: Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.