Estate of the artist
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Waddington Galleries, London
Acquired from the above in 1981

Venice Biennale, 1950, no. 21

Antoine Terrasse, Bonnard, Cleveland, 1964, illustrated on the title page
Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1940-1947 et supplément 1887-1939, vol. IV, Paris, 1974, no. 1657, illustrated p. 80

The canvas has been lined and the extreme outer edges have been taped. One pindot-sized loss is visible along the right edge approximately three inches from the top. Under UV light: certain pigments fluoresce and minor number of scattered pindot-sized spots of retouching are visible, primarily focused in extreme upper right and lower right quadrants. Two slightly larger strokes of retouching, each approximately a quarter inch in diameter, are also visible toward the upper right corner. Overall the work is in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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With an exacting focus on this vase of peonies, Bonnard exemplifies the intimisme of his earlier Nabis pictures and the vibrant coloration that defined his later years. Still-lifes occupied a large part of the artist's oeuvre over the course of his career but, as he developed his style, his approach to these compositions became more experimental. The present work is evidence of this approach. Many artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries found in the Mediterranean light an exciting source of painterly stimuli. Like Monet, Cézanne and the Fauve painters, Bonnard was inspired to use bold color by a particular intensity of light in this region, to which he often returned.

Dita Amory comments further on Bonnard's effusive use of bright color in his later paintings: “In his late work Bonnard was also far more inventive as a colorist. He had truly transformed himself from a Japoniste Nabi with a palette of grays, browns, and ochers into a veritable mystic whose colors recall the Persian riddle about saffron: 'What is purple in the earth, red in the market and yellow on the table?' Bonnard’s colors came to embody the emerging, meeting, and passing of forms in the transient world, whose components he turned into shapes and planes of saffron red, gold light, and violet shadows” (Dita Amory, ed., Pierre Bonnard, The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 23).

Henri Matisse, also so famous for his use of color and executions of still-lifes, traded paintings with Bonnard so that each might be surrounded by the other's work in his own interior. Indeed, a photograph of Bonnard posing in Matisse’s studio serves as a reminder of how interconnected the two artists were (see fig. 1). Examining the two artists' oeuvre, Jack Flam states that “in terms of historical evaluation, there are some interesting parallels between the careers of Bonnard and Matisse. Perhaps this is because they stand apart from those progressive painters who expunged narrative subjects from paintings early in the last century for having done so primarily with color, and for having made painting breathe in a new way: not in distinct, constructed sections, but organically, as if infused by a respiratory system. The skins of their paintings have lives of their own, almost independent of what is represented, creating a fluid, synergistic relationship among forms, objects, and empty spaces. Hence, although both painted many still lifes, the inanimate objects in their paintings do not remain 'still.' They breath, they vibrate, they interact with each other and with the spaces around them; they seem at times to be livelier than the figures that cohabit the rooms in which they are placed” (Jack Flam, “Bonnard in the History of Twentieth-Century Art,” in ibid, p. 48).