Pierre Bonnard

The Window

1925

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Not on display

Artist: Pierre Bonnard 1867–1947
Original title: La Fenêtre
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1086 × 886 mm
frame: 1283 × 1094 × 127 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill through the Contemporary Art Society 1930
Reference: N04494

Display caption

In this work, Bonnard unites interior and exterior in the strong sunlight of the South of France. It was made in a rented apartment at Le Cannet, the town which the artist’s wife Marthe is seen surveying from the balcony. The sensuality and warmth of the south entranced Bonnard, but in his paintings he habitually framed the landscape with windows or doorways, as if submitting the abundance of nature to human control.

Gallery label, December 2007

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Catalogue entry

Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947

N04494 La Fenêtre (The Window) 1925

Inscribed 'Bonnard' b.r.
Oil on canvas, 42 3/4 x 34 7/8 (108.5 x 88.5)
Presented by Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill through the CAS 1930
Prov: With Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (purchased from the artist, 16 February 1927); with Independent Gallery, London, 1927; Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill, London
Exh: The CAS: Second Loan Exhibition of Foreign Paintings, M. Knoedler, London, February 1928 (59); Bonnard, de Hauke & Co., New York, April 1928 (16); Acquisitions of the CAS, Tate Gallery, September-October 1946 (6); Paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, RSA, Edinburgh, August-September 1948 (36, repr.); Pierre Bonnard, RA, London, January-March 1966 (178, repr.); Pierre Bonnard, Haus der Kunst, Munich, October 1966-January 1967 (99, repr.); Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris, January-April 1967 (111, repr.)
Lit: Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard (Paris 1973), No.1318, Vol.3, p.259, repr. p.260
Repr: Charles Terrasse, Bonnard (Paris 1927), p.3 as 'Le Cannet. La Fenêtre' (dated 1925 on p.204); Carlos Peacock, Painters and Writers (London 1949), pl.57 in colour

Painted at Le Cannet (Alpes-Maritimes), in an apartment occupied by the painter in the Villa Hirondelle prior to his purchase in 1925 of the Villa du Bosquet. Through the window may be seen the red roofs of the little town of Le Cannet. On the table is the novel Marie by Peter Nansen, for which Bonnard drew the illustrations: it was published by the Revue Blanche in 1898. (Information from Charles Terrasse in letters of 31 May 1951 and 13 January 1954).

Published in: Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.67, reproduced p.67