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For collectors searching landscape oil painting, In a Boat is a dependable choice. Painted in layered oils on canvas after Pierre Bonnard, this post-impressionist work reads equally well as classic canvas wall art and as a thoughtful housewarming gift.
EN BARQUE
circa 1939
Oil on canvas
29 1/8 by 33 1/2 in.
Private Collection, Paris.
En barque relates to a work of the same title and from around the same date that is currently in the Musée d’Orsay and depicts the artist’s wife Marthe and two children in a boat. Bonnard was twenty-six years old when he met Marthe de Meligny on a street in Paris in 1893; she was to become the long-term love of his life and the inspiration behind many of his most beautiful works. It is difficult to know whether Bonnard would have become the master of interiors and the intimate paintings for which he is so renowned today were it not for the domesticating influence of Marthe de Meligny. In 1912, they bought a small house together on a hillside above the Seine at Vernonnet, in Normandy. Bonnard delighted in his daily strolls through the lush surrounding countryside and even bought a small boat on which he would entertain friends.
The present work marks the artist's return to Impressionism after his Nabis period and demonstrates his exceptional mastery of colour. A gentle light pours in from the skies above, achieving a warm glow in the distant horizon and a patchwork of shimmers in the trees. The evocation of a sympathetic natural environment is complemented by the happy figures who inhabit it: three passengers of a small rowing boat, untroubled ducks on the water and a boy informally fishing on the bank. Bonnard’s development in style and subject from 1905 onwards demonstrates a completely self-sufficient maturity. Sasha M. Newman observes: ‘Bonnard’s retreat to the country, his sensitivity to the cycles of nature, expressed both in his art and his life, parallel Monet’s earlier withdrawal from urban life. Bonnard, who in the 1890s was a painter of Paris, moves more and more towards the creation of his own private world, and the conflict in his art is less between city and country as between his will to paint both the contemporary and the timeless’ (Sasha M. Newman in Bonnard: The Late Paintings (exhibition catalogue), The Phillips Collection, Washington, 1984, p. 136).
Marthe de Meligny seemed to evoke in Bonnard an untraditional tenderness. She suffered from an unspecified illness for most of her life which rendered her timid and frail. Bonnard’s depictions of her range from nudes to domestic scenes, however there is one unflinching constant and that is the artist’s watchful and caring gaze: ‘We are always made acutely aware that whatever the subject of the painting – a nude, a still life, a landscape – what we are being asked to witness (and to participate in) is the process of looking. But it is in the paintings of Marthe above all that we find Bonnard portraying himself as the ever-attentive, watchful presence’ (Sarah Whitfield in Bonnard (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1998, p. 17).
As dining room wall art, the piece pairs naturally with other post-impressionist wall art and with warm neutrals, timber, and soft natural light.
We use a 100% hand-painted process: stretched artist-grade canvas, layered oil pigment, and a final protective varnish. There are no inkjet prints or mechanical reproductions in this collection — just a painted landscape artwork made to order.
Build a dining room gallery wall around this landscape oil painting, or let it stand alone as a single statement. The hand painted canvas finish keeps the landscape composition looking intentional in both classic and contemporary rooms.
| Size | Price |
|---|---|
| 20 X 24 in | $68.48 |
| 24 X 36 in | $106.48 |
| 30 X 40 in | $146.98 |
| 36 X 48 in | $195.48 |
| 48 X 72 in | $379.98 |
The sizes shown are the reproduction canvas sizes we paint to order. The dimensions given in a work's description refer to the original artwork and will differ from the sizes offered here. Not sure? Read the size guide or e-mail us.
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Every canvas is painted by hand in oils on artist-grade stretched canvas, with an extra blank border left for framing. How to care for your painting.
Measurements are on the size guide, or e-mail [email protected] and we reply within one business day.
