Young Women in the Garden by Pierre Bonnard

Young Women in the Garden - Pierre Bonnard - Figurative Canvas Wall Art

At a Glance

Young Women in the Garden - Pierre Bonnard - Figurative Canvas Wall Art suits both traditional and modern interiors. As a portrait oil painting, it works as a standalone focal point or as part of a hallway gallery wall, and unlike a print it is genuinely hand painted in oils.

About the Artwork

JEUNES FEMMES AU JARDIN
1918
Oil on canvas
36 3/8 x 40 7/8 in.

Jeunes femmes au jardin is part of a series of large decorative compositions that Pierre Bonnard completed between 1900 and 1920. Like the Impressionists, the artist presents an image of countryside leisure, most likely a gathering of family members at “Le Clos,” his family’s vacation home in Le Grand-Lemps. The site was where Bonnard, as a child, indulged in his favorite past time of drawing, and it would become the inspiration and setting for many of Bonnard’s best works.

Bonnard’s success is derived from a distinctive combination of Realism, Symbolism and Classicism, not to mention the sensitivity to lighting effects and coloration that characterized his style. Bonnard favored nature and leisure as subject matters, yet unlike the Impressionists who championed plein-air painting, Bonnard often created his images from memory. While his compositions are largely dominated by quick, brushy strokes of paint, the delineation of form is at times punctuated by a linear style mastered during the artist’s early years as a graphic artist. As seen in the present work, line, color and form are all dominant elements of the composition, with every last detail expertly crafted to create an atmospheric image of relaxation.

Bonnard’s personal style is ultimately driven by his desire to challenge tradition while perfecting the art of representation. His lifelong struggle between Realism and idealism is discussed by Nicholas Watkins: “Bonnard’s ambivalent attitude to Monet’s Impressionism, reinforced by the contemporary reassertion of traditional values, brought on what amounted to a mid-life crisis around 1913. His crisis was not so much one of what to paint as how to paint it. Feeling that he has not been sacrificing form and composition to color, he took himself, he said, back to school. He told his nephew, Charles Terrasse: ‘I drew ceaselessly. And after drawing comes the composition, which must be balanced. A well-composed painting is half done.’ Bonnard’s crisis brought to a head a conflict which could not be resolved simplistically because it went beyond questions of style to his very vision as a painter. For the emphasis on form in its turn carried with it connotations of materialism, of a world tied down in time and dominated by objects and human beings, whereas Bonnard was essentially a painter of mood and atmosphere. His solution as it emerged was novel and totally idiosyncratic. Instead of equating color in traditional academic terms with emotion and drawing with the mind, he reversed the process, maintaining: ‘Drawing is sensation. Color is reasoning’” (Nicholas Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 134).

Every hand painted oil painting in this figurative series is finished on artist-grade canvas and checked against the original before it leaves the studio.

100% Hand Painted on Canvas

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 figurative artwork made to order.

Product Details

• A true oil-on-canvas painting produced manually by our artists — not a mass-produced print.
• An extra 2-inch blank border is left around all edges for easy stretching and framing.
• No middlemen — we ship directly to you worldwide.
• Available canvas sizes for this hand painted oil painting: 20 X 24 in, 24 X 36 in, 30 X 40 in, 36 X 48 in, 48 X 72 in.
• Choose from standard sizes or request a custom dimension to fit your wall.
• Multiple low-cost carriers available, including DHL, UPS, FedEx and USPS.
• Free canvas stretching on wooden stretcher bars; custom framing available on request.
• We send a digital image of your figurative painting for approval before it ships.

Where to Hang It

Build a hallway gallery wall around this portrait oil painting, or let it stand alone as a single statement. The hand painted canvas finish keeps the figurative composition looking intentional in both classic and contemporary rooms.

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