1908, Pierre Bonnard, Early Spring -- Phillips Collection (Washington)
From the exhibition label: Early Spring is set in the garden surrounding a house in the country not far from Paris, near where the Impressionists had lived a generation earlier. "When my friends and I decided to pick up the research of the Impressionists and try to take it further, we wanted to outshine them in their naturalistic impressions of color," Bonnard said. Here, fresh green colors and passages of light alternating with shadow are inspired by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, while the arrangement of horizontal bands reflects Bonnard's claim that he and his friends "were stricter in composition."
1908, Pierre Bonnard, Early Spring -- Phillips Collection (Washington)
From the exhibition label: Early Spring is set in the garden surrounding a house in the country not far from Paris, near where the Impressionists had lived a generation earlier. "When my friends and I decided to pick up the research of the Impressionists and try to take it further, we wanted to outshine them in their naturalistic impressions of color," Bonnard said. Here, fresh green colors and passages of light alternating with shadow are inspired by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, while the arrangement of horizontal bands reflects Bonnard's claim that he and his friends "were stricter in composition."