Born on October 3, 1867, Pierre Bonnard grew up in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France. He started showing talent for drawing and watercolour at a very young age, and grew up painting scenes in the garden of his parents’ country home. Later, he went to school to study law, as per his father’s request, however, he began taking art classes on the side. After selling his first work of art later that year, his parents let him study art full-time at “Academie Julian” in Paris.
Soon after the start of his artistic career, Bonnard formed an art group with his friends from school called “Les Nabis”. While most of his peers created paintings with more religious themes, he kept his overall style playful and un-ideological. In 1892, he gained interest in decorative art and design and started creating posters and lithographs, as he was particularly inspired by the Japanese print style. Because of this, he also started including geometric patterns in his portrait paintings.
“Morning in Paris” (1911) 
“Dining Room in the Country” (1913)
In 1894, Bonnard created a series of paintings of life in Paris and continued to focus on similar subjects until he married a woman named Marthe de Meligny in 1925. Marthe is known to be the subject of many of his portraits, particularly that of the nude style, as his most famous portraits include Marthe lying nude in a bathtub.
The last painting he did was titled “The Almond Tree in Blossom”, (1947) and was completed a week before he died at age 79 in Le Cannet, France on January 23, 1947. Pierre Bonnard is widely considered ‘one of the greatest colourists of modern art’ due to his bold use of colours, which were heavily influenced by Paul Gaugin. His striking, distinct style is what truly led his remarkable life as an artist.
Sources: Metmuseum.org, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bonn/hd_bonn.htm. “Pierre Bonnard.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 29 Sept. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Bonnard. “Pierre Bonnard.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Oct. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bonnard. Images: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre_Bonnard,_Self-portrait._c._1889,_oil_on_canvas,_21.5_x_15.8_cm.jpgHow the Japanese transformed French paintinghttps://www.newstatesman.com/Pierre-Bonnard-Colour-Memory-Tate-Modern-review https://frenchculture.org/performing-arts/3843-pierre-bonnard-dining-room-country https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Morning_in_Paris%27_by_Pierre_Bonnard,_1911.JPG
Jordan,
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Jeff
Jordan,
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Jeff