Customer Reviews

Pierre Bonnard: Early and Late

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"Early and Late" is the book that accompanied the Phillips Collection's 2002 exhibit on Bonnard's early and late works. The exhibitition was beautiful. The book, of course, doesn't do justice to the colors in the originals, but the book's prints, particularly the details, are very good.

The book includes a chronology of Bonnnard's life, three excellent essays, and some notes from Bonnard's journals. One essay discusses Bonnard's innovations, especially early on and especially his use of photography as a way to prepare for his paintings. Another essay shows how Bonnard's paintings were influenced by his reformed education. A final essay demonstrates Bonnard's debt to Japanese art.

Bonnard's longevity, I think, has kept him from having more of a reputation as an innovator. A quick overview of Bonnard's work shows that he was still painting postimpressionism toward the middle of the 20th Century. His use of different points of view and contrasting colors, and the subservience of the object to the idea make him more than a late impressionist. Basically, I like this guy's work, and this book helped me answer my question, "What is it about this man's painting that I like?"

This is one of the best books on Bonnard the color repros are good and sometimes enlarged.. Besides Antoine Terrase's book" drawing to color "this book shows how Bonnard worked up his paintings from little drawings from a daily diary he used as a sketchbook.The photos shows Bonnard's studio in Le Cannet.Also,Some of his shots of nudes. It has repros found in few other books. I have Bonnard books stemming from the MOMA exhibit after WW11 by John Rewald, Another book that had rare color repros was Bonnard edited by R.J. Beer.This is a good buy and a worthwhile study of the work. Winston Hough

I was looking forward to what could have been the best book on the market for Bonnard, you know, one that would offer a wide range of paintings by this master artist, it is titled: Early and Late. So I got the idea it was filled with many paintings by Bonnard. Duh.

This book has maybe 40 paintings total for the 300 + pages, and the huge amount of space wasted on black and white photos of Bonnard's nude wife astounded me. About 1/4 of the book was devoted to this. Other portions included black and white pictures of posters he designed, etc. This book might be useful for scholars who are interested in how he used his wife as a model, but anyone looking for an ART book will be very disappointed.

Bonnard painted more than 1000 canvases in his lifetime, and yes he used photos he took as guides, but for a book titled "Early and Late" there has to be more than just the handful of so so works included in this book. There really needs to be a good huge coffee table sized book for this artist's wonderful paintings. There are certainly enough, and the title 'Early and Late' could actually be justified.