Paysage normand
Pierre Bonnard, 1920
Image not available: work still under copyright
Paysage normand is an oil on canvas that Pierre Bonnard painted in 1920. It is now held by the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, in Alsace. It shows a landscape in Normandy in a vertical format, dominated by a tree rising over an expanse of field and vegetation. The scene was not painted outdoors. Bonnard worked from memory in his studio, a habit that fits his broader approach to landscape. That distance shows in the calm mood of the picture, where colour is arranged in patches and tones that favour impression over precise detail. The painting was bought by the Bernheim-Jeune gallery as soon as it was finished, and decades later it passed to the Société Schongauer, the body that runs the Colmar museum. Bonnard returned to Normandy scenery later in his career, as shown by another landscape of the region now at the Smith College Museum of Art, which reveals how persistent this theme was for him.
- Painter
- Pierre Bonnard
- Date
- 1920
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 100 × 58 cm
- Museum
- Unterlinden Museum, Colmar
- Genre
- landscape painting
- Depicts
- tree