In this beautifully illustrated book, the forty year friendship between Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard becomes a platform for new perspectives on the development of the European avant-garde. "Long live painting!" With this rallying cry, Henri Matisse, greeted his colleague Pierre Bonnard on a 1925 postcard from Amsterdam. Widely considered two of the greatest painters of French modernism, they were united by a forty-year-long friendship and a keen appreciation of each other’s work. This catalogue offers fascinating insights into their artistic dialogue. Focusing throughout on their creative exchanges, it highlights their respective contributions to the development of modern art, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War. Comprising over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, the book makes palpable the many intersections between their artistic visions, and investigates their shared interest in subjects such as interiors, still life, landscape, and the nude. Scholarly essays and thematic introductions to their oeuvres provide a wealth of information on the two colleagues and friends gained from their writings and correspondence as well as archival material. Another highlight is a series of iconic photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who visited both Matisse and Bonnard at their much-fabled houses in the South of France.

The letters exchanged between Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse from 1925 to 1946 attest to a 40-year friendship between two of the most important artists of the 20th century. This volume documents an extraordinary correspondence between two great masters who respected and liked one another.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A brand new look at the extremely beautiful, if underappreciated, later works of one of the most inventive artists of the 20th century Between 1935 and his death at midcentury, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) undertook many decorative projects and commissions. These include mural paintings, stained glass, ceramic tiles, lead crystal pieces, carpets, tapestries, fashion fabrics, and accessories--work that has received no significant treatment until now. By presenting a wealth of new insights and unpublished material, including from the artist's own correspondence, John Klein, an internationally acclaimed specialist in the art of Matisse, offers a richer and more balanced view of Matisse's ambitions and achievements in the often-neglected later phases of his career. Matisse designed many of these decorations in the innovative--and widely admired--medium of the paper cut-out, whose function and significance Klein reevaluates. Matisse and Decoration also opens a window onto the revival and promotion, following World War II, of traditional French decorative arts as part of France's renewed sense of cultural preeminence. For the first time, the idea of the decorative in Matisse's work and the actual decorations he designed for specific settings are integrated in one account, amounting to an understanding of this modern master's work that is simultaneously more nuanced and more comprehensive.

"The vibrant late paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) are considered by many to be among his finest achievements. Working in a small converted bedroom of his villa in the south of France, Bonnard suffused his late canvases with radiant Mediterranean light and dazzling color. Although his subjects were close at hand-usually everyday scenes taken from his immediate surroundings, such as the dining room table being set for breakfast, or a jug of flowers perched on the mantelpiece - Bonnard rarely painted from life. Instead, he preferred to make pencil sketches in small diaries and then rely on these, along with his memory, once in the studio." "This volume, which accompanies the first exhibition to focus on the interior and related still-life imagery from the last decades of Bonnard's long career, presents more than seventy-five paintings, drawings, and works on paper, many of them rarely seen in public and in some cases, little known. Although Bonnard's legacy may be removed from the succession of trends that today we consider the foundation of modernism, his contribution to French art in the early decades of the twentieth century is far more profound than history has generally acknowledged. In their insightful essays and catalogue entries the authors bring fresh critical perspectives to the ongoing reappraisal of Bonnard's reputation and to his place within the narrative of twentieth-century art."--Jacket

The City of Glasgow possesses an internationally renowned collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. This magnificent book, the catalogue for a major exhibition, features sixty-four of the finest paintings in this collection, including important works by Rousseau, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Derain, Matisse, and Rouault. The lavishly illustrated book provides a short essay on each work as well as full catalogue details. There are also four introductory essays by prominent scholars that set the paintings in context. Irene Maver examines the social, political, and economic environment of Glasgow from its beginnings until the First World War; Frances Fowle charts the taste for French art in the west of Scotland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; Hugh Stevenson explores the early history of the city's collection and its assimilation of contemporary French paintings; and Belinda Thomson discusses how Glasgow's collection relates to the wider historical context of French painting of the period.

"The Contributions of Artists Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker Xavier Roussel to the French avant-garde of the 1890s, as members of the Nabis, are widely recognized. What is less known about these artists' careers is their extraordinary work in decorative painting - work on a large or unusual scale for private interiors. This illustrated book focuses on the many decorative works carried out by the four artists between 1890 and 1930. During these years, they moved beyond the narrow parameters of easel painting and applied their wholly untraditional aesthetic of decoration to a wide range of works for domestic interiors, from wall-size ensembles to folding screens. The cosmopolitan group of patrons who made this work possible ranged from the avant-garde circle of La Revue Blanche to prominent members of the French establishment. An examination of their role and tastes is another fascinating feature of this publication." "The book and accompanying exhibition reunite paintings that have long been dispersed, introducing contemporary viewers to a group of bold and evocative works, which had a wide-ranging, though little-recognized, influence on modern art. As the book's authors argue, the aesthetic embodied by these works indeed helped set the stage for the large, non-narrative paintings by artists as diverse as Rothko and Lichtenstein that came to dominate the avant-garde after World War II."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

When acclaimed memoirist and scholar Louise DeSalvo sold the house she and her husband had raised their children in and moved to a beautiful new home in Montclair, New Jersey, she was shocked to discover a rash of unexpected emotions interfering with her plans. Suddenly the old, cramped house was paradise, and the new house a barren building with none of the comforts or familiarity of "home." Faced with a sudden disillusionment over her dream house, DeSalvo turned, as she always has, to her favorite writers. What she found was a treasure-trove of material, most of which has seldom been written about before, chronicling the tumultuous and inspiring moves of some of our most beloved literary figures. Percy Shelley, destitute and restless, moved his tired family from one home to another, only to settle in what he came to believe was a haunted house on the Gulf of Spezia, in which he soon drowned. Virginia Woolf, on her hunt for the perfect room of her own, was a real estate hound, and spent years trying to get back to her home in London after a nervous breakdown forced her to relocate to the country. More recently, Mark Doty found selling the house he and his dying lover spent decades renovating surprisingly freeing as the couple found a new home in which to say goodbye. DeSalvo mines the hopes, disappointments, memories, and fears that come with that simple yet fundamental part of everyone's lives ... moving.

In fact Bonnard began his career as a graphic artist, producing posters and illustrations for such magazines as La Revue Blanche. Associated with Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard and other members of the Nabis group from 1890, his early work is characterized by a tendency towards broad, flat colour and asymmetrical composition derived from Gauguin and from Japanese prints. From 1900 his palette became richer and his subject-matter settled into a range of obsessive themes - principally landscapes, nudes and interiors - in which he explored ever more complex formal problems and developed an unparalleled mastery of colour and light. His mature work achieves a level of dazzling intensity which has ensured his enduring reputation as one of the twentieth century's great colourists.

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning ‘prophet’. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis, the most distinguished of the Nabis, revolutionized the spirit of decorative techniques during one of the richest periods in the history of French painting. Influenced by Odilon Redon and Puvis de Chavanne, by popular imagery and Japanese etchings, this post-impressionist group was above all a close circle of friends who shared the same cultural background and interests. An increasing individualism in their art often threatened the group’s unity and although tied together by a common philosophy their work clearly diverged. This publication lets us compare and put into perspective the artists within this fascinating group. The works presented in this collection offer a palette of extraordinary poetic expressions: candid in Bonnard, ornamental and mysterious in Vuillard, gently dream-like in Denis, grim and almost bitter in Vallotton, the author shares with us the lives of these artists to the very source of their creative gifts.