Woman in a Landscape

On a bright summer’s day, a sweeping panorama of a Mediterranean landscape can be seen from a verdant garden. A table beneath a tree has been set with a tablecloth, a tureen, and a basket full of cherries; next to the table on the left, a woman in white rests in a reclining chair, while on the right a cat seems to have sought refuge in the shade.

The painting is unusually narrow and elongated, and the principal elements have been bunched together in the foreground. Even though the perspective is clearly indicated in the chair and the table, the painting’s two-dimensional, decorative nature is underscored by the vigorous brushstrokes and vibrant colours that have been painted in delimited, rhythmical sections. Green, blue, and yellow tones predominate, with contrast provided by the reddish hues in the tablecloth pattern and the berries in the basket.

Pierre Bonnard worked as a painter, illustrator, and poster designer. As a painter he refined the legacy of impressionism, both in his choice of motifs and in his techniques. He managed nonetheless to develop an idiosyncratic style that combined the impressionist idiom with a more abstract, surface-based style, inspired in particular by Paul Gauguin and Japanese woodcuts.

After moving from Paris to Normandy and later on to Provence, Bonnard tended to paint scenes of quotidian life from in and around his house and his garden. At the time he painted Woman in a Landscape, he was also working on several private commissions for decorative work. For such commissions he often used large canvases to depict idyllic, summery scenes and pastoral visions of people and animals in harmony with nature.