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Madame Bonnard by Vuillard, Edouard

Vuillard, Edouard · 1895/1900

Vuillard painted his friend's wife on a piece of raw cardboard around 1898. Look closely and you can see the brown board at the left and right edges, he never meant to hide it.

The turquoise hat is the real subject. Vuillard breaks the crown into flat geometric blocks of turquoise and dark silk, pushing it so close to abstraction that it almost leaves the woman beneath it behind. But trace the warm ochre brim downward: the exact same color reappears in her cheeks and forehead, fusing hat and face into a single decorative surface.

This is Nabi painting in its purest form. Vuillard and his circle, Bonnard, Denis, Sérusier, rejected illusionistic depth for flat planes of color and pattern, borrowing heavily from Japanese prints. The raw cardboard support was part of the statement: no pretension, no academic finish, just color relationships worked out on whatever surface was at hand.

What do you think the cardboard does for the painting, does it make it feel more intimate, or less finished to your eye?

Details

Look at the hat first.
Look at the hat first.
Now where the crown meets the brim, a hard seam, almost a collage.
Now where the crown meets the brim, a hard seam, almost a collage.
The brim and her skin share the same warm ochre.
The brim and her skin share the same warm ochre.
Now see what holds it all: raw cardboard, left bare at the edges.
Now see what holds it all: raw cardboard, left bare at the edges.
Wife of Pierre Bonnard, rendered with flattened planes rather than illusionistic modeling , the Nabi aesthetic visible in direct pixels, not just art-historical description.
Wife of Pierre Bonnard, rendered with flattened planes rather than illusionistic modeling , the Nabi aesthetic visible in direct pixels, not just art-historical description.
Transcript

Look at the hat first. Turquoise and dark silk, broken into flat geometric blocks. This is a Nabi painter rejecting illusion. Now where the crown meets the brim, a hard seam, almost a collage. The brim and her skin share the same warm ochre. Vuillard unifies figure and hat into one color register. Now see what holds it all: raw cardboard, left bare at the edges. Oil on cardboard, not canvas. A Nabi declaration against academic finish.