The French painter Pierre Bonnard was a master of composition and color and the emotional power of deceptively quiet settings. His career spanned more than half a century, with roots in lithography, Impressionism and the Japanese prints that enthralled Paris in the 1890s.
Bonnard was certainly a modern artist, but he never fit into a convenient category among 20th-century art trends. The wide range of his work doesn't provide an indelible image for museum exhibits.
That uncertainty hasn't kept San Francisco's Legion of Honor from hosting a big retrospective, from Paris, of the artist's career. "Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia," despite the blissful-sounding title, offers depth, innovation and challenging works beyond the pastoral.
Among the major French artists creating paintings a century ago -- including Monet, Renoir, Matisse and Braque -- Bonnard may be the most difficult to pin down today.
American visitors to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris return home with indelible memories of Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas, among the 19th-century artists whose works fill the museum. It also holds the largest collection of Bonnard paintings, but they may be overlooked among the bigger names and familiar images.
Bonnard (1867-1947) was definitely in the spotlight last year when the Orsay produced a retrospective covering half a century of his work, to the last year of his life. It gave the artist's entire career its due, beyond the bucolic landscapes and domestic scenes that may have defined him.
Resource: http://www.mercurynews.com/
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