Dec 15, 2005 - Sale 2062

Sale 2062 - Lot 162

Price Realized: $ 3,450
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
PIERRE BONNARD (1867-1947) LA REVUE BLANCHE. 1894.
301/4x231/4 inches. Edw. Ancourt, Paris.
Condition B: creases and time-staining in image. Framed.
The Revue Blanche was an avant-garde magazine founded by the Natanson brothers. Contributors included France's best writers, musicians, artists and poets, who also comprised the literary circle associated with the magazine, a group whom Marcel Proust referred to as "the epitome of society life." Both Bonnard and Lautrec were frequent contributors to the magazines, as well as close friends of the Natanson brothers, and they were each asked to design a poster for the publication. Bonnard's work exemplifies his deep sense of observation, depicting a street scene with a young boy, a shivering woman, and a man wearing an ample overcoat and a top hat reading a wall of posters. Bonnard employs only four colors to make this street scene come alive. The boy's expression and the woman's attitude are small gems of representation, as is the single, solid mass of color that constitutes their clothing and the typography, that in one place is actually wrapped around the woman's leg. The intriguing image, from the "beguiling sloe-eyed Parisienne" to the "impertinent neckerchiefed newsboy," to the "top hatted figure bent over the newsstand behind [them]," . . . is one of Bonnard's "most audacious graphic designs" (Ives p. 105ff). Maitres pl. 38, DFP II 77, Word & Image p. 26, Modern Poster p. 8.