By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Pierre Bonnard was painting several scenes involving mirror play each year.

Among his intimate domestic scenes, Reflection or The Tub (1909) is one of his best pieces of mirror play. He again opts for a view from an elevated position, looking down and into an angled plane mirror in the bathroom. The reflected view almost fills his canvas, with the nude Marthe (most probably) crouching slightly in the upper left corner, as she dries herself after a bath.

The angle of view plays some odd tricks. The washing bowl on the dressing table is brought to overlie the larger shallow bathtub on the floor, for example. Some of the objects on the dressing table are shown directly, others only in the reflected image. And over on the opposite side of the room is a chair, and a coffee tray.

The Dressing Table with a Bunch of Red and Yellow Flowers (1913) presents us with another visual riddle that we struggle to resolve. Shown in the mirror above the dressing table is a reflection of what lies behind the artist. There’s a nearly-nude figure sat in the corner, and what appears to be a bath, or a bed on which there is a large black object, possibly a dog. As ever, the artist is nowhere to be seen, unless of course that headless figure is male rather than female.

The following year Bonnard moved back from the dressing table and its mirror, for The Bathroom Mirror (1914). Marthe’s reflection is now but a small image within the image, showing her sat on the side of the bed, with a bedspread matching the red floral pattern of the drapes around the dressing table. The artist has worked his usual vanishing trick for himself, and a vertical mirror at the right adds a curiously dark reflection of the room.

In his Nude before the Mirror (Bather) of about 1915, Bonnard inverts his mirror play with a small mirror mounted at head height. Instead of using the reflection as a picture within the picture, to reveal figures behind the position of the painter, the artist is here set well back and his model is close to the mirror, so that it frames her face. This transforms the painting by giving the figure a face, an identity, and a character, rather than just the expanse of flesh of her back.

The Mantlepiece (1916) is another complex piece of mirror play. Bonnard has viewed this from an unusually low position, level with the surface of the mantlepiece and looking slightly up. Behind him is his nude model, who appears slightly odd as she is both lit and viewed from below. On the wall behind them is a very long painting of a reclining nude (which certainly doesn’t look like one of Bonnard’s works), below which is a dressing table mirror. In this case, Bonnard appears to have used the reflections to bring together quite disjoint images into a single composite.

He then seems to have painted little if any mirror play for fifteen years.

Of his surviving paintings from the 1930s I have been able to locate, intimate domestic scenes and nude figures again predominate. The Toilette (Nude at the Mirror) (1931) marks the return of mirror play different from his earlier practice: the nude stands in front of the mirror, but she isn’t seen in reflection at all, only directly. Instead, the mirror reinforces the verticals of the window and curtain off to the right.

At last, in about 1933, Bonnard returns to his earlier mirror play in his Nude before a Mirror. Marthe (presumably) stands slightly to one side of a full-length mirror, the yellow light catching her back, buttock, and thigh. Instead of her head being cast down, almost obscuring her face, she looks at the mirror, and her reflection looks back at the viewer in a Venus effect.

This is, of course, optically impossible: both Marthe and the viewer are to the right of the midline of the mirror. The viewer could only see Marthe on the left side of the mirror if that mirror were angled so that its plane was parallel to Marthe’s shoulders. What Bonnard shows is really Marthe’s doppelgänger, not her reflection.

Late in his life, after the death of Marthe, Bonnard painted some self-portraits in a mirror, including this Portrait of the Artist in the Bathroom Mirror from between 1939-46, as he is looking increasingly frail. And those appear to be his final reflections.

Mirror play in paintings isn’t uncommon, but there can be few major artists who have returned to it repeatedly over a period of more than forty years, as did Pierre Bonnard. In this article and its sequel tomorrow I show a selection of his work featuring reflections in plane mirrors.

The Lamp, from about 1899, is one of Bonnard’s earliest paintings featuring a reflection, here a complex world in miniature seen in a spherical glass part of a lamp. The reflection shows two of the lamp’s arms, one of the bottles of wine, and the bowl of fruit on the white tablecloth.

His portrait of Ambroise Vollard from about 1904-05 is perhaps his first use of a large planar mirror in a figurative painting. It shows some of the art dealer’s collection, including a painting on an easel. Here he uses the reflection to extend the field and scope of the painting.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Bonnard used mirrors and reflections in several paintings, including this Interior from about 1905. It is an unusual composition, with but a little of the woman’s back visible in the mirror; Bonnard instead shows the reflection of a chair placed in front of the mirror, and what appears to be the artist sat at a table.

His purpose in placing the chair in front of the mirror was, I think, to demonstrate that the artist’s eye is in line with the chair and with his own reflection, confirming that it is him who is sat at the table, although he doesn’t have an easel, neither is there any canvas or palette in sight.

Woman Getting Dressed (1906) is a second example of Bonnard’s optical play with reflections. Dominating the centre of his canvas is a pile of women’s clothing on a low item of furniture, and a heater. A flat mirror at the left reveals the subject, who is sat beyond the right edge of the painting, getting dressed.

Bonnard continued to paint figures from models. Nude Seated on a Red Sofa (1908) engages in gentle mirror-play without the sophisticated compositions of previous years.

His intimate visual diary of Marthe’s life was becoming the focus of his development and innovation. In El Tocador, which means The Dressing Table (1908), Marthe’s headless torso is seen only in reflection. The direct view is of the large bowl and pitcher which she used to wash herself. This opens a new chapter of scenes shown in the mirror of a dressing table.

Mirror in the Dressing Room (1908) shows a similar dressing table and mirror, but in contrasting blue decor. A woman’s nude back and buttocks now appear in the mirror, as another woman sits at the left drinking a cup of coffee.

In The Toilet, alias The Toilet in Pink, from about 1908, a nude woman stands drying herself in front of a vertical mirror. This painting sets a trend for these intimate domestic scenes to be lighter.

Of all these works painted in 1908, my favourite is The Bathroom, or The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa, which anticipates those from later in his career, when he was living in the south of France. Looking at a brightly-lit window from a slightly elevated position, Bonnard’s partner Marthe’s body is seen against that light, and the bright colours of the room. There is still some subtle mirror play, with her headless torso shown in the dressing table mirror, in which the artist is replaced by an empty chair. Its last reflection is that of the window frame in the residual water in the shallow metal bath at the left.

Following their popularisation in the nineteenth century, paintings of Spring blossom continued to flourish, reinforced perhaps by increasing urbanisation.

Helen Allingham’s Buckinghamshire house at Penstreet (c 1900) shows a house in the hamlet of Penn Street, near the village of Penn, in Buckinghamshire, England. This remains a relatively unspoilt part of the Chilterns to the north-west of London.

For Willard Metcalf, Dogwood Blossoms (1906) also provide the opportunity to explore the shimmering effects of dappled light, and how it can break the forms of large boulders.

Pierre Bonnard painted Early Spring in 1908, shortly after his return to France from a visit to North Africa. The children are probably the artist’s friends from the Terrasse family, enjoying their garden as it comes into bloom in the improving weather.

The Small House, Spring Evening is an unusual landscape painted by Bonnard in 1909. It offsets the rich blossom on the trees at the left against the plain wall of a house, seen in failing light.

József Rippl-Rónai was the founding father of modern painting in Hungary, and in 1909 painted this Sour Cherry Tree in Blossom, in which the flowers overwhelm the whole painting, just as they had for Samuel Palmer nearly eighty years earlier.

One of the eclectic Georges Clairin’s later paintings from about 1910 brings an elegant group out among lush blossoms On the Balcony.

John William Waterhouse’s A Song of Springtime from 1913 has lost much of the narrative from more classical accounts of Flora and the Spring, but still features plenty of cherry blossom. Flora appears with her breasts bared, and a skirtful of daffodils or narcissi, perhaps a cross-reference to Poussin’s figure of Narcissus in his Empire of Flora, and the Graces have been replaced by young children.

By the First World War, Western artists weren’t just collecting and studying the art of south-east Asia, but some went to live in countries such as Japan. Among these was the American printmaker Helen Hyde, who demonstrates her mastery of colour woodcut prints in her Blossom Time in Tokyo, from 1914. This shows the tea ceremony taking place during the Spring viewing of blossom.

By the end of the war, Théo van Rysselberghe’s colours had become as strong as those of the Fauves. In Almond Trees in Blossom (Morning) the more delicate pinks of the flowers pale in comparison with his full reds and blues, even down to the blue horse pulling a plough.

The Ukrainian artist Mykhaylo Berkos painted this classic Impressionist motif of an Apple Tree in Blossom in 1919. But this was to be his last Spring, as he died of typhus just before Christmas that year, at the age of only 58.

In the far north of Europe, the Norwegian Nikolai Astrup included blossom in many of his paintings of Spring and early summer in the fjords, as in his Apple Trees in Bloom, painted after 1920.

In about 1927, Astrup painted Apple Tree in Bloom showing the trees in full blossom and marsh marigolds in flower.

In Pierre Bonnard’s Open Door from about 1937, we look out through the frame of French windows to a table that has escaped into the landscape, and dazzles against brilliant blossom beyond.

I wish you a happy blossom festival, and above all peace.

In 1904, Misia Natanson, née Godebska, patron and muse of artists in Paris, was in the process of transferring her affection from her first husband Thadée Natanson to Alfred Edwards, the publishing magnate who was providing him with capital in return.

Pierre Bonnard sees a completely different figure from those in Renoir’s portraits. In Misia Natanson and Her Dog from about 1904, she’s out in the country with her dog, wearing an ornate white lace hat, more like a character from a nursery rhyme than the mistress of a newspaper magnate.

The following year, Misia married Edwards, and her circle of artists and composers benefited from new patronage with even deeper pockets. Misia and her husband had a yacht, by which I mean a large, crewed vessel, not a dinky little dinghy. In the summer of 1905, they took Bonnard, Maurice Ravel, and others on the yacht’s maiden cruise to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Misia, though, looks no happier in Renoir’s third portrait of Misia Sert with a Lap Dog (Young Woman with a Lap-Dog) from after her second marriage in about 1906. And the dog has changed to a toy breed, probably a Brussels Griffon.

Bonnard dedicated his painting of The House of Misia Sert (1906) to the former Misia Natanson, muse, close friend, and patron. This was made using tempera rather than oils.

He continued to keep company with Misia and her husband. Maurice Ravel dedicated two of his most beautiful compositions to her: The Swan from Histoires Naturelles, and The Waltz.

Works created for Misia extended beyond mere portraits. In Pierre Bonnard’s large painting of Pleasure or Games from 1906, one of four panels he made for Misia and Alfred Edwards’ apartment in Paris, decorative edging includes images of birds and monkeys, whose innocent playfulness is seen as being pleasurable.

In 1908, Bonnard painted at least three portraits of Misia. Gone is the illusion of the shepherdess: she now sits in a lavishly-decorated room, with what appear to be Gobelin tapestries behind her.

In Misia with a Pink Corsage, Bonnard closes in for a straight head-and-shoulders.

In Misia with Roses, she looks down at an almost unseen pet she is stroking beside her.

As could have been expected, Alfred Edwards proved unfaithful to Misia. She divorced him in 1909, by which time she was already in a relationship with the Spanish painter Josep Maria Sert (1874-1945). He had been on the periphery of the Nabis since moving to Paris in 1899.

The last portrait that I can find by Bonnard, of Misia Godebska Writing, was painted in about 1910. It’s back to head-and-shoulders, although here the artist has used a little mirror play to reveal her chignon, a feature that Bonnard seemed to like.

Misia didn’t marry Sert until 1920, by which time she was established as the cultural arbiter in Paris, and a close friend of Coco Chanel. Her husband, a friend of Salvador Dalí, specialised in murals, and strangely never appears to have painted her portrait. Instead, he spent over thirty years painting murals in the Vic Cathedral in Barcelona, and having affairs of his own. In 1927, Sert divorced Misia to marry the sculptor Isabelle Roussadana Mdivani (1906-1938), known for short as Roussy, who for a time had lived with the Serts in a ménage à trois.

The Serts had been strong supporters of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which was based in Paris from 1909. Josep Maria Sert painted sets and designed costumes from 1914 onwards. Misia was also heavily involved, often raising money to save a production from seemingly overwhelming debts.

Léon Bakst had also been painting and designing for Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. Diaghilev proved highly successful, and commissioned music from Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev and other major composers of the day. Other painters who produced work for the Ballets included Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Coco Chanel also created costume designs.

Misia remained close to Diaghilev, and in August 1929 she comforted him as he died in Venice of diabetes, then paid for his funeral from her own pocket.

Just before the Second World War, Roussy Sert died, and Misia and Josep Maria Sert reconciled, and sort of lived together in separate apartments in Paris. Misia’s reputation remained unblemished during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and she died there on 15 October 1950, at the age of 78.

Without Misia’s influence and support, a great deal of the painting, music, and ballet of the first half of the twentieth century simply wouldn’t have happened.

Reference

Wikipedia.

One of the myths about nineteenth and twentieth century art is that it freed itself from patronage that had bedevilled its past. What did change was that patrons of the arts were seldom royalty or nobility, although their power and influence were just the same. Between about 1895 and the late 1930s, one of the most important patrons in France was a Polish woman, born Maria Zofia Zenajda Godebska in 1872, but subsequently known as Misia Natanson, Edwards, or Sert. Her father was Cyprian Godebski, a major sculptor who was a professor at the Imperial Academy in Saint Petersburg. This weekend I tell a little of her story, with a succession of portraits by her many admirers.

Misia’s mother died shortly after the girl’s birth, so she was sent to her grandparents in Brussels. This took her from sculpture to music, as those grandparents had musical circles including Franz Liszt. She was brought up as a pianist, and when her father moved her to Paris, she studied under Gabriel Fauré.

Misia married for the first time at the age of twenty-one, to her cousin Thadée Natanson, who had socialist ideals and lived in artistic circles. The Natansons entertained Marcel Proust, Stéphane Mallarmé, André Gide and Claude Debussy. But they were closest to their painter friends: Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon, Paul Signac, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

It was probably Toulouse-Lautrec who first started to draw and paint Misia, as in his Portrait of Misia Natanson of 1895.

In 1895 he turned that into his Poster for “La revue blanche”, the arts magazine co-founded in 1889 by Misia’s husband, which was the platform that promoted the Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard.

Toulouse-Lautrec later painted Misia Natanson playing the piano in 1897.

The Nabis themselves painted Misia’s portraits, not just as their main patron, but in informal settings, as more of a friend and muse.

Édouard Vuillard’s Vallotton at the Natansons shows Misia watching Félix Vallotton painting in 1897, at the Natanson’s home.

Félix Vallotton provides a glimpse into her private life in his Misia at Her Dressing Table from 1898.

In his turn, Pierre Bonnard painted Misia Natanson at Breakfast in about 1899, with one of the family’s maids at work in the background.

Bonnard’s Misia at the Piano from about 1902 shows Misia doing what she loved most.

At this time, Thadée Natanson needed more capital to support his publishing and other activities. He found a source in Alfred Edwards, a publishing magnate who had founded and published the major newspaper in Paris at the time, Le Matin. Unfortunately, Edwards and Misia fell in love, and Misia became Edwards’ mistress in 1903. As Natanson wanted his capital, so Edwards wanted Misia, and that became a condition of the deal between them.

Renoir painted this and the next portrait of Misia Sert while this was being settled, in 1904. Of the two, this is the better-known, as it hangs in the National Gallery in London. I can’t help feeling that she appears unhappy here.

In this second of Renoir’s portraits of Misia from 1904, now in Tel Aviv, she is as sumptuously dressed, but her head is buried in a book.

Reference

Wikipedia.