Dauphine Landscape

Painted in 1899 and held in the Hermitage, this Dauphiné landscape connects Bonnard to the pre-Alpine region of southeastern France where his family had roots — the Dauphiné property at Le Grand-Lemps was the setting for many of his early domestic subjects, including the Terrasse family scenes of the 1890s. The region's particular character — rolling hillside orchards, stone farmhouses, the specific blue-grey light of the pre-Alps — provided Bonnard with a landscape quite different from the Norman countryside around Vernonnet or the Mediterranean heat of the South, and his early Dauphiné landscapes carry a quality of youthful directness quite different from his more accomplished later landscape work. The Hermitage acquired this work for Ivan Morozov's collection, reflecting the Russian collectors' interest in Bonnard's entire development rather than only his most celebrated later works. The 1899 date places this painting in the transitional moment between the Nabis period and the more freely chromatic domestic intimism that would define his mature style.

The Dauphiné landscape is rendered with early Bonnard colour — less chromatically intense than his mature work but already showing the warm, direct approach to landscape that would develop over the following decades. Greens, ochres, and warm blue sky are handled with a relative freshness.