Grape Harvest

Painted in 1926 and held at the Phillips Collection, this harvest scene moves Bonnard's domestic landscape beyond the garden enclosure into the agricultural landscape of the French South. The grape harvest, with its specific late-summer chromatic world — the deep greens of vine leaves, the blue-black clusters of ripening grapes, the golden light of September — provided a subject whose seasonal particularity connected to Bonnard's broader interest in the agricultural cycle. By the mid-1920s he was regularly between Le Cannet and Vernonnet, and the harvest subjects available in the South were distinct from the gardening rhythms of his Norman property. The painting continues the Phillips Collection's outstanding documentation of Bonnard's mature landscape practice; Duncan Phillips was among the first American collectors to recognize that Bonnard's late work, far from being a retreat into comfortable domesticity, represented a radical chromatic achievement equal to any in contemporary European painting.

The grape harvest creates a subject of warm chromatic richness: deep green-blue vineyard foliage, dark purple grape clusters, the warm ochre and amber of late summer landscape. The figures of harvesters are integrated into the agricultural environment with the same visual democracy Bonnard brought to domestic subjects.