L'Étable

L'Étable from 1912, at the Fondation Bemberg, is a stable subject — an unusual agricultural setting for an artist whose domestic range typically encompassed the garden, the dining room, and the bathroom rather than farm buildings. The stable's particular quality of enclosed, animal-inhabited space, with its straw-filtered light, rich earthy colours, and the living warmth of the animals, would have offered Bonnard a subject whose chromatic qualities — the yellows of straw, the deep earth colours of the floor, the warm brown and black of animal coats — aligned well with his increasingly warm and dense late palette. By 1912 he was spending time at Vernonnet and beginning his regular southern visits; the stable subject, if painted in Normandy, belongs to his engagement with the agricultural landscape of the Seine valley. The Fondation Bemberg's holding of this unusual subject adds an important dimension to its Bonnard collection, demonstrating his willingness to explore subjects beyond his characteristic urban and domestic range.

Bonnard's canvases vibrate with color built from small, variegated strokes applied in a high-keyed palette of cadmium yellows, deep purples, vermilion, and turquoise. He often composed from memory, distorting perspective and scale for emotional rather than descriptive accuracy.