Le Déjeuner

Le Déjeuner of 1923, at the National Gallery of Ireland, is one of Bonnard's table subjects from the period when his approach to the dining table had reached its most radical spatial and chromatic ambition. Unlike his earlier, more conventionally organised table scenes, the mature déjeuner paintings tilt the table toward the viewer, compressing and distorting the conventional recession of perspectival space to bring the full abundance of the meal — the bread, fruit, glasses, and flowers — into a direct chromatic confrontation with the picture plane. This spatial strategy had affinities with Cézanne's treatment of the table, which Bonnard studied carefully, but his colour was considerably more intense than Cézanne's, more autonomous in its departure from observed reality. He worked from memory and sketch rather than before the motif, allowing colour to be determined by emotional response rather than optical fact. The National Gallery of Ireland acquired this significant canvas as part of its systematic engagement with French Post-Impressionist painting in the late twentieth century.

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.