The Large Garden

Painted in 1895 and held at the Musée d'Orsay, this large-scale garden canvas belongs to Bonnard's early engagement with outdoor subjects and represents one of his most ambitious early compositions. At 28, Bonnard had completed his most experimental Nabi years; the large garden offered a subject requiring the kind of expansive compositional thinking he was developing beyond the small panel and cardboard formats of his graphic and intimiste work. Gardens — ordered but lush, intimate but open — recur throughout his career, culminating in the Le Cannet garden works of the 1930s and 1940s. The Orsay's holding gives this early work a canonical institutional status within French Post-Impressionism.

The large format allows expansive treatment of foliage mass. Deep greens and varied ochres create a dense garden surface. Figures within the garden — characteristic of Bonnard's domestic outdoor scenes — are loosely integrated into the vegetative surround rather than formally placed.