Coquelicots et graminées

Coquelicots et graminées (Poppies and Grasses) belongs to Bonnard's series of field and garden observations in which particular wild flowers—poppies among them—provide strong color notes within the more diffuse green of grass and meadow. Red poppies in a field of green were a subject with immediate resonances in French painting after Monet's famous 1873 canvas, and Bonnard's version transforms this Impressionist inheritance through his more subjective, non-naturalistic color approach. His poppies are observed at Le Cannet or during summer stays in the countryside, where the red of the flowers against the varying greens of late spring and early summer provided a pure chromatic problem.

The red poppy heads are rendered as concentrated bright passages within the more diffuse green and yellow-green of the surrounding grasses. Bonnard does not describe individual grass stems but evokes the meadow through short, varied strokes in multiple green tones. The poppies' red is typically applied at full chromatic intensity, appearing to advance from the cooler surrounding field.