Woods in Summer

Painted in 1927 and held at the Phillips Collection, this summer woodland subject belongs to Bonnard's engagement with densely vegetated landscape — the kind of subject where light filters through canopy to create complex patterns of illumination and shadow that his chromatic technique was particularly equipped to capture. The woods of the Seine valley in summer, with their deep greens and filtered light, provided a different kind of landscape subject from the open panoramas of the Midi or the enclosed domestic garden: here the painter is inside the landscape rather than observing it from without. By 1927 Bonnard was moving between Vernonnet and Le Cannet, and the summer woodland subjects he painted in Normandy carry the accumulated knowledge of fifteen years of observing the Seine valley's vegetation in different seasons and lights. The Phillips Collection's woodland canvas represents the institutional commitment to documenting Bonnard's landscape practice across its full variety of subject and location.

The dense summer canopy creates a complex pattern of dappled light — filtered greens and yellows, with deep shadow in the understory. The brushwork is varied in direction and pressure, building the layered vegetation through accumulated marks. The palette ranges from acid yellow-green to deep viridian.