Many people argue that Bonnard was not truly a colorist until his move from Paris to the South of France. While it is apparent that his naissance as a colorist occurred in conjunction with his exposure to Japanese woodblock prints in the 1890s, the Midi certainly had a profound effect on his growth as an artist as a logical continuation of his colorist tendencies. Starting in 1910, Bonnard made frequent trips to the Midi, but did not move there full-time until 1912, when he emigrated to the sunny fishing village of Saint Tropez. In Saint-Tropez Harbor (1911), we can see the brilliant light of the town entering his art. Indeed, Bonnard’s environment and mood can be seen clearly reflected in all of his art. While in Paris, he incorporated in his art some of the brilliant colors of Japanese prints, but also reflected dreary city life in many subdued depictions of urban scenes. Upon his move to Saint Tropez, we can see the sunshine and beautiful environment of the South reflected in bright colors and many paintings of plant-life and the outdoors. Saint-Tropez Harbor is dominated by brilliant, sunny yellow and the vibrant blue of the sky and sea on a clear day, two colors that could be particularly appreciated by someone coming straight from Paris.
Colorful depictions of the outdoors like this one are reminiscent of impressionism. Indeed, Bonnard often sought to capture impressions daily life in his paintings. For example, in Dining Room in the Country (1913), we see a woman leaning on a window sill, relaxed and not at all posed, and in Young Girl Playing with a Dog (1913), we see simply that: a young girl enjoying a moment with her pet. While these are both certainly impressions, Bonnard was not an impressionist. He saw inadequacy in the impressionist movement’s adherence to the true colors of nature and expanded on the style with more vibrant hues (Zutter). He draws our attention to the beauty of everyday life, not by faithfully capturing a moment, like the impressionists did, but by enhancing and heightening it with vivid color, which he used to help establish mood. For example, the shocking red of the walls in Dining Room in the Country is not likely
to be the true color of the house; it is simply too brilliant to be true. However, it helps to establish contrast between the harsh interior of the house and the more gentle hues of the outdoors. In Young Girl Playing with a Dog, we see more unnatural colors�the lilac of the path and of the girl’s neck certainly are not faithful to nature, but help create a sense of beauty and calm in the painting.
If Bonnard’s stay in Saint-Tropez marked an embracing of color as a means of depicting mood, his 1926 move to the seaside Southern town of Le Cannet inspired his final commitment to the gospel of colorism. His home here, which he called Le Bosquet, had a beautiful garden, which he painted frequently. He always carried pencil and paper for sketching, and the longer he was in the South, the more he painted nature and the outdoors. The Garden Steps (1940) is typical of his late work in that it depicts his beloved garden in beautiful, brilliant colors.
A color like the blue in this sky is certainly an enhancement of the color found in nature. Along with depicting nature more frequently, as he grew older, his works became more abstract and color-based. For example, in his 1913 works Dining Room in the Country and Young Girl Playing With Dog, we can see definite, clearly recognizable flowers, plants, and even blades of grass. However, in The Garden Steps, painted thirty-seven years later, the colors are brighter and definition of the subjects is less clear. For example, we can see blobs of bright yellow flecked with orange in the foreground, which we can assume are bushes because of their placement in along garden steps. Out of context, however, we would probably not even be able to discern what they are, as there are no defined leaves or branches. These paintings from Bonnard’s Southern period are clearly continuations of his growth as a colorist, a trend that was started with his discovery of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris in the 1890s.