BALTIMORE — “Bonnard and Vuillard” at the Baltimore Museum of Art sounds like it might sizzle with the bright colors and busy patterns favored by these two French postimpressionists. So it’s disappointing to find mostly subdued works on paper in this small, shallow exhibit, which is drawn entirely from the museum’s collection.
The 35 pieces concentrate primarily on the career beginnings of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), who met in art school and became lifelong friends. Lithographs, etchings and book illustrations from the 1890s reveal an outgoing, experimental side of these artists before they became homebodies focused on intimate interior scenes.
Both started out combining the fine and commercial arts, following the lead of pioneering Parisian poster designers Jules Cheret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Bonnard, a fledgling lawyer, first made a splash in 1891 with an ad for champagne, allowing him to pursue art full time. He and Vuillard, son of a military man and a seamstress, became founding members of a group called the Nabis (“prophets” in Hebrew) who sought a more subjective, symbolist art than nature-driven impressionism.
Japanese wood-block prints were particularly influential on Bonnard, who imitated their broad, flat areas of color, patterned fabrics and changing perspective. His reputation as the “Japanese Nabi” is particularly evident in an 1894 poster for La Revue Blanche, a literary journal. The woman and street urchin in his scene are pictured as dark spreading shapes punctuated by detailed faces, delicate flowers and checkered tie.
Of the two artists, Vuillard appears to have been the more adventurous, at least initially. Active in avant-garde theater circles, he illustrated performance programs, some of which are represented in the show, and created costumes and scenery. His one commercial poster on display, advertising a “restorative tonic with a meat base” for athletes, delivers more graphic punch than those by Bonnard. It depicts the newly popular sport of bicycle racing, made possible by the invention of rubber tires, with lettering juxtaposed over the large green space inside the track.
Vuillard made the most of color lithography, which was popular during the 1890s, to enliven his prints with vibrant hues and wild patterns. His striking “Two Sisters-in-Law” juxtaposes complementary figures in white and black against lemony wallpaper filled with an energetic arrangement of wispy green leaves.
Much of the exhibit is devoted to lithography, and curator Katy Rothkopf does a good job explaining and illustrating this multistep technique, which is reliant upon the repulsion of water and oil. To create such a print, a drawing is made on a stone or a metal plate with a greasy crayon or a liquid. Ink is rolled over the moistened surface so it adheres to the oily sketch but not the wet areas. Then the stone or plate is applied to a sheet of paper to create the image.
Each color requires a separate pass through the press, a process clearly revealed in the six proofs of “The Pastry Shop.” This remarkable series of images deconstructs Vuillard’s outdoor cafe scene to show how it was built up from successive applications of ink, with the pinks and grays overlapping to create a brown awning. Understanding the calculated sequence required of the final image makes the fluid shapes and detailed patterns in both artists’ lithographs seem all the more impressive.
The second gallery shifts into the early 1900s, when the Nabis began to disband and Bonnard and Vuillard went separate artistic ways. Several prints capture their appreciation of Parisian street life before they settled indoors to depict their respective domestic worlds. Bonnard’s strolling crowd in “The Boulevards” and Vuillard’s airy landscape in “The Garden in Front of the Studio” counter the intensely studied interiors for which they became famous.
In this section of the exhibit, Bonnard takes over as the stronger artist as the flat, somewhat awkward imagery of his lithographs shifts into luminous paintings filled with dazzling colors. His five canvases in the show make you forget the duller prints in the previous room.
Influences from Japanese prints can still be felt in “Woman With a Basket of Fruit,” with its tall, narrow format, cropped image and elevated viewpoint. Bonnard connects the various elements of the luscious scene with a continuous, undulating line that stretches right up the canvas, from the tip of the dog’s nose up through the tabletop and basket to the woman’s hand resting on her face.
Another of his clever compositional techniques is evident in “Basket of Fruit,” in which the vessel’s curved handle frames the almost abstract shapes of furniture in the center of the picture like an archway in a room.
While Bonnard was hitting his stride as a modern colorist, Vuillard was retreating into wallpapered rooms more somber and conventionally depicted than his earlier work. His only painting in the show, “Interior on a Grey Day, Vaucresson,” is rendered in distemper paint, a mixture of pigments, water and animal glue, to create a chalky, textured effect. It focuses on Vuillard’s mother, with whom the artist lived until she died in 1928, when he was 60. The picture conveys a musty atmosphere, as though the artist knew his better days were behind him.
WHAT: “Bonnard and Vuillard”
WHERE: Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st streets
WHEN: Through Aug. 10; Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
ADMISSION: Free
PHONE: 443/573-1700
WEB SITE: www.artbma.org
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