The Nabis

By Albert Kostenevitch

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of the group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves “the Nabis”, from the Hebrew word for “prophet”. Influenced by Odilon Redon, Puvis de Chavannes, popular imagery, and Japanese woodblock printing, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton and Denis (to name the most prominent members) revolutionised the spirit of decorative technique during one of the richest periods in French painting.
Although the increasing individualism of their works often threatened to weaken their unity, the Nabis were above all a group of close friends. The artwork presented in this book − varying between Bonnard’s guilelessness, Vuillard’s ornamental and mysterious works, Denis’s soft languor and Vallotton’s almost bitter roughness − plunges us into the deep source of their creative talents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parkstone International
• Release date: May 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783101801

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Text: Albert Kostenevich

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© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA

© Estate Bonnard / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris

© Estate Denis / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris

© Aristide Maillol / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris

© Estate Matisse / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / Les Héritiers Matisse

© Estate Roussel / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris

© Jan Verkade

© Estate Vuillard / Artists Rights Society, New York, USA / ADAGP, Paris

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyrights on the works reproduced lie with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we would appreciate notification.

ISBN: 978-1-78310-180-1

Albert Kostenevich

The Nabis

Contents

The Group

Major Artists

Félix Vallotton

Ker Xavier Roussel

Pierre Bonnard

Édouard Vuillard

Maurice Denis

BIOGRAPHIE

Index

Notes

1. Paul Sérusier, The Talisman, 1888.

Oil on wood, 27 x 21.5 cm.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The Group

Although Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, Roussel and Vallotton have gone down in the history of painting as artists belonging to a single group, their works, in spite of some common features, in fact display more differences than similarities. They were bound together in their youth by membership in a circle which bore a curious name — the Nabis. Art historians, who see the Nabis’ work as a special aspect of Post-Impressionism, have long resigned themselves to this purely conventional label. The word Nabis says next to nothing about the aims and methods of these artists, but probably on account of their very diversity it has proved impossible to replace the label by a more meaningful term, or at least one which fits better into the established scheme of things. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg possesses a splendid collection of works by Bonnard and his friends, and a much smaller collection of no less artistic merit is housed in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. All these works are presented in this book.

An interest in Nabis painting arose very early in Russia. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, it emerged not among art lovers as a whole, but among a tiny group of art collectors who were ahead of the general public in their appreciation of new developments. Works by Bonnard, Denis and Vallotton found their way to Moscow, and later to St. Petersburg, soon after they had been painted, some of them even being specially commissioned. In those days the purchase by Russian collectors of new French painting was a defiance of what was accepted as good taste. In contrast to earlier times, these new connoisseurs of painting came not from the aristocracy but from the merchant class. Several well-educated representatives of the new type of up-and-coming entrepreneurs, used to relying on their own judgement, also became highly active and independently-minded figures in the art market. Two of them, Sergei Shchukin (1854-1937) and Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) formed collections which at the beginning of the twentieth century ranked among the best in the world.

The name of Shchukin is probably more widely known, and this is not surprising: his boldness, seen by many of his contemporaries as mere folly, soon attracted attention. He had brought the most notable works of Henri Matisse, André Derain and Pablo Picasso to Moscow before Paris had had time to recover from the shock that they caused. Even today specialists are astonished by Shchukin’s unerring taste and keen judgement. He proved able to appreciate Matisse and Picasso at a time when so-called connoisseurs still felt perplexed or even irritated by their paintings. The Nabis, however, attracted Shchukin to a lesser degree, perhaps because their work did not appear sufficiently revolutionary to him. He acquired one picture by Vuillard and several by Denis, among them the Portrait of Marthe Denis, the Artist’s Wife, Martha and Mary and The Visitation. Later another canvas was added to these, Figures in a Springtime Landscape (The Sacred Grove), one of the most ambitious and successful creations of European Symbolism, which was passed on to Sergei Shchukin by his elder brother Piotr. But Shchukin failed to notice Bonnard. Regarding Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin as the key-figures in Post-Impressionism, Shchukin — and he was not alone in this — saw the works of Bonnard and his friends as a phenomenon of minor importance.

2. Maurice Denis, Sun Patches on the Terrace, 1890.

Oil on cardboard, 24 x 20.5 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

3. Paul Gauguin, Vision of the Sermon

 (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), 1888.

Oil on canvas, 72.2 x 91 cm.

National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

4. Jan Verkade, Decorative Landscape, 1891-1892.

Oil on canvas. Private collection.

5. Paul Sérusier, Old Breton Woman under a Tree, c. 1898.

Oil on canvas. Musée départemental Maurice Denis Le Prieuré,

Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

6. Mogens Ballin, Breton Landscape, c. 1891.

Oil on paper. Musée départemental Maurice Denis Le Prieuré,

Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

He did in fact make one attempt to get into Bonnard. In 1899, he bought Bonnard’s painting Fiacre at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, but later he returned it. Today it is in the National Gallery in Washington. Shchukin used to say that a picture needed to be in his possession for some time before he made his final decision about it, and art dealers accepted his terms. The man who really appreciated the Nabis and who collected their pictures over a considerable period of time was Ivan Morozov. His taste for their work must have been cultivated by his elder brother Mikhail, one of the first outside France to appreciate their painting. Mikhail Morozov owned Behind the Fence, the first work by Bonnard to find its way to Russia. He also had in his collection Denis’s Mother and Child and The Encounter. When in 1903 Mikhail Morozov’s untimely death put an end to his activities as a collector, his younger brother took up collecting with redoubled energy, adding to his collection judiciously. Seeing in Bonnard and Denis the leading figures of the Nabis group, the best exponents of its artistic aims, he concentrated on their work. As a result, Bonnard and Denis were as well represented in his collection as the Impressionists, Cézanne and Gauguin.

After purchasing Denis’s picture Sacred Spring in Guidel at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1906, Morozov made a point of becoming acquainted with the artist. That summer he visited Denis at his home in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he bought the as yet unfinished Bacchus and Ariadne and commissioned Polyphemus as a companion piece. In the same year, or at the beginning of the next, he placed his biggest order with Denis, The Legend of Psyche, a series of panels for his Moscow mansion in Prechistenka Street. At Morozov’s invitation, Denis came to Moscow to install the panels and add the finishing touches. Relations between the patron and the artist became firm and friendly. Morozov sought the Frenchman’s advice; at Denis’s prompting, for example, Morozov purchased one of Cézanne’s finest early works, Girl at the Piano. Denis introduced Morozov to Maillol. The result of this acquaintance was a commission for four large bronze figures which later adorned the same hall as Denis’s decorative panels, superbly complementing them.

The second ensemble of decorative panels commissioned by Morozov is even more remarkable when seen today. Created by Bonnard, it comprises the triptych Mediterranean and the panels Early Spring in the Countryside and Autumn, Fruit-Picking. At Morozov’s suggestion Bonnard also painted the pair of works, Morning in Paris and Evening in Paris. Together with the triptych, these rank among Bonnard’s greatest artistic achievements.

St. Petersburg had no collectors on the scale of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. Only Georges Haasen, who represented a Swiss chocolate firm in what was then the capital of Russia, collected new French painting. He was especially interested in artists like the Nabis group. Among other works, he had in his collection Bonnard’s The Seine near Vernon and six paintings by Vallotton (all now in the Hermitage). Haasen knew Vallotton well: the artist stayed with him in St. Petersburg and painted portraits of the businessman himself and of his wife. No complete list of the works in Haasen’s collection has survived, but there is enough information to indicate that it was very well put together. The catalogue of the St. Petersburg exhibition held in 1912, A Hundred Years of French Painting, contains a number of works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Vallotton from Haasen’s collection that were not among those which entered the Hermitage in 1921.

7. Édouard Vuillard, Chestnut Trees.

Distemper on cardboard,

mounted on canvas, 110 x 70 cm.

Private collection.

8. Ker Xavier Roussel, Women in the Countryside, c. 1893.

Pastel on paper, 42 x 26 cm. Private collection, Paris.

9. Ker Xavier Roussel, Garden, 1894.

Oil on cardboard mounted on canvas, 120 x 91.4 cm.

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

There was one more Russian collector who showed