Family Scene, from "L'Estampe Originale"
Pierre Bonnard French
Publisher André Marty French
Not on view
Bonnard’s inclusion of his own profile at lower right, against the checkered pattern of his sister Andrée’s dress, demonstrates his delight in the close observation of his first nephew, Jean, born in May 1892. He wrote to his friend Edouard Vuillard, "I’m a thousand times more blown away by my nephew’s cute little face than by all that I’ve seen in my travels." The narrow, vertical format and oblique, close-up perspective of this composition are likely adopted from Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts, examples of which were shown in a landmark exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1890. Mary Cassatt’s own adaptation of the Japanese aesthetic and focus on domestic subject matter in her color prints exhibited the following year also likely inspired Bonnard.
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