Best-known for his watercolours of Venice, he was a Post-Impressionist, and an early promoter of the art of Cézanne and Matisse in the US.
Matisse
Trained in Kyiv, Kraków, and with Matisse in Paris, he is best known for his virtuoso Impressionist oil sketches.
In the last decade of his career, he visited Venice twice and painted it extensively. He also turned more to watercolours.
A pupil of Carol’s-Duran, he switched to Divisionism/Pointillism in 1891, when Georges Seurat died. Early paintings are gentle and delicate before he turned the chroma up.
After a month in Venice he had amassed 200 watercolour studies which were to keep him busy for the next two years painting shimmering views of the city.
Crippled by his arthritis, he couldn’t stop painting. Landscapes became more radical, and he painted more bathers. Some of Renoir’s last and most radical works.
Paintings of exuberant brilliant yellow mimosa, bleak self-portraits, and his favourite views around Le Cannet from his final years.
With the end of the war, his output increased significantly. A close look at the Tate’s ‘Bowl of Milk’, and Bonnard’s continuing independence.
After a visit to Berlin, his colours became more strident, and his brushstrokes looser. He also made many woodcuts, which influenced and informed his paintings.
Far from being a recluse, the last years saw him teaching avidly, painting major works, and transforming his house into a museum.
The Eclectic Light Company 