A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group Les Nabis, Pierre Bonnard embraced expressive color, flattened forms, and decorative composition, drawing inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints and the work of Paul Gauguin. The Nabis challenged distinctions between fine and decorative art, expanding beyond easel painting to prints, screens, fans, wallpaper, tapestry, and more.

Bonnard’s family had a country house in Le Grand-Lemps, in southeastern France, where he painted frequently in the gardens throughout his life. Made in 1906, this landscape dates from several years after the Nabis disbanded around 1899-1900. Bonnard continued to explore the decorative sensibility he developed with the group, increasingly treating the picture surface as a space where forms, patterns, light, and color could merge rather than conform to traditional perspective and depth.

Painting was an ongoing process of discovery for Bonnard. Pablo Picasso famously characterized his palette as “a potpourri of indecision”. In Paysage du Grand-Lemps, Bonnard’s use of painted and exposed passages of canvas, together with layered shades of green and blue, creates a flattened, tree-lined landscape in which color and surface become as important as the scene itself.