By the Sea, Under the Pines 1921

Curator: Ah, this feels like stepping into a half-remembered dream! This painting, "By the Sea, Under the Pines" by Pierre Bonnard, painted in 1921... It just breathes a lazy summer afternoon. Editor: It does, but for me, the materials speak first. It's oil on canvas, plain enough, but look at the application! Short, broken brushstrokes – very immediate, almost impulsive. Was this done en plein air, I wonder? It certainly gives that impression. Curator: Absolutely! Bonnard was all about capturing the fleeting moment, the sensory experience. He wanted to bottle the light, the warmth, the very air of a place. Notice how the figures are almost swallowed by the landscape? They become part of the scene. It reminds me a little bit of that feeling you get when you look at your own family in old photos, they fade into memory almost as a sense and no longer faces. Editor: They’re flattened, that’s for sure. It's all surface, isn’t it? We’re not meant to delve too deeply into individual stories here. Rather, Bonnard highlights the culture of leisure; how painting becomes a method of producing idealized views of a bourgeois domesticity… picnics by the seaside, that sort of thing. The social and artistic making goes hand in hand. Curator: But it's also so much more than that. It is about family, but through Bonnard's unique, very subjective filter. He's not just documenting, he's transforming reality into something utterly his own, full of colour and almost abstract emotion, it is incredibly intimate and full of love! Do you get that too or am I alone in my rapture, haha? Editor: Oh, it is beautiful! It's just... it also makes me think about where the paint came from, the cloth for the canvas, the labor of harvesting and processing these materials so that Bonnard could capture this specific slice of bourgeois life. It’s a production, really. Curator: Well, you know, isn't all art a production of sorts? Whether it's extracting pigment or excavating memories... It is about sharing something vital that has always been with you to someone else! I like the way he invites you to notice a moment of serene, lived reality here! I'm not so worried about the specific pigment source from the painting that captures a specific intimacy, though. Editor: True, very true! Still, next time I look at a landscape, I'm going to be thinking about the material world behind the view, you know? Curator: Fair enough! As for me, I’ll continue dreaming of those sun-drenched afternoons under the pines! I imagine that this painting always brings me into the serenity Bonnard had by the seaside at that moment...