Style Imitating Art-Pierre Bonnard’s

Welcome to this edition of Style Imitating Art!

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Daenel of Living Outside the Stacks and me. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday one of us selects an inspiration image and we each post the image on our blogs. The following Monday we share our art-inspired outfits. The following Wednesday, the curator shares all of the submissions on her blog.

This Weeks Curator

That would be me.

This Week’s Inspirational Art

Dining Room in the Country by Pierre Bonnard, 1913

My pick for this round is by an artist that was featured earlier this year by Salazar; Pierre Bonnard.

What Did I Pick This Art Work?

When I decided that I wanted to be part of the SIA team, I had a short list of artists that I wanted to work with my first year and Pierre Bonnard was one of them. When I was in art school, his work influenced me. I’ve always appreciated his work ever since. The stye of his work I’m referring to is the intensely colored and light radiating style that he developed during his later years.

If you compare the above painting to the Bonnard that we worked with in March, which was Woman With a Dog (1891) you will notice that this earlier work of his has more of a traditional color palette and has a style that could fall under Impressionists. However, like many of his contemporaries, Bonnard was ready to experiment and move on to another “ism”.

He ended up being a part of “Les Nabis”, a group who favored a bold, but a simplified style of painting. Les Nabis used flat patches of color and admired Japanese prints. Another interesting fact is that, unlike the Impressionists, Bonnard only painted from memory and never from life.

The one thing that the two paintings have in common is their subject matter. They both are of domestic life. His choice of subject matter never really changed with his style and he especially liked using his wife, Marthe in his paintings. That a small nutshell of information about Pierre Bonnard.

This paint is brimming with rich colors and and patterns. I think there should be a lot to work with here.

Here are some links to find out more about Pierre Bonnard:

Eight Essential Things to Know About Pierre Bonnard

Matthias Waschek: Pierre Bonnard’s ‘Dining Room In The Country’, a 45 minute lecture discussing all the artists and movements that led up to Bonnard’s final style development and as they relate to this painting.

A short synopsis of the painting

Will You Join the Fun?

I hope this art inspires you to create a look and that you will join us. Send me your picture of your SIA inspired outfit along with a small blurb on how you were inspired to meadowtreestyle@gmail.com June 29th. I’ll share the submissions on my blog on Wednesday June 30th.

Anyone can participate and you certainly do not have to have a blog.

If you do share your inspirations on Instagram use the hashtag #StyleImitatingArt so we know you are there. You can also tag us in the images. Our Instagram names are: @terrigardner_meadowtree, @daenelt and @14shadesofgrey.

Take care and create on!