penwithlit

In the first of these two articles looking at paintings using glue as the binder in the artist’s paint, I showed examples from the Renaissance, and from William Blake’s revival of the medium around 1800. During much of the nineteenth century, ‘glue tempera’ fell into disuse, with oils, watercolour and pastels proving far more popular until a group of young French artists started experimenting with different media.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Stork and Four Frogs (c 1889), distemper on red-dyed cotton fabric in a three paneled screen, 159.5 x 163.5 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Among the first of these is Pierre Bonnard’s extraordinary and exquisite three-panelled Japoniste screen of The Stork and Four Frogs in about 1889, as the Nabis were forming. Using more modern pigments, Bonnard has achieved very high chroma, comparable to anything in oils, and quite unlike traditional glue tempera.

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), Misia at Her Dressing…

Translated by Andrew Brown

Claudine’s House was book 5 of my 20 books of summer. Published in 1922, it form part of my side project to read books from 1922 throughout 2022. Historically, 1922 was a momentous year. I recently read Nick Rennison’s 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent year, published this year, which gives a brilliant overview: this is the year the USSR was formed, the Ottoman Empire fell, the post-Spanish flu pandemic ‘roaring ’20s’ got under way and, in publishing, ‘peak modernism’ was reached. Books published in 1922 include both Ulysses (which I keep eyeing warily) and the Waste Land. And this engaging sort-of memoir by Colette.

Lots of people have pointed to the book’s charm, as it evokes Colette’s childhood summers in a French country house, replete with puppies and kittens and hair fastened with ribbons. Through a series of short vignettes, life with her fluttering…

Several of the Nabis painted in pastels during their careers. Of the three I cover in this article, it was perhaps Ker-Xavier Roussel who was the most prolific in this medium, and created some of his finest works using it. All three benefitted from a relatively conventional training: Roussel, for instance, started as a pupil in the studio of Diogène Maillart, an academic history painter, and from there went on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. All three were founding members of the Nabis when they were students at the Académie Julian under Tony Robert-Fleury.

Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944), Women and Children by a Village (Let the little children come to me) (c 1893-95), pastel on grey paper, 37 x 52 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Roussel’s Women and Children by a Village, also known by the Biblical quotation of Let the little children come to me, from about 1893-95…

Over the last three months, I’ve shown many of the oil paintings of Paul Signac (1863-1935), but have omitted his watercolours. During his early career, he seems to have used these primarily as preparatory sketches made in front of his motif, then recomposed and adjusted them to form the basis of his studio oil paintings. Given the painstakingly slow pointillist technique, it’s hardly surprising that he found this preferable to alternatives such as oil sketching.

In time, he was persuaded to exhibit these sketches, and by the twentieth century they came to form a substantial part of his art that was seen by the public. In this and the next couple of articles I show a small selection from these. Sadly, most of his watercolours from before 1918 are no longer accessible, but here are a few from that period that reveal Signac’s other art, completely different from his oil…