École fauviste française (c.1905) - Le chemin chromatique

Technical sheet

The Chromatic Trail
Author: Attributed to Pierre Bonnard or his circle (first Nabi period, c. 1900).
School / Style: Intimate Post-Impressionism with early Fauvist drift.
Chronology: circa 1898–1905
Technique: Oil with touches of wax on panel.
Measurements: 55 × 66 cm with frame; 33.5 × 48.8 cm without frame.
Support: Original table with clear preparation, in accordance with Nabis practices.
Sign: lower right margin, partially obscured by the filling.
Splendid golden frame, contemporary and historicist, that enhances the pre-Raphaelite aura of the whole.
Condition: Excellent, with a vibrant filling and a very well-preserved surface.

2. Compositional and iconographic description

The landscape unfolds like a sensory stage, more felt than described, where a winding path organizes the scene under the intimate logic of color.

The greenish beds, pearly violets, opaline roses, and distant turquoises surprisingly accurately evoke Bonnard's luminous and domestic palette before his most well-known period in the south of France.

The trees, stylized and almost anthropomorphic, recall Nabi's taste for forms that breathe interiority, while the thick impasto—unusual but not incompatible with certain Bonnard studies—suggests a work of experimentation, perhaps executed en plein air but reworked in the studio.

The image does not seek to represent but to emulsion a memory, something profoundly Bonnardian: the landscape as an affective impression, stained with pure subjectivity.

It is a piece of enigmatic aura, whose chromatic energy sets it apart from academic productions, placing it within the creative orbit of a major artist.

Style, Attribution, and Valuation

The combination of a high palette, the sinuous structure of the path, deliberate absence of contour, and lyrical vibration of color allows for a plausible attribution to Pierre Bonnard's close circle, or even to his own hand in an early phase.

Its similarity to landscape studies by Nabis — such as those carried out by Bonnard in Île-de-France — is striking: the fragmented composition, the sensory perception of the environment, the emotional treatment of the landscape, and the brushstroke that suggests more than it defines.

Due to its rarity, its material power, and its coherent connection with Bonnard pre-1910, this work acquires a highly exclusive and collectible character, making it a piece that can generate great interest both curatorial and market-wise, especially in circles focused on French avant-garde prior to Fauvism.