Pierre Bonnard moved on artistically when Les Nabis, the group of artists who ushered Impressionists into the 20^th century and modernism disbanded by 1900. Yet the influence of those early years never completely dissipated. Soleil Couchant, painted two decades later, takes us back to a time when Paul Sérusier shared with Bonnard a brightly colored, nearly abstract sketch he had painted under the watchful eye of Paul Gauguin. That sketch, Le Talisman, emulated the expressive color and bold patterns of Gauguin, emphasized decorative unity, and most importantly for Bonnard, represented not a representation of a scene, but a painter’s visual sensations. More importantly, perhaps, it was Bonnard who acquired the nickname “le Nabi trés Japonard,” or, “the ultra-Japanese Nabi.”  He had been introduced to ukiyo-e woodblock prints at Goupil Gallery and became infatuated with their decorative contours, flattened color, asymmetrical compositions, and Bokashi, the graduated color transitions that are probably the ukiyo-e’s most recognizable and evocative technique. Japonisme, a French artist’s interpretation of the aesthetic, liberated Bonnard from western conventions and enabled him to produce intimate works reflecting his personal temperament.

From 1910 onward, Bonnard spent a great deal of time on the coasts of St. Tropez, Cannes, and Antibes. Soleil Couchant is presumed to have been painted near one of these coastal towns. Rather than work in the open air in the manner of the Impressionists, Bonnard mastered the ability to paint from sketches, photographs, and the power of his imagination. He was also renowned for retouching paintings and constantly subjecting them to changes, sometimes radically changing his original conception. He was obsessive in this behavior, so much so that on a visit to the Luxembourg Museum, he persuaded his friend Édouard Vuillard to distract the guards while he surreptitiously retouched one of his paintings that had been in the collection for several years.