Pierre Bonnard’s Books: A Catalogue with an Introduction

Abstract

Pierre Bonnard’s studio appears today much as it did at the time of the artist’s death in 1947. For decades his villa named Le Bosquet, in the southern French town of Le Cannet, lay abandoned owing to a legal dispute over Bonnard’s estate. When finally in 1968 the villa was purchased and subsequently restored by Bonnard’s family, his great-nephewMichel Terrasse even reported finding the artist’s paint-spattered clothes and hat still in the wardrobe.When I visited in 2015 there was also a collection of books and periodicals inside a cupboard in Bonnard’s studio. It contained enough items with dedications to Bonnard, markings that appear to be in his hand, or connections to his life, to suggest a collection that at least in