In this issue of NGV Magazine, we introduce new exhibitions – Watercolour Country: 100 works from Hermannsburg and Photography: Real and Imagined at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. We continue our deep dive into Bonnard with insights into Pierre Bonnard’s love of motoring and new technology, alongside a new essay by Northern Irish author Dr Louise Wallace on a recurring figure in the artist’s lifelong visual studies – his partner and wife Marthe de Meligny. Dr Ted Gott shares the story of an ambitious painting by Marie-Victoire Lemoine, A young woman leaning on the edge of a window circa 1798-99, and Imogen Mallia-Valjan looks at the rise of the influential Shaker movement in the United States in the nineteenth century.
NGV MAGAZINE DIGITAL EXCLUSIVES
Slow Looking with Pierre Bonnard
By Dr Olivia Meehan, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne.
The practice of slow looking encourages us to engage with a work of art for a sustained period of time. Studies into museum visitor behaviour reveal that most people spend around 8-30 seconds looking at a single work of art. Bonnard suggests that the viewer plays an essential role in activating the painting, bringing it into existence through observation and contemplation, giving it a life beyond its material presence.
Bonnard did not paint from life, like the Impressionists before him, rather he traced the edges of memories, recalled dreams, and regularly engaged in imaginative practice. On his daily walks in nature, he recorded each experience in a leather-bound pocket diary. Along with his sketches, he regularly noted the weather and other observations. His small diaries were an aide memoire, providing a shorthand, for the expansive and rich environments and colours he went on to express in his paintings. A longer closer look is richly rewarded as the details emerge.
Look closer to view Bonnard’s works through a slow looking lens by clicking into the areas in the works below:
Twilight, or The croquet game (Crépuscule, ou La Partie de croquet) 1892.
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Location 1
At first glance, patterns and colours sidle up, and dissolve into each other. Three golden shapes hover over a group of figures rendered in the form of luminous silhouettes. The gold may be telling us it is twilight peering through the dense green foliage. Layers of green fold over themselves, as a patch of lawn connects with tree and bush forms. Are you starting to sense the atmosphere of a long summer evening?
Location 2
Dark patches of paint provide a contrast in the middle ground of the painting to reveal a group of figures. Their heads are turned to the woman holding a croquet mallet. She is wearing a pale-yellow dress, and the loose ends of a powder blue sash billow around her.
Location 3
They lead our eye to the playful dog who appears to tilt his head, pouncing on the spot as he anticipates a hit to the ball. Now we are beginning to appreciate the true liveliness of this work in its radiant twilight state.
The dining room in the country (Salle à manger à la campagne) 1913
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Location 1
In his interior works, Bonnard actually invites us into the picture plan by, for instance, bending and tilting tables: although we may be positioned at a dining room table, things may feel a little uneasy or precarious, sliding off in different directions.
Location 2
The doors and window are opening inwards, and a woman leaning on the windowsill stoops in towards us.
Location 3
The soft lilac blue of the sky is reflected on the table top via the door frame, a hazy atmosphere of sunlight spills inside, effortlessly connecting the two spaces.
Location 4
This light traces the edges of objects, and gently touches the faces of the two cats seated with us at the table. They appear tiny in this monumental painting, but their illumination creates an unmissable presence. What other objects are there? The intimate and sometimes troubling relationships invite us to consider how things settle together, sometimes in unusual and unexpected ways.
MAJOR TEXTILES CONSERVATION TREATMENT
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CREWELWORK BED CURTAINS
By Kate Douglas, NGV Textiles Conservator
The NGV Conservation department recently completed a major conservation treatment on the first of a pair of seventeenth-century Crewelwork bed curtains, generously donated to the NGV in 2018 by the Murdoch Foundation. Crewelwork uses two-ply worsted wool to embroider a dazzling variety of stitches on a typically linen ground. Like many historic crewelwork bedhangings, the two curtains were re-purposed to allow their continued use. These curtains hung for many decades as window furnishings in the late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’s sitting room at Cruden Farm in Langwarrin in Melbourne’s south-east.
Due to their long life as practical items, the curtains required significant treatment before they could be displayed to the public. The first curtain came into the NGV Collection with its wool embroidery intact but completely detached from its deteriorated linen backing. Conservation treatment involved stabilisation and securing the many crewelwork elements onto a new ground of historically accurate twill linen. This work was carried out by various members of the NGV Textiles Conservation team. The first panel has been transformed from a lattice of unsecured embroidery into a complete curtain, which can now be displayed hanging on a wall. The thick wool embroidery, which kept its owners comfortable as they slept in a four-poster bed almost 400 years ago, is still incredibly robust.
The works will now be able to be enjoyed for many years into the future.
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