Collection: Pierre Bonnard   1867 - 1947 

Born in the Paris suburbs, Bonnard initially enrolled at the Académie Julian and also at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris after a short period of study at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. During this period he befriended contemporaries Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, amongst others, and subsequently, in 1889, they founded a group called the Nabis (the Hebrew word for prophets).

Now exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants, Bonnard produced his first lithographic poster, France-Champagne, in 1891, inspiring Toulouse-Lautrec to do the same. Working and travelling throughout the latter half of his life, in 1912 he was offered the Légion d’Honneur, though he declined to accept it, and had a major retrospective in 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago. He died in 1947.