Interpretive Resource

Following a period of producing lithographs, paintings, and posters of Parisian scenes in the style of Edouard Vuillard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard virtually reinvented his art around 1905. The artist’s new emphasis on large-scale, expansive compositions; bold forms; and above all brilliant colors shows his awareness of the work of modernists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as does his focus on Arcadian landscapes, a theme he had not previously explored. Earthly Paradise exhibits Bonnard’s daring investigations into light, color, and space. Here the artist used foliage to create a proscenium-like arch for a drama involving a rigid, brooding Adam and a recumbent, languorous Eve.

The contrast Bonnard set up between the two figures seems to follow a tradition according to which the female, seen as essentially sexual, is connected with nature, while the male, seen as essentially intellectual, is able to transcend the earthly. Heightening the image’s ambiguity is a panoply of animals, including birds, a monkey, rabbits, and of course a serpent—here reduced to a garden snake. The melancholic scene, presented as a paradise that is less than Edenic, may reflect the artist’s response to the destruction of Europe during World War I, which was raging when he began the painting.