Evening in Paris

The idea of creating two paintings about life in the streets of Paris connected by the traditional theme of changing times of day was prepared by the whole of Bonnard’s previous output. A role was also played here by the location of his studio on the Rue de Douai, which runs into the Boulevard de Clichy almost where it meets the Boulevard des Batignolles at the Place de Clichy. Back then, this district was already especially lively and, constantly returning to motifs of movement in the street during the second half of the 1890s and the following decade, Bonnard kept thinking about a multi-part composition that would be capable of accommodating more impressions than a single picture.
In 1896 and 1900 he produced two triptychs depicting the Place de Clichy. The first of them is called The Ages of Life. The idea of juxtaposing different stages in life is retained to some degree in the two-work set acquired by Morozov as well, with each painting containing personages of three ages. The starting points that led to Evening in Paris were Boulevard des Batignolles or The Cab Horse (1895, National Gallery, Washington DC) and lithographs in the series Some Aspects of Parisian Life created at that same time,
Japanese influences clearly manifested themselves both in the lithographs and in Evening in Paris. The frieze-like composition is reminiscent of the techniques used by Kiyonaga, and the evening street scene of Hiroshige’s colour woodcut print Night View of Saruwaka-machi from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856).

Commentary by Albert Kostenevich