This painting is considered Bonnard’s last completed work and records the almond tree in the garden of Le Bosquet. Visible from his bedroom window, the tree in blossom was a motif he felt compelled to return to: ‘every spring it forces me to paint it’, he said. One of the few canvases tacked to his studio wall over the last year of life, Bonnard worked on it until his death in January 1947. In his last weeks, when he was too weak to hold the brush unaided, he enlisted his nephew, Charles Terrasse, to help him apply final touches. Asking him to bring the canvas to his bedside, he sought to correct the colour, noting ‘this green, on the ground – there – it’s not right. It needs some yellow’.
Pierre Bonnard
French 1867–1947
Almond tree in bloom (L'Amandier en fleurs) 1946–47
oil on canvas
54.5 × 37.5 cm
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
On deposit at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle
Gift of Mr and Mrs Charles Zadok, 1964 (RF 1977 87)
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / image RMN-GP
This product is produced in collaboration with Musée d’Orsay and Rmn - Grand Palais, Paris, France
