The Cote d'Azur Painting That Set Pierre Bonnard's Auction Record

Pierre Bonnard's La Terrasse Ou Une Terrasse À Grasse (1912) sold for $19.57m at Christie's in New York on May 13, 2019. The oil on canvas work had been traded twice in the past.

Bonnard painted the grounds of a villa in Grasse in the South of France where he and his future wife, Marthe, were staying in the late winter and spring of 1912. He fell in love with the light on the Cote d'Azur, declaring: “It was like something out of the Arabian Nights." He would return often.

On the same productive visit he painted a larger, panoramic composition entitled L’Été (summer) (1912). The view from the upper-story balcony of the Villa Antoinette caught the eye of the Russian collector Ivan Morozov when both were shown in Paris in the artist's solo show that June.

Bonnard went on to paint autumn and spring-inspired works for Morozov, which are now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow along with other works in his collection seized by the Bolsheviks.

The sale beat the artist’s previous auction record by $7.97m, a 68% rise. Bonnard's previous record was set by Terrasse à Vernon (1923), which sold for $11.6m at Christie's on February 9, 2011.

A Brief History of Bonnard at Auction