Bonnard's La Revue Blanche vs. Lautrec's Divan Japonais

Introduction: Two Post-Impressionist Poster Artists

French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) was a major representative of the avant-garde Post-Impressionist Parisian school of painting. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) was likewise a remarkable French painter who left an indelible mark on the Post-Impressionist movement. Both artists were born into aristocratic families, and their works were inspired by their upbringings and the nature of the environments surrounding them. The works of the two have often been compared, and Bonnard's La Revue Blanche is frequently noted for its resemblance to Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge posters.

Visual Style and Japanese Influences

La Revue Blanche, painted in 1896, was designed as a promotional poster for a literary periodical of the era. The work contains several distinctive features — unmodulated color, depictions of flattened space, and decorative stylization — that would later be associated with Art Deco. The background of the 31 × 24⅜ inch lithograph was created primarily using light brown nuances, and its flat texture was inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. The foreground was painted in shades of medium to dark grey, while the letters at the base are rendered in white paint and are designed to stand out prominently.

Divan Japonais, painted in 1893, also drew on Japanese artistic sources and, like La Revue Blanche, depicts matters of social interest. As the San Diego Museum of Art has observed: "The poster represents a complete summary of Lautrec's artistic interests and sources. Compositionally it is an exact opposite of Edgar Degas' landmark painting The Orchestra of the Opera (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Degas' influence is implicit throughout Lautrec's art, but Divan Japonais is a direct borrowing. Stylistically, however, Lautrec looked to sources in Japanese prints: the use of diagonals, compartmentalized colour, curvilinear silhouettes, and the flattening of space." Divan Japonais is more colorful than Bonnard's painting, employing shades ranging from light brown to black, with more vivid accents of red in the woman's hair and lips.

Characters and Social Identity in La Revue Blanche

Bonnard's poster contains three distinct figures: a woman, a street urchin, and a grey shadow in the background. In the main frame, the standing woman wears a fashionable black dress and a large flowery hat, projecting an image of social opulence. The hat's contour is slightly blurred, but the flowers are carefully rendered. The use of the same color for the flowers as for the periodical's title may symbolize the purity and truth associated with both the flower and the newspaper. She holds a copy of the periodical in her hand, representing the modern, discerning reader and buyer. Her right hand placed on her hip, her confident posture, and her alluring, analytically outward gaze together construct the image of a chic, socially prominent individual.

To the left of the woman stands what appears to be a street urchin with a scarecrow-like face, dressed in black with a black-and-white scarf around his neck. He raises his right thumb and points toward the copy of the periodical held by the woman. The contours of these two characters are not clearly delimited, lending the composition an abstract quality. The urchin's face is painted in a lighter nuance, and his uncombed hair clearly suggests an inferior position on the social ladder. His gaze is directed toward the newspaper, and his open mouth implies amazement at the sight of it.

The third presence in La Revue Blanche is a large shadow, which has been interpreted over the years as an angry figure, a child, another woman, or something else entirely. The shadow is painted in the same color as the outfits of the woman and the urchin, further blurring the compositional contours. Against the faces of the two distinguishable characters and the light-colored background, the sole white element in the painting is the copy of the periodical in the woman's hand. This could imply that the periodical is meant to shed light in a world of conflict and ambiguity — a hypothesis supported by the translated title, La Revue Blanche meaning "The White Review."

Conclusion: Reflections of French Society

The two posters by Pierre Bonnard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec faithfully depict French society at the turn of the century: rich, aristocratic, confident, attractive, and outwardly superior, yet quietly tormented by internal tensions and individual differences. Both works use the visual language of Japanese printmaking to frame distinctly French social concerns, and both reward close looking for the layers of meaning embedded in posture, color, typography, and gaze.