Word: edouard
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bonnard was France's last strong link with the great 19th Century French impressionists. Now he had a prodigy to warm his heart. "Edouard," Bonnard predicted, "will be the French painter of tomorrow-providing he stays away from design schools and academies...
Bonnard would permit no one, not even himself, to criticize Edouard's work. Instead he rambled on about the colors that flood the eyes, and how to approximate their pure sparkle in paint. "Paint what you want," he told Edouard, "as you want to paint it. Treasure your freshness, your inspiration. The rest will come by itself...
Photographs of Edouard's paintings which reached the U.S. last week had a child's freshness, and also a strength that was not at all boyish. Edouard, painting in oil, spread the pigment in broad, thick strokes that gave a sense of third dimension. For subject matter he used what appealed to his wide eyes: lobsters, a landscape framed in the window, flowers, a teapot, and, lately, his mother...
...Remember Mama. Several months ago Edouard suddenly lost all interest in landscape and still life: he wanted to paint nothing except people. His mother, when she came home from her work as a charwoman, posed for Edouard: sometimes as the Madonna, draped in a shabby dressing gown, and sometimes in the nude. They worked in one of the family's two bare rooms, with Edouard's canvas propped against a suitcase on the dinner table...
Papa Capra, who runs an oyster stand in Cannes, brought home broken crates to make frames for Edouard's pictures. He also did all he could to keep his son from getting a big head. "Edouard must not be spoiled, either by the love of money or by the influence of others," he carefully explained. "That is what Bonnard told us. We can give our son all he needs...