About this work
Executed in 1898 as a lithograph in black on wove paper , this compact, punchy print announces the song sheet *Du Pays Tourangeau* with the economy and wit that defined Bonnard's graphic work at its peak. The Van Gogh Museum, which holds a copy of this work, catalogues its visual content as fantasy figuration rendered in a caricatural mode — a suited male figure amid suggestions of puppetry, weaponry, and primitivist typography — all packed into a sheet barely a foot tall. Bonnard integrates lettering and image in a single seamless composition, applying the Japanese aesthetic he so deeply admired: a flat, reductive composition in which text and image are synthesized rather than separated . Working entirely in black, he uses stark contrast, bold silhouette, and abbreviated line to conjure character and place with startling directness. The result reads as both advertisement and artwork — a broadside from the avant-garde.
The *Répertoire des Pantins*, published in 1898, was the product of a close collaboration among poet and dramaturge Alfred Jarry, Pierre Bonnard, poet Franc-Nohain, and composer Claude Terrasse.
The Théâtre des Pantins was a puppet theatre founded by Alfred Jarry, Franc-Nohain, and Terrasse , and Bonnard — who was involved in set design and the making of marionettes for the puppet theatre — also created the covers for the music sheets composed by Terrasse.
*Du Pays Tourangeau* was the first of six Bonnard-designed covers in the series, followed by *Malheureuse Adèle*, *Velas ou l'Officier de Fortune*, *La Complainte de M. Benoit*, *Paysage de Neige*, and *Berceuse Obscène*. The series sits at the intersection of fin-de-siècle literary Paris and the visual avant-garde: Terrasse's incidental music for the Théâtre des Pantins' puppet shows outlasted the short-lived endeavour, with individual songs issued as sheet music with striking lithographed covers designed by Jarry and Bonnard.
A copy is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., as part of the Virginia and Ira Jackson Collection.
On the wall, this print rewards a viewer with a taste for the wiry, irreverent energy of Belle Époque graphic culture — anyone drawn to Toulouse-Lautrec's posters or the woodblock directness of Hokusai will find a kindred spirit here.
