Founded in Belgium in 1889 and then published in Paris two years later, La Revue blanche disseminated work by avant-garde writers, critics, and artists such as Marcel Proust and Guillaume Apollinaire. The magazine also served as a means for the intelligentsia to discuss social and political issues of the day, most notably the Dreyfus Affair. Its financers were the Natanson brothers – Alexandre, Alfred, and Thadée – who befriended and patronized the Nabis. Bonnard, in particular, became close to Thadée and his wife Misia. In 1894, Thadée asked Bonnard to create the first print for the cover of the magazine, initiating Bonnard’s career as a poster designer and illustrator. Bonnard’s lithographic poster for La Revue blanche features an elegantly cloaked woman holding a copy of the magazine in question, and an impish newsboy, both with reddish faces. In the
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Dividing the poster vertically is the sultry image of a well-dressed woman in a large flowered hat and fashionable mantle. She is holding a copy of La revue blanche in one hand, as a small boy with gestures towards it with his thumb. Both figures look down and to the right, creating a diagonal that animates the basic grid of the composition. Behind them a menacing black shape (sometimes read as a rear view of a man wearing a top hat with collar upraised) looks at a wall of magazines.
The ‘l’ of the ‘la’ hangs from her arm like an umbrella, while the ‘a’ curves around the leg of the woman. The tail of the ‘b’ defines one side of her dress, the other ‘l’ makes a division between the two figures. The text is hand written and sustains the wobbly quality of Bonnard’s line that is especially prevalent in the urchin’s face. Note how the pattern of the chequered scarf remains flat and decorative, and where flat areas of plain color and pattern deny the illusion of
Dividing the poster vertically is the sultry image of a well-dressed woman in a large flowered hat and fashionable mantle. She is holding a copy of La revue blanche in one hand, as a small boy with gestures towards it with his thumb. Both figures look down and to the right, creating a diagonal that animates the basic grid of the composition. Behind them a menacing black shape (sometimes read as a rear view of a man wearing a top hat with collar upraised) looks at a wall of magazines.
The ‘l’ of the ‘la’ hangs from her arm like an umbrella, while the ‘a’ curves around the leg of the woman. The tail of the ‘b’ defines one side of her dress, the other ‘l’ makes a division between the two figures. The text is hand written and sustains the wobbly quality of Bonnard’s line that is especially prevalent in the urchin’s face. Note how the pattern of the chequered scarf remains flat and decorative, and where flat areas of plain color and pattern deny the illusion of