The art collector Andries Bonger (1861–1936) first fully immersed himself into Odilon Redon’s (1840–1916) universe in 1894 at a retrospective organized by the art gallery Durand-Ruel in Paris. An annotated catalogue in Bonger’s archive marks this defining event. In it, he scribbled down in pencil scraps of his conversation with the artist at the gallery together with a few impressions of his work (see Bonger’s Handwritten Notes on Redon). The seemingly innocuous document bears witness to Bonger’s first purchases and hence to the beginning of the intimate relationship between artist and collector.
The exhibition was a defining moment in Redon’s life too: it marked a period of transition for the fifty-four-year-old artist, in which the black materials and dark motifs that had been his trademark since the 1870s gradually gave way to a more colourful palette and lighter subject matter. He also abandoned his self-imposed seclusion in order to present himself to the art world at Durand-Ruel and enter Parisian life. The retrospective brought him dozens of reviews, recognition as a pioneer of Symbolism in visual art, and a new generation of collectors, whose ranks Bonger was about to join.
In Durand-Ruel’s galleries with their deep-red, panelled walls, Bonger was presented for the first time with a complete overview of Redon’s oeuvre (). He was able to admire over a hundred early noirs (charcoal drawings) with titillating titles such as Le Secret, Elixir de mort, Cauchemar and Apparition, as well as the most important series of prints and ‘pièces modernes’ from Redon’s lithographic output, about ten more recent paintings and a similar number of pastels. Bonger’s catalogue included a description by the critic André Mellerio (1862–1943), a friend of Redon, of the new work in colour as a ‘strange glow’ that had spread across Redon’s ‘vision sévère’ (severe vision), opening up the artist’s black oeuvre. He also found clear guidance in Mellerio’s text on how to experience and fathom Redon’s universe: ‘The first sensation that his work inspires is one of astonishment mingled with a vague fear and admiration. One is surprised in the face of a conception so different from the ordinary, which suddenly seizes us and hurls us from the order of ideas in which we are accustomed to live. Then the eye becomes more fixed, the mind reasons, emotions are moved and we are overcome. […] That is what we find in him, what so few works give us, the thrill of a world beyond.’
Bonger was not put off by his first sight of Redon’s work and made his initial ambitious purchase, acquiring no fewer than five prints and two drawings, and shortly afterwards another drawing that had remained unsold (see Bonger’s Handwritten Notes on Redon, fig. e). He noted down the artist’s address on the catalogue: ‘10, rue du Regard’. Immediately after returning to Hilversum in the Netherlands, Bonger kindly sent Redon a copy of Eugène Delacroix’s (1798–1863) recently published diary, which they are sure to have discussed. Redon wrote back about the pleasure the publication had given him, initiating a correspondence that would continue until Redon’s death.
The three-hundred-plus letters that went back and forth between them formed the glue of their relationship, which grew over the years into a long-lasting alliance and even a close friendship. In Bonger, Redon found an intelligent and equally well-read foil, with whom he could correspond on equal terms and who sometimes picked up on the latest ideas from Paris even sooner than he did. Redon in turn suggested reading matter to Bonger, including the recently published novel Les nourritures terrestres by André Gide (1869–1951) in 1897. Bonger had beaten him to it and was able to reply a week later: ‘You can scarcely imagine the joy your letter gave me. When it reached me, I had just finished the André Gide you spoke of and I too enjoyed it immensely. […] So it would be an immense pleasure to talk to you about the book and everything that I love in it.’ The bulk of the correspondence is made up of thoughtful exchanges like this. Virtually all the letters are deep and heartfelt and extend to literature, poetry, philosophy and music. Even their lengthy reflections on the weather have a certain depth and lyricism. Tellingly, notes of financial transactions are relegated to short postscripts at the end of the letters.
In the years following his first purchases via Durand-Ruel, Bonger became an increasingly fanatical collector, admirer and ultimately good friend of Redon. This essay shows how Redon came to choose the Dutch businessman as a collector, friend and confidant. Bonger, meanwhile, eventually came to prefer Redon over the other artists in his collection: his Redons initially shared the walls of his home with works by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Adolphe Monticelli (1824–1886) and Emile Bernard (1868–1941), among others. Slowly but surely, though, Bonger focused all his attention and resources on the man who, in his view, far surpassed his contemporaries in both artistry and profundity. Bonger’s efforts resulted in one of the largest collections of Redon’s work. He went on to acquire no fewer than twenty-nine paintings, nineteen pastels and twenty-nine drawings, as well as the artist’s complete graphic oeuvre. Thanks to an arrangement between Bonger’s heirs and the Dutch state, as many as thirty-six paintings and drawings are now held by the Van Gogh Museum.
Interior of Galeries Durand-Ruel, 16 rue Laffitte, Paris, 1879. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
A somewhat aristocratic view of life
What drove a Dutch insurance man like Bonger to build such a progressive collection of an artist as elusive as Redon? While Bonger did indeed make a career for himself in the insurance business, he craved intellectual nourishment and elevation throughout his life. From an early age, he looked down on ordinary folk and the more prosaic aspects of everyday life with aristocratic disdain. In his letters to his parents, he expressed his aversion to ‘idle chitchat, bland pleasantries, platitudes and idiotic conceits’. Not that his own background or upbringing provided much justification for such attitudes, but he always strove to rise above his milieu.
Although music played an important role in the family, Bonger described his youth as hard and lacking in colour. To his great frustration, he was not permitted to continue his studies and he duly took a position as a junior clerk at Geo Wehry & Co., a firm trading in tobacco, coffee, tea and rubber. During his training at the company’s Paris branch he slaked his ‘insatiable thirst to know more’ by seeking out people who could instruct him in the higher arts. The elderly Dutch writer and critic Conrad Busken Huet (1826–1886) provided him with a constant flow of books and reviews while he was in France, while the art dealer Theo Van Gogh (1857–1891) taught him so much about art that he wrote to his parents: ‘my eyes are opened wider every day’. Through Theo, Bonger came into contact with Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard, from whom he bought and was given several works. In 1889 Theo married Bonger’s sister Johanna (Jo) (1862–1925), at which point the two friends became brothers-in-law. While his colleagues took full advantage of the Parisian nightlife, Bonger spent his evenings in his bed beneath a counter in his firm’s warehouse. Following a tirade about ‘drinking, eating, smoking and puffed-up people’, he wrote with relief that ‘thank God there are books and hence communion with the chosen’. It was this that Bonger yearned for: contact with people who distinguished themselves through their talent, sensitivity and vision. Literature allowed him to nourish himself from their intellect. As Paul Bourget (1852–1935) set out in his Essais de psychologie contemporaine, of which Bonger was an admirer, the experiences of a real life that went on outside the reader’s window – a flower blooming, a sultry summer night or an attractive woman – were no match for the deeply felt and existential revelations that contemporary French writers and poets offered him in his lodgings, where he could forge a direct, spiritual connection with the author. In his spare time, Bonger kept well away from the wild parties in the bohemian stronghold of Montmartre, and visited the Théâtre-Français, the Opéra and the Musée du Louvre instead, to enjoy Paris as ‘the focal point of civilization, of high intellectual culture and of fine taste’.
Bonger returned to the Netherlands in 1892 to take up a position as an insurance agent, following in his father’s footsteps. Since he had attempted unsuccessfully to make a living in Paris as a literary correspondent or art dealer, the move has been described as a capitulation to bourgeois life. All the same, another interpretation is also possible in that pursuing a business career enabled Bonger to earn the money he needed to build a collection and join the upper echelons of the Parisian cultural world. His second wife, Françoise van der Borch van Verwolde (1887–1975), later made this point very clearly: ‘Bonger wanted to get ahead. Firstly, because he enjoyed his work and sensed that he had the strength to advance; and secondly, because it provided him with the means to create an environment conducive to his personal development. Bonger felt no disdain towards material prosperity, but he did believe that it ought to be a means of raising a person intellectually to a higher level.’
Eyes closed to reality
The newly minted businessman Bonger and his first wife Anne (Annie) Bonger-van der Linden (1859–1931) moved into the Villa Jeanne in Hilversum, where he found a nice spot for the Bernards and Van Goghs he had brought with him from Paris (). Whenever he made a business trip to the city that had become so precious to him, he invariably found time to visit the Louvre and was thus able to attend the major Redon retrospective in 1894. He might even have travelled specifically for that purpose, since the artist had fascinated him for several years by then. Busken Huet had introduced him to art criticism and it is highly likely that he was already reasonably familiar with Redon’s work through literary figures like Jan Veth (1864–1925), Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) and Emile Hennequin (1859–1888). Bonger’s very first acquaintance with Redon’s work must have occurred some years earlier. In 1889 Theo Van Gogh acquired a painting directly from the artist for his own collection: the original painted version of what would become Redon’s most famous motif, Closed Eyes (). Theo viewed the purchase as a personal investment for the art dealership he hoped to set up with his brother Vincent and in which he closely involved Bonger as well. The friends are sure to have discussed the work fervently. The struggle for direction within modern art was a constant topic of conversation between the two, whose preferences differed. Theo was particularly appreciative of artists who visually represented their personal sensations of modern life. Bonger had different ideas, which are neatly summed up by Gustave Kahn’s (1859–1936) famous definition of Symbolism: ‘The essential aim of our art is to objectify the subjective (the externalization of the idea) instead of subjectifying the objective (nature seen through the eyes of temperament).’ Like the figure in Closed Eyes, Bonger preferred to close his eyes to visible reality. He later wrote that ‘with his glorification of nature’ Emile Zola (1840–1902) would ‘gallop on like a dead horse’. According to Bonger, a work of art ought to express the rich inner world of the artist and hence offer the viewer a spiritual experience and urge them to reflect on the essence of human existence. As Bonger pursued his quest, Redon’s art came to him as nothing less than a revelation. He later wrote: ‘When there was nothing more in the intellectual sphere, when all had been torn down, then came Redon.’
The first meeting between Redon and Bonger took place shortly afterwards, on 8 November 1891. Annie recorded the event: ‘It had long been an ambition of [An] Dries to make his acquaintance, and he was not disappointed. He came back full of admiration for Redon. They have arranged a rendezvous at the Louvre next Sunday, and Redon will then come here to see my portrait, which Bernard will bring along.’
A select circle of initiates
The first group of Redons, purchased at Durand-Ruel, immediately granted Bonger entry to an exclusive circle of enthusiasts as well as a new identity in the spirit of the French ‘amateur’. While Redon’s collectors included a number of actual aristocrats, the others were no longer distinguished automatically by their noble origins as would have been the case in previous centuries. Many worked as lawyers, for example, but combined this with writing plays or art criticism or composing sonatas. Their careers and social status allowed them to create a haven within the protective walls of their libraries and studies, in which they could feed their spirit and intellect with art, literature and music. They set themselves apart from other bourgeois through the refined sensitivity with which they shaped their collections. Their progressive preference for Redon united them in a self-selected aristocracy of taste. The author of the first catalogue of Redon’s graphic work, the Belgian lawyer and politician Jules Destrée (1863–1936), described the motives of these initiés, among whom he included himself, as ‘feeling so unusual, imagining themselves candidly as the first cluster of peaks to catch the light of the rising sun, within the anonymous and multitudinous crowd’.
Writer and painter Kasper Niehaus (1889–1974) compared Bonger to ‘the French amateurs’ and described the cult as an ‘un-Dutch phenomenon’. All the same, Bonger was not the only person in the Netherlands to focus on the cultural elite of Paris in general and Redon in particular: Redon had already caused a furore in the 1880s among the ‘Tachtigers’, a modern literary movement named after the same decade, while the painter Isaac Israels (1865–1934) was another great admirer. Having purchased the last copy of Redon’s most coveted print series, Dans le rêve, which appeared in a tiny edition of twenty-five, Israels wistfully commented that he would love to get hold of ‘the portraits’ of the other twenty-four owners. Bonger must have had similar feelings following his purchase from Durand-Ruel. The names of Redon’s most important collectors featured prominently in the catalogue as lenders (, , , , , , , and ) in what was a deliberate strategy on the part of the artist and the gallery to win over new buyers. As a lover of French literature, the names of Huysmans and Gide must have been especially pleasing for Bonger to see.
Redon as one of the chosen
Along with his immersion in books, these first purchases thus assured Bonger of ‘communion with the chosen’ without having to leave home. They brought him into contact with other admirers, but above all with the artist himself. To Bonger, the work of art was a direct expression of its maker’s spirit, which made personal contact essential.
Unlike the shabby bohemians he encountered at Theo’s home, for whose liberated lifestyle he could muster little respect, the twenty-years-older Redon embodied an entirely different type of artist: one who precisely matched Bonger’s ideal image of elite Parisian culture. Redon was well read, refined, sensitive and aristocratic. In his later years, he was described by print dealer and publisher Johannes Hendricus de Bois (1878–1946) as: ‘an exceptional man […] but not in the manner that many have represented him, that is to say as a wild fantasist with long hair, floppy tie and Garibaldi hat. Far from it: he is a gentle, dignified, truly French old gentleman, dressed in black with a white tie, soft of speech and smile’ (). Even in his younger days, the artist had been respectable and restrained in appearance, channelling his turbulence and vehemence entirely into his art. Redon screened off his sensitive nature from the outside world as much as he could. He never, for instance, opened his studio to the public as many of his contemporaries did, and he worked in immense tranquillity and seclusion in his living quarters. The artist is depicted on the cover of the magazine Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui, staring in apparent meditation at the sheet of paper on his easel ().
Bonger as one of the chosen
Around the self-imposed isolation of his domestic arrangements, Redon constructed a second protective circle of loyal collectors, whom he called his fidèles. Although Bonger came to occupy a special place, he was by no means the only collector with whom Redon struck up a relationship. These friendships were instrumental to some extent, in that they guaranteed the artist stable sales, without his having to venture out too often in public – a reticence brought about by the widespread indifference or even hostility towards his work. One of Redon’s noirs caused a furore, for instance, at an 1882 exhibition in the offices of newspaper Le Gaulois on a Paris boulevard. As they passed the shop, passengers on the omnibus would point and jeer at these most intimate expressions of his soul.
The Durand-Ruel exhibition of 1894 was Redon’s first major show since then and the comforting domesticity of the rooms and the gallery’s exclusivity were well suited to his work. Redon was convinced of the importance of a conducive environment for his art, one capable of reflecting its personal origins, which is why he preferred to place his work with collectors he knew well and trusted. He wrote to Bonger: ‘How these artistic media are sensitive! They’re like the kind of shy people who can seem negligible in certain contexts but in the intimacy of a small gathering give the true measure of their brilliance.’
When they met again in Paris where the Dutchman had purchased his first works from Durand-Ruel, Redon was establishing the intimate relationship between artist and collector that he considered essential. To Redon’s mind, Bonger was of sufficient calibre to be worthy of his art. Within the space of a few letters, he already felt able to write to him: ‘Let me say again what has often occurred to me – that my art has brought me into contact with some very fine people; some excellent friendships have come of it. I am increasingly surrounded by loving and devoted friends.’
Neither bohemian nor bourgeois
We are better informed now about Bonger’s complex character thanks to the publication of the annotated correspondence with Redon in 2022. He himself destroyed the majority of his much more extensive correspondence, which meant that, until recently, researchers had to make do with the earlier letters to his parents and a few very unfavourable anecdotes about him that were noted down after his death by Vincent Willem Van Gogh (1890–1978), the son of Theo and Bonger’s sister Jo.
The image of Bonger that emerges from the correspondence is that of an intelligent and sensitive man with an exceptionally strong sense of duty. ‘But one must carry on regardless, like a good soldier’, he wrote wistfully to Redon in 1911. Although he always dutifully fulfilled his everyday obligations, the banality and monotony of that life were an inexhaustible affliction for a man of his nature. ‘How I have suffered in my life – and still do every day – because of this conflict!’, he had complained to Redon some years earlier. According to the artist, this duality was the result of an attitude to life that he also recognized in himself and which arose from an aristocratic refusal to identify with the bourgeois on the one hand or the bohemian on the other.
What Bonger found in Redon’s art was a potent antidote to the banality of everyday life. He wrote to Redon: ‘You cannot imagine the extent to which you occupy my mind amid the work that, alas, absorbs almost all of my strength.’
At the same time, however, Bonger was perfectly clear that this mental world, his contact with Redon and his support of the artist, only existed by grace of the funds provided by his career. He wrote in another letter to the artist: ‘It makes me happy, you may well believe, not least for the contentment you feel at my love of your art. My daily labours, over and beyond the material security they provide, will not have been entirely in vain. […] This consoles me in my many anxieties and spares me many regrets.’
A rather one-sided image of Bonger’s wife Annie had developed, shaped largely by Andries’s cry of despair shortly after he married her: ‘Sometimes I think she’s been lying on a marble tomb for years. […] There’s no question of an intellectual life – I had so much more stimulation on that side before my marriage.’ Various sources document that Annie was an aloof woman and that the couple supposedly avoided each other at home as much as they could. The correspondence confirms that they did indeed develop a modus vivendi of their own over the years. Annie’s interest in Redon’s work and her piano playing in the evening suggest, however, that she did actually share to some extent in her husband’s intellectual activities.
Through her correspondence with Redon’s wife and various visits between the two couples, Annie actively contributed to the relationship, just as Camille Redon (1853–1923) assumed some of her husband’s social and organizational duties. Bonger’s second wife described Annie in more appreciative terms: ‘With her calm nature, cultivation and refined taste, his wife was a true companion for him, who shared his interest in art and literature and who, with the greatest devotion, provided him with the care he so desperately needed in his demanding work and a nervous disposition that tended almost to oversensitivity.’ Redon courteously involved Annie in the relationship by always sending her his regards, and those of Camille too, in his letters. He even dedicated a subtle still life of a peach to her, which he inscribed ‘à Madame Bonger – respectueusement – Odilon Redon’ ().
Odilon Redon, Peach, 1901. Oil on canvas, 20.5 × 25.5 cm. Inscribed: ‘à Madame A. Bonger – respectueusement’. Private collection
Building the collection
Bonger carefully built up his extensive collection of Redons between 1894 and 1908. His purchases in Paris and The Hague were soon joined by many others, yet each new acquisition seems only to have whetted Bonger’s appetite for the master’s work. He was able to track the artist’s development closely through Redon’s own letters and his daily scrutiny of reviews in international newspapers and magazines. In the wake of his first acquisitions of female profiles in charcoal, he followed Redon’s transition from working in black materials to working in colour, and in 1898 he purchased one of the artist’s first small paintings, done two years earlier. After Redon wrote to him in 1896 that he was making increasing use of pastels,
Bonger immediately sounded him out about the possibility of adding pastels to his collection. Working in colour gave Redon a new, light-hearted source of pleasure. At the same time, the works sold well, enabling him to move into a larger apartment. Bonger bought most of the works in his collection directly from the artist: as many as forty paintings and drawings, as well as all the prints, came to the Netherlands via this route. The line between maker and buyer was so short, in fact, that after one big purchase by the collector, Redon found his studio walls entirely bare. Bonger also frequently acted to ‘save’ Redons from private collections that came up for auction. His purchases at these sales prevented the works from falling into ‘the hands of someone indifferent to your art’ – rescue missions for which Redon thanked him effusively.
The 1903 sale exhibition
Bonger bought several dozen works at sale exhibitions, mostly at Durand-Ruel. Redon was granted other shows of this kind at the gallery after 1894, for which Bonger always tried to travel to Paris despite his busy schedule. In 1902 Bonger offered to lend his collection to a forthcoming exhibition, while thinking back wistfully to 1894. He wrote to Redon: ‘I shall never forget the feelings inspired in me by the 1894 exhibition, I can bring its every detail to mind. That little room holding your lithographs and etchings, how overjoyed I should be to see it again!’ Bonger lent four important items to the 1903 exhibition, which meant that he himself was now listed in the catalogue among the prestigious lenders. His name appears there above those of other prominent collectors like Fabre, Fontaine and Frizeau. He wrote to Redon of how he imagined meeting these other admirers: ‘All your friends and collectors will no doubt be there too, united in one and the same sentiment of admiration and gratitude.’
Bonger bought no fewer than eight new works during his visit to this particular sales exhibition – virtually everything that was not yet in the hands of other collectors. A striking number of purchases were (floral) still lifes. These works were highly sought after and so accounted for a steadily growing proportion of Redon’s output. For all his unique identity in a period when most artists were aligned with a particular school or style, Redon thus showed himself to be sensitive to the demands of the art market. Redon wrote to Bonger in 1907, ‘Here everyone is, for the time being, devoted to my flowers’. Over the years, Bonger would acquire as many as twenty of them in total.
This awareness of the market also explains the increasing proportion of portraits in Redon’s oeuvre. The relative number of them in the 1903 catalogue is striking: no fewer than six portraits, several of which were of collectors’ wives. Together with still lifes, these portrait commissions took up the majority of Redon’s time around 1906. Annie Bonger-van der Linden was also immortalized by the master (). Bonger was delighted with his wife’s depiction in just a few shades of oil paint: ‘The portrait of my wife is a masterpiece, it is quite unexampled. It is supremely elegant and has an inner life that is deeply moving.’ Redon made a small portrait of Bonger himself during a few enjoyable days that the couples spent together in Paris in early November 1904 and gave it to the appreciative Dutchman as a souvenir (). Bonger wrote to the artist that the portrait would always remain dear to him as ‘testimony to your friendship’. Redon made similar portraits in sanguine of several of his ‘amateurs’, mostly in profile or three-quarter view, with highly worked-up and refined facial features, floating on a sheet with ample borders. The artist inscribed his personal message at bottom right, using the same words as he had for other friends and collectors, somewhat reducing the individual touch ( and ).
Almost as personal as a portrait were the customized decorations that Redon produced for his collectors’ interiors, although some were also sold individually on the art market. Bonger acquired his first decorative panel in distemper from Durand-Ruel in 1903 on Redon’s suggestion. On his return, he carefully installed it in his home on Stadhouderskade (). The beautiful effect of the painting, with its abstract dream world of flowers against a light background, rekindled Bonger’s old yearning for ‘a little house of my own, decorated by you and Bernard to match my most intimate tastes’. This desire was stimulated further by Redon’s accounts of the decorations he was now producing for the interiors of his (by now often truly aristocratic) French collectors. Bonger dropped several hints to Redon about a tailored commission like this, before specifically proposing in 1906 that he decorate a screen in shades of red to divide the front and back rooms of his new house on Vossiusstraat in Amsterdam, where it would contrast attractively with the modern white walls (). It is noteworthy that while Bonger made the request partly at his wife’s behest, it would also have had the effect of dividing off the study in which he spent his evenings from the living room where Annie was mostly to be found.
Odilon Redon, The Red Screen (with Pegasus), 1906−08. Distemper on canvas, 173.5 × 238 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
Making up lost ground
At the same time as he was acquiring some of Redon’s recent works, Bonger tried to get his hands on the master’s early noirs (1870–90) in lithographic ink and charcoal. By now, Redon had moved far beyond the existential phase of life in which these works had been created and the well from which he had drawn for such creations was likewise sealed up. Bonger managed to acquire several of the now scarce charcoal drawings from the artist and from private collectors, and with effort and perseverance, he succeeded over the years in assembling the entire graphic oeuvre.
In time, Redon simply began to send Bonger his latest prints automatically, often providing several copies at a time for him to distribute among private collectors and dealers in the Netherlands – a tried and tested strategy on the artist’s part. In doing so, Redon was using Bonger as his personal agent, as it were – a role that the collector was only too happy to assume. He wrote to Bonger as early as 1895: ‘I have put into the post: Three new lithographs, though on condition you simply return those you do not like, as do other collectors (abroad or in various French towns) to whom I regularly send things for sale or return’.
One by one, Bonger eventually acquired the rarest prints and was able to complete his collection. He sometimes asked specifically for a print he was still missing, such as Wing, of which Redon sent a signed impression on his request in 1895 (). In 1903 Bonger paid a hefty 100 francs for the iconic print Closed Eyes from 1890 – a key work for every Redon admirer (see fig. 5c in entry 5). The rare series Dans le rêve and Les origines, which had assumed mythical status among collectors, were the crowning glory of his collection. Their purchase in 1908 via Redon’s wife meant that Bonger, too, had now become one of the twenty-five ‘chosen’ about whom Israëls had mused years earlier ().
With the addition of a few more purchases around 1908, Bonger considered his overall collection to be virtually complete, even though Redon would continue making art for a few more years to come. During those years, he acquired just a handful of items that subtly complemented or provided context for Redon’s oeuvre. He was happy to shell out, for instance, for a group of prints by Redon’s teacher Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) and a few early landscape drawings by Redon. The two early copies after Rembrandt (1606–1669) and Delacroix that Bonger was able to acquire from Redon’s widow after his death were particularly special. He had previously made tentative but repeated attempts to get the artist to part with them, but Redon refused to sell these precious works.
A personal ensemble
Those final purchases allowed Bonger to achieve his goal of a collection covering the ‘complete range’ of Redon’s work. He wrote to the artist as early as 1901 that he was building an ensemble of his entire oeuvre, which he considered infinitely varied. It was this, he stated in 1903, that set Redon apart from other artists: ‘Looking over my collection as a whole, I’m astonished by the variety of your art. Moreover, it offers the rare spectacle of a new blossoming, at a time when so many others have stiffened to a uniform note.’
Bonger described the assembly and hanging of his collection as a creative act comparable to composing a piece of music, in which each new work added a note to the harmony of the ensemble, transcending the individual parts. He spent endless Sundays and evenings carefully arranging Redon’s pieces in his successive rooms, in harmonious interplay with those of Bernard, Van Gogh and Cézanne. With each new acquisition, the collector began to compose afresh, keeping Redon informed through descriptions in his letters and specially commissioned interior photographs (). Bonger generally selected a large floral still life or a decorative panel as the centrepiece of the wall and grouped his other works around it. Significantly, having moved into his final home on Gabriel Metsustraat, Bonger no longer mixed his Redons with other works of art but placed them in the main rooms as the dominant melody, with the works by other artists now barely audible in the background in the corridors and upstairs rooms.
Suitable framing
The artist and collector were both keenly aware that the frames in which the Redons were placed formed a defining element of the ensemble. After each purchase, they corresponded in detail about the choice of frame, with Bonger having absolute faith in Redon’s judgement. Besides which, Bonger did not know any framer in the Netherlands who could provide Redon’s work with a suitable setting. Redon almost always chose Jean-Marie Boyer’s (1850–after 1906) firm in Montmartre to frame Bonger’s purchases (). The company was strategically located in the artists’ quarter, close to the dealers and practically next door to Pierre Cluzel (1850–1894), who also made frames for the Impressionists and for Redon. Like Cluzel, Boyer specialized in ‘encadrements artistiques’, with particular attention to works on paper. He offered all styles, from traditional Louis XIV frames and gilding to contemporary designs for the avant-garde.
The frames for the Bonger collection, which Redon commissioned from Boyer, have almost all been preserved, as have the mounts. Redon was acutely aware of the importance of the frame and selected each one with great care. His work commanded relatively low prices during his lifetime, however, and so he was generally unable to spend too much on framing. For that reason, he often favoured bronzed mouldings that were sold by the metre and then sawn to size. The decorative aesthetic of the mouldings was contemporary without being overpowering. Redon frequently chose strikingly thin frames, which gave his paintings a subtle character. Works on paper were framed with wide, coloured mounts, which isolated them, as it were, from the outside world. Redon deliberately pursued this effect of ‘interiority’, which is also why he expressly elected to display his works behind glass.
Familiar as he was with the household, he corresponded with Bonger about the walls on which his works (and hence the frames) were to hang. Redon wrote: ‘Above all, tell me about the frames for which I took responsibility and about the effect of the works. How they change when one moves them! How sensitive they seem to me, and affected by the things that surround them.’ He advised the collector to use yellow wallpaper, but Redon’s works were also displayed to good effect on the white walls of Bonger’s newly built house on Vossiusstraat. Redon clearly had to adjust to this modern context for his work, but he was curious about the effect, especially for his noirs, which were after all drawn on coloured paper. Bonger wrote that he was able to admire the works on his white walls as if through new eyes, confirming Redon’s opinion that the context of a work of art is decisive to the way it is perceived.
The interior of Andries Bonger’s home at Stadhouderskade 56, Amsterdam, 1904. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Andries Bonger Archive, S. Crommelin Bequest
Bonger's experience of Redon's art
Many collectors might gradually grow accustomed to the paintings on their walls and cease to notice them. Not so Bonger, who viewed them with his full attention almost continuously. The spiritual experience that Redon’s art offered him was closely linked to the way he experienced music. He described to Redon, for instance, how the piano music his wife played enhanced the mystery of his art. Bonger’s thoughts also transported him to Redon’s work in moments of rapture during performances at the Concertgebouw. He sensed connections, in other words, between Redon’s art and music: ‘It is expressive, like music, that is to say it speaks for itself.’ Bonger shared the view, therefore, that visual art could correspond with the other arts on an abstract level. Gustave Kahn had already referred to Redon’s drawings in musical terms in 1887: ‘The drawing or rather the form represented has the value of being suggestive, a musical theme with the potential to stimulate […] the spectator’s daydreams. Different individuals can intuit different melancholy thought and sentiments from these images.’ Bonger further described how Redon’s works were continuously transformed not only by the colour of the walls but also the changing light throughout the day and the seasons.
The collector reached for his large leather portfolio of Redon’s graphic work in order to ‘lose’ himself while browsing the albums. Bonger seems to have meant by this that he could forget his everyday worries and tiredness and be transported to another dimension – one directly connected to the mind of the artist. He could then feel that he was surrounded not only by Redon’s works of art but also by the artist himself.
Bonger gave a lecture on the subject when he exhibited his complete collection of Redon’s prints at the Larensche Kunsthandel in Amsterdam in 1909. He was hesitant about doing so, as he had little patience with audiences that shied away from Redon’s art. The collector spoke mostly of his noirs, which he described as ‘an art that, even on superficial inspection, leaves a deeper impression, yet which is so meaningful and which springs from such a mysterious source that only by fathoming it more deeply each time can one achieve a full understanding of its grandeur.’ As far as Bonger was concerned, this ‘grandeur’ lay primarily in the work’s humanity. What Redon offered, the collector said, was ‘a deeper glimpse into the universe, with its ever-receding mystery’. Redon himself wrote how he expected the ‘amateur’ to play an active role – a role that Bonger fulfilled with absolute devotion. According to Bonger, Dans le rêve allowed the viewer to descend into the very deepest mystery, as – unlike other series – it was entirely separate from literature. With no titles or narrative to offer points of reference, the associatively arranged images spoke ‘for themselves’, as Bonger put it.
A close alliance
Although Bonger fully concurred with Redon’s conviction that his art was most powerfully experienced by leaving it undefined, he could not resist occasionally asking for titles for his latest acquisitions. The artist tended to respond very reluctantly to such requests and what titles Bonger did eventually receive were conspicuous for their generality: Femme avec enfant, say, or Paysage. While some of Redon’s other collectors and dealers came up with interpretative titles of their own, Bonger always respected the artist’s wishes.
The circumspect way in which Bonger approached Redon’s oeuvre meant that the artist entrusted him with the publication of his early diary entries, those of ‘a mystical and doleful soul’. The collector took on this task and honour with his characteristic diligence. Redon expressed his gratitude in the dedication of the manuscript he sent to Bonger in 1909: ‘To you, Monsieur Bonger, it is dedicated and addressed – to you, whose faithful appreciation of my art is as old-established as our friendship; I shall be well content if, beyond those borders that art has rendered so illustrious, it may yet elicit an echo as precious as the one that I found in you.’
The wish that Bonger expressed early on for ‘communion with the chosen’ had more than come true. His books enabled him to commune briefly with the mind of the author but without any opportunity to reciprocate. Through Redon’s art and letters, by contrast, he could experience a true exchange and even friendship. After Redon’s death, his widow invited Bonger and the collector Dr Raymond Jacques Sabouraud (1864–1938) to dinner, as ‘you are the two friends whom Redon loved most’. Through his years of support and dedication, Bonger had truly become the chosen among Redon’s fidèles.
Fleur Roos Rosa de Carvalho
2022