Landscape with Olive Trees and a Chapel
- Artist: Pierre Bonnard
- Date: c. 1924
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The Courtauld Gallery
- Collection record: The Courtauld Gallery website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Landscape with Olive Trees and a Chapel” by Pierre Bonnard, painted around 1924 in oil on canvas. Though Bonnard is celebrated for his interior scenes, by the mid‑1920s he was shifting toward landscapes, a transition he embraced fully by 1935 when he said he had “acquired a landscapist’s soul.”
The scene is thought to have been painted in Le Cannet, the south‑French town where Bonnard bought a house in 1925. The canvas bursts with rich, saturated colors that reveal the expressive freedom of his later work. Bonnard’s notebooks show how intensely he observed nature, noting the subtle changes in shadow and sunlight—effects that are evident here as the olive trees cast dappled light on the chapel’s stone walls.
You’ll notice the way he layers color to create depth without heavy outlines, a technique that lets the light shift across the scene as if you could walk into it. The composition balances the tranquil olive grove with the quiet, almost reverent, presence of the chapel, offering a glimpse into Bonnard’s evolving vision of the French countryside.
See it in person
Landscape with Olive Trees and a Chapel hangs in The Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, London. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
