U3A Writing: The Le Bosquet Almond
Derek McQueen imagines himself as Charles Terrase, the loving "son'' of artist Pierre Bonnard. When Bonnard was too weak to complete his famous painting Almond Tree In Blossom, Terrase put the finishing touches to it.
Derek is himself an artist. To see some of his pictures click on the link on the right-hand side of this page.
The view over Cannes and the Mediterranean coast to the west was stunning. Warm air pleasured the skin and morning sunlight lit the trees and flowers until they seemed to blaze with colour.
I was in my uncle Pierre’s garden at Le Cannet. The garden of the house he had bought with Maria Bousin in 1926 - my aunt Maria, immortalised in her husband’s paintings as Marthe. They called the house Le Bosquet and I was talking that morning with my uncle, Pierre Bonnard, while we admired the centrepiece of the garden - a sensational almond tree bursting with brilliant white blossom.
Pierre Bonnard thought of me as his son and because he and Marthe had no children of their own, they adopted my mother’s family, the children of his sister Andree Terrasse.
As we gazed on that beautiful tree, Bonnard told me that he hoped to make a painting of it some day. I remember being surprised by that. Most of his paintings were of interiors of the house - many of Marthe at her toilet in that much recorded Le Bosquet bathroom.
We strolled slowly back to the shade of the house where Marthe was waiting for us with a welcome cold drink. As I relaxed on the terrace, taking in the full beauty of the almond tree I could hardly have known that Bonnard would indeed make the painting but that it would be his final piece of work.
This was in 1947, five years after Marthe’s death in 1942. I had travelled in great haste from Paris to see him when news reached me of his illness and I was surprised and delighted to find Uncle Pierre painting, seemingly as usual. He signed the painting he called ‘Almond Tree in Blossom’ but then, as was often the case, decided that ‘something was not quite right’. He noticed that the green in the bottom left hand corner needed a touch of yellow and by now, too weak to do anything about it himself, asked me to do it for him.
The painting now hangs in the Centre George Pompidou in Paris - Almond Tree in Blossom by Pierre Bonnard with assistance from his loving ‘son’ Charles Terrasse.
