L'Omnibus, Night Paris — Pierre Bonnard Postcard

Night falls hard around Bonnard's L'omnibus, and everything in the picture answers to lamplight: a team of blue-black horses hauling a yellow carriage, silhouettes crowding the pavement, glass windows catching small fires of gold. It is one of his most theatrical street scenes, built more from mood than from likeness, the whole city reduced to colour moving through the dark. Even at postcard size, that nocturnal charge carries through, making it a striking small print for a collector's wall. The card carries that same charge in miniature, a good one for anyone drawn to Paris after dusk. It belongs equally on a wall, in a frame, or on its way through the post from the Pierre Bonnard collection.