The Master & the Prodigy

In his declining months 80-year-old Pierre Bonnard gave Thursdays and Saturdays to the future. On those days a green-eyed, curly-haired little boy came running up the road to Bonnard's villa, just outside of Cannes, for a talk about painting. Solemn little Edouard Capra, who is now only ten, always brought along a dilapidated schoolbag full of paints and brushes, and--wrapped in newspapers under his arm,--a new painting to show the master.

Bonnard was France's last strong link with the great 19th Century French impressionists. Now he had a prodigy to warm his heart. "Edouard," Bonnard predicted, "will be the French painter of tomorrow--providing he stays away from design schools and academies."

Bonnard would permit no one, not even himself, to criticize Edouard's work. Instead he rambled on about the colors that flood the eyes, and how to approximate their pure sparkle in paint. "Paint what you want," he told Edouard, "as you want to paint it. Treasure your freshness, your inspiration. The rest will come by itself."

Photographs of Edouard's paintings which reached the U.S. last week had a child's freshness, and also a strength that was not at all boyish. Edouard, painting in oil, spread the pigment in broad, thick strokes that gave a sense of third dimension. For subject matter he used what appealed to his wide eyes: lobsters, a landscape framed in the window, flowers, a teapot, and, lately, his mother.

He'll Remember Mama. Several months ago Edouard suddenly lost all interest in landscape and still life: he wanted to paint nothing except people. His mother, when she came home from her work as a charwoman, posed for Edouard: sometimes as the Madonna, draped in a shabby dressing gown, and sometimes in the nude. They worked in one of the family's two bare rooms, with Edouard's canvas propped against a suitcase on the dinner table.

Papa Capra, who runs an oyster stand in Cannes, brought home broken crates to make frames for Edouard's pictures. He also did all he could to keep his son from getting a big head. "Edouard must not be spoiled, either by the love of money or by the influence of others," he carefully explained. "That is what Bonnard told us. We can give our son all he needs."

A month ago, when Bonnard died (TIME, Feb. 3), little Edouard walked among the old men and women in mourning, and saw the master's coffin covered with earth. Edouard knew that Bonnard loved color more than anything in the world, and he had bought a bunch of carnations to go with the somber wreaths. Tucked into the vivid crimson of Edouard's carnations was a white card. A mon cher Maitre, said the hesitant scrawl, avec mon regret eternel.

But Edouard came back from the funeral dry-eyed. "Get into your pose," he told his mother. "We mustn't forget Maitre Bonnard told me to work always, and there's still a bit of light."

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