Pierre Bonnard

Charles Zadok, New York
Acquavella Galleries, New York
Acquired from the above in 1972

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre peint révisé et augmenté 1888-1905, vol. I, Paris, 1992, no. 367, illustrated p. 320

This work is in very good condition. For the complete condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation please contact the Impressionist & Modern Art Department at +1 (212) 606 – 7360.
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By the early 1900s, Bonnard was considered one of the most successful painters of his generation. His ability to capture the experience of a fleeting glimpse—"all that one sees upon first entering a room"—in an unconventional manner set him apart from his contemporaries. By combining the objectivity of Impressionism with the Symbolist emphasis on memory and feeling, his canvases exude an ethereal quality: “[Bonnard could] infuse the canvas with a feeling and achieve a dream-like, light-filled vision of an earthly quality, whose origins go back to the Rococo to Watteau and the Eighteenth Century” (Nicholas Watkins, Bonnard, London, 1994, p. 8).

Painted in 1905, the present work exemplifies Bonnard’s continual interest in the nude as subject matter. These nudes often include elements of both eroticism and domesticity, with their nudity often accompanying tasks like bathing, washing and undressing.  Bonnard’s lover and eventual wife, Marthe de Méligny, probably served as the model for this painting. The artist’s continued interest in the theme was sustained by Marthe’s own compulsive need to bathe. Bonnard would often sketch his subject in her bathroom, sitting several feet away from her, before completing the final version in his studio.