PIERRE BONNARD | Femme accroupie or Nu au tub

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1913) Private Collection, Prague (acquired from the above)

Roger Fry, London

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the above in 1928)

De Freune Collection, Paris

Galerie Bénézit, Paris

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the above in 1937)

Acquired from the above by the family of the present owners circa 1937

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Bonnard, œuvres récentes, 1913, no. 11 Tokyo; Museum of Tsukuba Ibaraki (and travelling in Japan), Premiers chefs-d'œuvre des grands maîtres Européens, 1991-92, no. 46

Balingen, Stadthalle, L'Eternel féminin: from Renoir to Picasso, 1996, no. 18, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Pierre Bonnard, l'œuvre d'art, un arrêt du temps, 2006, no. 22, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Claude Roger-Marx, Bonnard, Paris, 1924, illustrated p. 33 (titled Tub and as dating from 1911) P.-F. Millard, 'Figure Painting of the Twentieth Century', in The Studio, vol. 143, January-June 1952, illustrated p. 166

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard. Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Paris, 1968, vol. II, nos. 773 & 886, catalogued and illustrated twice pp. 318 & 397 (under no. 886 as dating from 1916)

Michel Terrasse, Bonnard: du dessin au tableau, Paris, 1996, illustrated p. 120

In Femme accroupie Bonnard depicts Marthe, his longtime companion and muse who inspired the majority of his paintings of nudes in domestic interiors. Here the model is seen crouching in a bath tub in a setting similar to that depicted by Degas, whom Bonnard greatly admired, in several pastels (fig. 1) and a bronze. While her body is depicted frontally and is open to the viewer’s gaze, her head is bent down in a pose of introspection, a device Bonnard employed as a means of establishing a boundary between the figure and the viewer. There was a fine line between openness and vulnerability that was inherent in these compositions of nudes, and here Bonnard's careful attention to the woman’s pose ensures the delicate balance of the two. With wide sweeping brushstrokes Bonnard has indicated the large bath tub and elements of the background, all of which are cropped by the narrow format of the composition. With this pictorial device he encourages the observer to imagine the domestic space beyond the scope of the canvas. By comparison with a larger and more detailed canvas of the same subject, now at the Musée d’Orsay (fig. 2) as well as with the artist’s photograph of Marthe (fig. 3), it can be understood that the rectangular shape on the left denotes a door, whilst the purple form on the right corresponds to the curtain. A ray of sunlight that is coming through the open door beautifully and subtly illuminates the woman’s back.

Discussing Bonnard's portrayals of Marthe, Sarah Whitfield wrote: 'Marthe is almost always seen in her own domestic surroundings, and as an integral part of those surroundings. [...] In a sense many of these works are variations on the theme of the artist and his model as well as on the double portrait. This is the case even when Bonnard is not visible. [...] We are always made acutely aware that whatever the subject of the painting – a nude, a still life, a landscape – what we are being asked to witness (and to participate in) is the process of looking. But it is in the paintings of Marthe above all that we find Bonnard portraying himself as the ever-attentive, watchful presence' (S. Whitfield, 'Fragments of Identical World', in Bonnard (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1998, p. 17).

Femme accroupie was acquired from the artist by the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1913, the year it was painted. In the 1920s it was in the collection of Roger Fry, the famous English artist and critic who was one of the leading members of the Bloomsbury Group. Fry was a great admirer of French Post-Impressionist painting and was pivotal in raising public awareness of modern art in Britain. The famed art historian Kenneth Clark wrote: ‘In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry’ (K. Clark quoted in Ian Chilvers, ‘Fry, Roger’, in Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, Oxford, 1990).