Pierre Bonnard

Exhibited by Ambroise Duchemin

Material Gouache and pencil on paper

Dimensions 33.9 × 28.9 cm

Price Available upon inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

In our drawing of a Femme à sa toilette, executed around 1933, Pierre Bonnard’s emotional world and his technical mastery seem perfectly aligned. The subject is inseparable from Marthe, the young woman who entered Bonnard’s life in 1893 and became his lifelong companion and muse. Her daily rituals of bathing and dressing shaped an entire mythology within his œuvre, offering the artist not only a private universe to observe but also a laboratory for studying colour, light, reflections, and architectural rhythms.

The sitter's form appears softly through shimmering dashes of gouache, the surface alive with reflections that echo Bonnard’s late oil paintings. Unlike the more fragmented or distanced compositions of the early 1930s, the figure here is presented with a directness that seems almost whispered, in an iridescent interior that feels both domestic and dreamlike.

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Provenance

Galerie Jacques Rodrigues-Henriques, Paris
Jacques Dupont, Paris (purchased from the latter on 21 June 1939)
Thence by descent
Sale at Christie’s, Paris, Oeuvres modernes sur papier / Art Impressionniste et Moderne, 14 April 2021, lot 19
Private collection, Paris