Pierre Bonnard

Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, 1888-1905, Paris, 1965, vol. I, p. 323, no. 373, illustrated
Art and Auctions, vol. 8, no. 186, London, 30th January 1965, p. 603, illustrated (titled La Toilette and as dating from circa 1908)

Bathers and nudes were among Bonnard’s most important images, often depicted in a domestic setting, occupied by a daily routine. The subject of the present work is Marthe, the artist’s life-long companion, muse and model for a number of his portraits and intimate interiors. Bonnard met Marthe de Méligny (née Maria Boursin) in 1893, when she was a fashionable young Parisian shopgirl, and married her in 1925. In Nu debout, de profil Marthe is captured in a personal moment, dressing or undressing before or after a bath, looking down at her clothes, as if unaware of being watched. In the manner of Bonnard’s best intimiste paintings, she is deeply absorbed in her act, without acknowledging the artist’s presence.

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).