Pierre Bonnard

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1909)

Gaston Bernheim de Villers, Paris (1968)

Private Collection, New York

Acquired on April 20, 1981

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Bonnard, 1910, no. 29

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Bonnard, 1946, no. 9

Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art & Tokyo, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Pierre Bonnard, 1997, no. 48, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Léon Werth, Bonnard, Geneva, 1919, illustrated pl. 9

Tristan Klingsor, ‘Pierre Bonnard’, in L’Amour de l’art, no. 8, Paris, August 1921, illustrated p. 244

Gustave Coquiot, Bonnard, Paris, 1922, illustrated (titled Nu and as dating from 1910)

George Besson, Bonnard, Paris, 1934, no. 23, illustrated

‘Bonnard’, Le point, no. 24, Lanzac, 1943, illustrated p. 31

André Lejard, Le nu dans la peinture française, Paris, 1947, no. 51, illustrated

Thadée Natanson, Le Bonnard que je propose, Geneva, 1951, illustrated pl. 37

Raymond Cogniat, Bonnard, Paris, n.d., illustrated p. 16

Florent Fels, L’Art vivant de 1900 à nos jours, Geneva, 1950, illustrated p. 129

Heinrich Rumpel, Pierre Bonnard, Bern, 1952, no. 23, illustrated

‘Hommage à Bonnard’, Nice Matin, no. 19, Nice, May 1956, illustrated

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Paris, 1968, vol. II, no. 532, illustrated p. 144

Michel Terrasse, Bonnard, du dessin au tableau, Paris, 1996, illustrated p. 101

Bonnard (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London & The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, fig. 11, illustrated p. 21

Good condition over all. The canvas is lined. The surface of the canvas is densely painted and well-preserved. Under UV, scattered spots of retouching are visible in the upper-left quadrant, as well as in the drapery on the right. There are other tiny spots of florescence in the figure's torso, which do not appear to be retouchings.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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La Femme à la commode, painted in 1909, is one of the important canvases that established Bonnard's reputation among avant-garde artists.  In this painting the nude is contextualized within the detailed quarters of her living space, as if Bonnard has given us access to the woman's private sanctuary.  This picture was among the important early nudes that remained in the private collection of Bonnard's dealer Bernheim-Jeune well into the 1960s.  Other examples from this series are now in the collections of major museums throughout the world, including Tate Gallery in London.

The image of a contemporary nude woman at her toilette was an enticing subject for many artists prior to Bonnard, most notably Degas.  And like his Impressionist predecessor, Bonnard's approach to painting the nude was aided by referencing sculptures of the human form.  The model's pose in the present composition, for example, recalls Michelangelo's Dying Slave, which Bonnard must have seen in the Louvre.  But in her consideration of this painting,  Sarah Whitfield explained that Bonnard often faced a dilemma when confronted with a nude model, often losing his aesthetic distance.  "Personally, I am very weak," Bonnard confessed,  "it is difficult for me to control myself in front of the object."   Whitfield explains that Bonnard resolved this dilemma by conflating a contemporary image with a historical one in order to distance himself from his subject.  She noted that the present painting exemplifies the successful result of this synthesis:   "By presenting the nude full-length and frontally, Bonnard makes her resemble a standing sculpture not unlike the small nudes he had made around 1906, in a short-lived experiment with modeling in the round.  That experience of working in plaster shows that Bonnard was thinking of the nude in terms of sculpture, and this in turn helped him find in painting the weight and density apprpriate to the human figure without having to work from a model" (S. Whitfield, "Fragments of an Identical World", in Bonnard (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1998, p. 21).

The model for the present work is presumed to be Bonnard's lover Marthe, who would pose for the artist's most intimate and voyeuristic compositions.  Bonnard's best works feature Marthe occupied by a daily routine such as eating, reading, bathing or drying herself after a bath. Among them all, the bather paintings are regarded as Bonnard's most successful.  Bonnard met Marthe de Méligny (née Maria Boursin) in 1893, when she was a fashionable young Parisian shop girl, and married her in 1925. 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" (ibid., p. 17).