Lot 385
  • 385

Pierre Bonnard

Estimate
300,000 - 400,000 USD
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Description

  • Pierre Bonnard
  • Devant la glace ou Le miroir
  • Signed Bonnard (lower right)
  • Oil on board
  • 21 3/8 by 12 in.
  • 54.3 by 30.5 cm

Provenance

Félix Fénéon, Paris (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 30, 1947, lot 61)
Galerie Georges Moos, Geneva
Acquired in 1948

Exhibited

Lyon, Galerie des Archers, Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel, Modigliani, 1928, no. 3
London, Adams Gallery, Bonnard, 1936
Winterthur, Switzerland, Kunstmuseum, Aus Privatbesitz, 1949, no. 42
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Bonnard, 1949, no. 16
Rotterdam, Musée Boymans, Bonnard, 1953, no. 23
Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bonnard, 1954, no. 19
Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, Mostra di Pierre Bonnard, 1955, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue
Basel, Kunsthalle, Bonnard, 1955, no. 15
Munich, Ausstellungsleitung Haus der Kunst, Bonnard, 1966, no. 18
Humlebaek, Denmark, Louisiana Cultural Centre and Museum of Contemporary Art, Bonnard, 1967, no. 5
Paris, l'Orangerie des Tuileries, Centenaire de la naissance de Bonnard, 1967, no. 22
Zurich, Kunsthaus & Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Les Nabis, 1993-94

Literature

Bijutsu Shinron, Tokyo, 1931, no. 63, illustrated
Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1888-1905, vol. I, Paris, 1965, no. 140, illustrated p. 177

Condition

This work is in very good condition. The board is sound. Surface may be very slightly dirty in places and there is a thick layer of varnish. Under UV light the layer of varnish is somewhat difficult to read through, however there appears to be only one spot of retouching at the center of the upper right quadrant.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Devant la glace is a wonderfully intimate early portrait of Marthe de Méligny (née Boursin), painted in 1896, the same year that the artist was offered a one-man show by Paul Durand-Ruel, an almost unheard of honor for an artist not yet thirty years old. Bonnard first met Marthe in 1893 when she was working as a shop girl in Paris, fooling the artist into thinking she was just sixteen, when she was really twenty-four. A fashionable woman with a taste for colorful high-heeled shoes, she soon became his life-long companion and muse, though they didn’t marry until 1925 after the death of Bonnard’s young mistress Renée Monchaty.

Annette Vaillant, who knew the couple from childhood, summed up their relationship:  “Incandescent will o’the wisp, clinging to Pierre’s shadow, she formed with him that oddly-assorted couple that the passing of time would mark without ageing. He looked after her, feared her, put up with her, loved her: her identity almost merged with his in the anxiety she caused him” (quoted in Belinda Thomson, Bonnard at le Bosquet (exhibition catalogue), Hayward Gallery, London, 1994, p. 17).

Marthe appears repeatedly throughout Bonnard’s oeuvre and is almost always presented within, and as an integral component of her domestic setting. The decorative shirt that she wears in the present work echoes the elaborate wallpaper design to the right of the mirror, and nods to his later paintings of Marthe where she becomes so much part of the room that she can almost go unnoticed. Indeed by presenting her face in a mirror reflection, she is – for the depicted moment at least – absorbed by the room, essentially becoming another portrait on the wall.

At once remote and intimate, Devant la glace is a stunning example of a key Nabis theme: that of the woman depicted in an elaborate interior setting, with the viewer occupying the role of voyeur, a role we are reminded of by the door frame we see her through. Marthe is lost in a private moment, quietly adjusting her blouse and unaware of being watched. This seemingly unremarkable activity is here afforded with the utmost attention. Bonnard was clearly besotted with this woman, interested in her every move, the more quotidian the better. The voyeurism of the present work anticipates the artist’s later exploration of the nude in the bathroom, an interest in the unself-conscious woman in her own domestic space that he shared with Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.