Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

The present work depicts the artist's wife, Marthe, in a vivid red top, wearing a turban, which is delicately tied in a bow above her left ear. Between 1910 and 1920, the artist revisited the theme of the young female, sitting passively, drinking tea or having dessert, in such examples as Jaune et rouge, 1915 (Dauberville, vol. II, no. 823, private collection) and Le café, 1915 (Dauberville, vol. II, no. 822, Tate Gallery, London). These compositions often push the sitter to the foreground, while melding her figure with the background elements to heighten a flattening effect. In the present work, Marthe is the central compositional focus. Her slightly absent, oblique stare is direct and concentrated, leaving the viewer free to examine her intently without compunction, thus being reminded of the intense presence of the artist behind the easel.

Marthe en corsage rouge is a wonderful example of an intimiste domestic scene, a genre of painting adopted by the artist as early as 1889. Marthe is depicted indoors, seated by a window. This latter artistic device enables Bonnard to model her features through the contrast of light and shade. Her luminous right side facing the window absorbs the sunlight streaming in, while her left side is obscured in semi-darkness. A formal purity is created through the strong vertical and horizontal lines of the wall and side table again evoked through the contrast of light and shade. Bonnard had been increasingly interested in the compositional possibilities of mirrors and windows in his work, the former to create spatial ambiguity and the latter to allow a continuous communication between the interior and exterior.

Marthe began to model for Bonnard in the autumn of 1893, shortly after they met in the spring of that year in Montmartre. Born Maria Boursin, she moved in 1892 to Paris, where she worked as a flower arranger, and changed her name to Marthe de Méligny in a break with her past. She would quickly become Bonnard's companion and almost exclusive model until her death in 1942. Despite the passing years, her features became frozen in eternal youth in Bonnard's paintings, as Annette Valliant noted 'Bonnard superimposed the features of the woman-child over those affected by time' (in exh. cat., Bonnard, The Work of Art: Suspending Time, Paris, 2006, p. 104).