#laughable loves

Nude in an Interior (1935) - Pierre Bonnard oil on canvas 134 x 69.2 cm (52 3/4 x 27 1/4 in.) Collection of mr. and mrs. Paul Mellon National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) met Marthe (but she would be Bonnard much later) in 1893. At the time he studied Law. But after attending art classes at the Académie Julian he changed to art and painting. In 1891 he would exhibit together with the other artists of Les Nabis (among them Maurice Denis, Felix Vallaton, Eduard Vuillard and others) who would be the ones who would transfer impressionism into a new era. According to some accounts, he met that frail girl in the streets of Paris when she was getting off a horsecar across the street. She would become his model, and later his lover. But Bonnard was not aware of the background of Marthe. He thought she was high class. For Pierre Bonnard she was Marthe, and that was all that mattered. Marthe's health and ilness made her have baths two or three times a day, possibly to relieve her of her pain. This was the reason that there are so many paintings of Marthe bathing and nude, and portrayed by Pierre Bonnard. In all his works Marthe seems always be present in every way possible. It looks as she is part of the interior. In that extent Bonnard portrayed her as he saw her. For us we may see a woman nude, but for Bonnard intimately, without any affectation, shares with us what he sees himself: Marthe part of the interior

[Pierre Bonnard & Edouard Vuillard (Nabis & Post-impressionism)]

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“We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.”

- Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves