Interiors by Design: Pierre Bonnard 2, bathroom

In this second selection of interiors painted by Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), I concentrate as he did on the intimate domestic life of his partner, later wife, Marthe. This came to obsess him during the twentieth century, to the point where he not only sketched and painted her constantly, but amassed thousands of photographs, the majority of them showing her at her toilet, and in her bath. Marthe apparently had a medical condition that made frequent long periods in the bath relieving, and Bonnard took every opportunity to paint her there.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), El Tocador (The Dressing Table) (1908), oil on panel, 52 x 45 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The Athenaeum.

By 1908, his intimate visual diary of Marthe’s life was becoming the focus of his development and innovation. In El Tocador, which means The Dressing Table, Marthe’s headless torso is seen only in reflection. The direct view is of the large bowl and pitcher she used to wash herself.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Mirror in the Dressing Room (1908), oil on panel, 120 x 97 cm, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia. The Athenaeum.

Mirror in the Dressing Room (1908) shows a similar dressing table and mirror, but in contrasting blue decor. A woman’s nude back and buttocks now appear in the mirror, as another young woman sits at the left drinking a cup of coffee.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The Bathroom (The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa) (1908), oil on canvas, 125 x 109 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium. The Athenaeum.

Of all these works Bonnard painted in 1908, my favourite is The Bathroom, or The Dressing Room with Pink Sofa, which anticipates those from later in his career, painted when Bonnard was living in the south of France. Looking at a brightly lit window from a slightly elevated position, Marthe’s body is seen against that light, and the bright colours of the room.

There is subtle mirror-play, with her headless torso shown in the dressing table mirror, in which the artist is replaced by an empty chair. Its last reflection is that of the window frame in the residual water in the shallow metal bath at the left.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Reflection (The Tub) (1909), media not known, 73 x 84.5 cm, Private collection. The Athenaeum.

Among his intimate domestic scenes, Reflection or The Tub (1909) is one of his best pieces of mirror-play. He again opts for the view from an elevated position, looking down and into an angled plane mirror in the bathroom. The reflected view almost fills his canvas, with the nude Marthe (I think) crouching slightly in the upper left corner, as she dries herself after a bath.

The angle of view plays some odd tricks. The washing bowl on the dressing table is brought to overlie the larger shallow bathtub on the floor, for example. Some of the objects on the dressing table are shown directly, others only in the reflected image. And over on the opposite side of the room is a chair, and a coffee tray.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The Dressing Table with a Bunch of Red and Yellow Flowers (1913), oil on canvas, 125 x 110 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. The Athenaeum.

Four years later, Bonnard hadn’t abandoned his mirror play, nor removed his easel from more private rooms in the house. The Dressing Table with a Bunch of Red and Yellow Flowers (1913) presents us with another visual riddle that we struggle to resolve. Shown in the mirror above the dressing table is a reflection of what lies behind the artist. There’s a nearly nude figure sat in the corner, and what appears to be a bath, or a bed on which there is a large black object, possibly a dog. As ever, the artist is nowhere to be seen, unless of course that headless figure is male rather than female.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The Bathroom Mirror (1914), oil on canvas, 72 x 88.5 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. The Athenaeum.

The following year, Bonnard moved back from the dressing table and its mirror, for The Bathroom Mirror (1914). Marthe’s reflection is now but a small image within the image, showing her sat on the side of the bed, with a bedspread matching the red floral pattern of the drapes around the dressing table. Bonnard has worked his usual vanishing trick for himself, and a vertical mirror at the right adds a curiously dark reflection of the room.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nude in an Interior (c 1912-14), oil on canvas, 134 x 69.2 cm, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The Athenaeum.

Nude in an Interior from about 1912-14 refers back to his Man and Woman in an Interior from 1898, with such extreme cropping that only a thin sliver of Marthe is visible. Something else is in front of her, perhaps the artist or a hanging dress, but so little of it is shown that it is unidentifiable. The rest of the interior is a complex overlay of coloured rectangles, from cropped surfaces and objects. We feel as if we have caught a glimpse of something that we shouldn’t have, but remain fascinated in trying to imagine what we cannot see.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nu dans la baignoire (Nude in the Bath) (1925), oil on canvas, 104.6 x 65.4 cm, The Tate Gallery (Bequeathed by Simon Sainsbury 2006, accessioned 2008), London. Photographic Rights © Tate 2018, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bonnard-nude-in-the-bath-t12611

Bonnard’s best-known nudes of 1925 are those where his model is still in the bath, most notably Nu dans la baignoire, or Nude in the Bath. The bath is cropped to show just the lower torso and legs of the woman in its water. A second, clothed, person is striding across from the left, its figure cropped extremely to show just the front of the body and legs.

It’s thought that the figure on the left is that of the artist, but I cannot make sense of that. He or she appears to be wearing light patterned clothing consisting of a jacket and long skirt, with soft slippers resembling ballet shoes!

This is a marked contrast from Bonnard’s recent nudes in returning to intimate scenes of everyday life, with a strongly voyeuristic sense of peering into private life. It isn’t known whether Bonnard painted this before his lover Renée Monchaty committed suicide in a bath, although his bathing paintings from 1925 onwards are often supposed to refer to her death.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), The Toilette (Nude at the Mirror) (1931), oil on canvas, 154 x 104.5 cm, Galleria internazionale d’arte moderna di Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, Italy. The Athenaeum.

Of the surviving paintings from the 1930s that I have been able to locate, intimate domestic scenes and nude figures again predominate. The Toilette (Nude at the Mirror) (1931) is another piece of mirror-play that departs from his earlier practice: the nude stands in front of the mirror, but she isn’t seen in reflection at all, only directly. Instead, the mirror reinforces the verticals of the window and curtain off to the right.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nude by the Bathtub (1931), media not known, 120 x 110 cm, Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris. The Athenaeum.

Nude by the Bathtub (1931) shows Marthe leaning idly against a deep bathtub. She appears to be surrounded by frosted glass, which on the right resembles the foam of a breaking wave.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nude in Bathroom (Cabinet de Toilette) (1932), oil on cardboard, 120.7 x 117.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. The Athenaeum.

Marthe and much of the rest of Bonnard’s Nude in Bathroom (Cabinet de Toilette) from 1932 have become shockingly pink. Even her dog, sat by her feet, is strongly red-brown. Bonnard has returned to the Nabi style of not projecting the patterning of the floor according to perspective, flattening the lower third of the painting.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Nude in Bathtub (c 1938-41), oil on canvas, 121.9 x 151.1 cm, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. The Athenaeum.

Nude in Bathtub (c 1938-41) is perhaps the culmination of the changes that had been taking place in Bonnard’s painting. Its colours are brilliant and visionary. The form of the bath adopts itself to that of Marthe within, curving around her legs in its asymmetry. The shimmering patterns of the floor and the curtain are independent of their orientation. Beside the bath, Marthe’s dog looks up at the viewer, as if knowing where this is all heading. On 26 January 1942, Marthe Bonnard died in their villa at Le Cannet.