La femme à la rose ou Femme dans un intérieur

In the period following 1906 Bonnard's work showed a growing affinity with Degas' paintings. "The use of a close-in and frequently raised perspective, the cropped and oddly angled views, and the concentration on habitual, nonacademic, unselfconscious gesture linked (Bonnard and Degas) in their search for an intimacy and freshness of presentation" (S.A. Nash, "Tradition revised: some sources in late Bonnard," Bonnard the Late Paintings, exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1984, p. 20). La femme à la rose was painted circa 1909 and in it Bonnard renders the subject of his earlier intimiste paintings in a more abstracted manner. Bonnard creates spatial ambiguities in La femme à la rose by repeating the rectangular shapes of the rug, chair chairs, and paintings, and flattening the angle of perspective. The presence of the mirror is also a device that appeared in his work during this time. Jean Clair notes that the mirror served to "remind us that there is no absolute point of view, and that the world exists as much at our feet or over our heads, even behind our backs, as it does before our eyes" (ibid., p. 37). As with his later images of bathers there is a sense of psychological distancing within the picture. The seated woman appears to be self-absorbed and unaware that she is being observed. While Bonnard does not reference the identity of the model, preferring that she be understood as a universal symbol of womanhood, it is likely that she is Marthe de Méligny, Bonnard's mistress who was his frequent model and whom he married in 1925.