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Lot Essay
Guy-Patrice and Floriane Dauberville have confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Bonnard’s fondness for depicting intimate scenes of everyday life, has led to him being called an “Intimist”; his wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is often seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal, like in the present lot, or nude, as in a famous series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub.
Legend has it that a 26-year-old Pierre Bonnard met 16-year-old Marthe when he helped her cross a Paris street in 1893. Marthe had just moved to Paris after leaving her small hometown of Saint-Amand-Montrond, and was working in a shop making artificial flowers for funerals. As things turned out, Marthe awoke in him an unorthodox tenderness; he took her in and sheltered her. Nonetheless, Bonnard did not discover her real name, Maria Boursin, until they eventually married, in 1925, some 30 years after they had met.
Bonnard’s fondness for depicting intimate scenes of everyday life, has led to him being called an “Intimist”; his wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is often seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal, like in the present lot, or nude, as in a famous series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub.
Legend has it that a 26-year-old Pierre Bonnard met 16-year-old Marthe when he helped her cross a Paris street in 1893. Marthe had just moved to Paris after leaving her small hometown of Saint-Amand-Montrond, and was working in a shop making artificial flowers for funerals. As things turned out, Marthe awoke in him an unorthodox tenderness; he took her in and sheltered her. Nonetheless, Bonnard did not discover her real name, Maria Boursin, until they eventually married, in 1925, some 30 years after they had met.