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Lot Essay
In Pierre Bonnard’s Nu aux babouches rouges, the artist returned to one of the most enduring motifs of his career: the nude bather. Painted in 1932, this work dates from a moment that the art historian Veronique Serrano has described as, “without doubt one of the most productive of his career, in which his paintings were so luminous and radiant, as if he were in constant awe before the vibrancy of life” (quoted in M. Gale, ed., Pierre Bonnard: The Color of Memory, exh. cat., Tate, London, 2019, p. 39). Here, the female protagonist, likely his wife and lifelong subject Marthe, has just emerged from the bath; unhurried and absorbed in drying herself, her lowered gaze suggests a moment of private reverie. Around her, the bathroom unfolds as a mosaic-like field of tiles and shifting yellow and blue hues, loosening spatial definition and drawing the eye across a rhythmic, tactile surface. The vivid red slippers anchor the figure within this shimmering expanse, providing a point of focus amid the interior.
Bonnard had first turned to the nude as a subject in his art in the 1890s, not long after he had met Marthe. These early compositions, rooted in a darker, more naturalistic palette, contrast with the chromatic intensity of his later work. By 1905, Bonnard’s treatment of the nude shifted decisively toward the luminous, color-saturated interiors now synonymous with his practice. In these early bathing scenes—his first sustained exploration of the motif—he experimented increasingly with vibrant color, diffused light, and the interplay between figure and interior. A further transformation emerged around 1925, as Bonnard embarked upon a new series of bathroom nudes, cooler in tonality yet heightened in chromatic clarity, and notably introducing the reclining bather immersed within the bath. By the time he painted Nu aux babouches rouges in the early 1930s, Bonnard had arrived at a moment of formal resolution, his painterly language fully consolidated as he created compositions, such as the present work, filled with light, color, and atmosphere.
The subject of the nude bather recalls the famed pastels of Edgar Degas. Yet Bonnard’s handling of this motif differs from Degas’s in that he created his compositions not from observation but from recollection, reconstructing scenes in the studio to capture not only what he saw, but what he felt and remembered. In Nu aux babouches rouges, the figure almost dissolves into the richly-worked background, as if Bonnard, seeking to will memories into physical form, can only just grasp at the body through a gauzy, oneiric haze. He alludes to the tension in a 1935 diary note: “The model you have before your eyes, and the model you have in your head” (quoted in ibid., p. 33).
Yet Bonnard’s most enduring source of inspiration was Marthe. Bonnard had met her in Paris in 1893, and after decades living together, they married in 1925. Known for her fragile health, Marthe developed a habitual reliance on bathing, a ritual that became a central subject in Bonnard’s work across painting, drawing, and photography. As art historian and curator Timothy Hyman observed, her bathroom became “the alchemical chamber in which the base metal of the everyday was transformed into gold” (Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 143).
We are made to witness a relationship not between artist and model, but between Pierre and Marthe. Marthe’s body is affirmed as a vessel of human emotion, holding its full measure of psychological and contemplative significance. Timothy Hyman
After years of escaping from Paris to rent seasonal villas in Saint-Tropez, Grasse, and Antibes, Bonnard finally pledged to embrace the colorful, languid life of the south in February 1926, when the couple purchased a home in the hills of Le Cannet, just outside Cannes. The house, christened “Le Bosquet,” and the south more broadly proved revelatory to Bonnard: the Mediterranean light suffused the landscape with radiant color, their hillside home afforded sweeping views across the surrounding mountains, villages, and coastline, and the climate appeared conducive to Marthe’s health. In the year following their purchase, Bonnard oversaw several renovations, most notably the addition of a new tiled bathroom with a large tub installed for Marthe.
By 1931, the couple had taken up permanent residence at Le Bosquet. Inspired anew by his home, a year later Bonnard painted the present work, proclaiming his engagement with the domestic nude within the newly-established interior. Notably, the space encouraged a level of experimentation previously unexplored in Bonnard’s earlier nudes, as Hyman has described, “His nudes in the bath—after having been funereal—became, in the bathroom at Le Cannet, a focus for unprecedented experimentation with color” (ibid., p. 39). In the years following, Pierre Bonnard would go on to create some of his most renowned works in this very space: notably, his Baignoire series—arguably, according to Hyman, “his culminating achievement” (ibid., p. 190). Critically, Nu aux babouches au rouges, alongside other early bathroom paintings from the artist’s first years at Le Bosquet, heralded this period where Bonnard approaches his pinnacle.
By 1931, the couple had taken up permanent residence at Le Bosquet. Inspired anew by his home, about a year later Bonnard painted the present work, reaffirming his engagement with the domestic nude within this newly established interior. The space encouraged a level of experimentation previously unexplored in his earlier treatments of the motif; as Hyman has observed, “His nudes in the bath... became, in the bathroom at Le Cannet, a focus for unprecedented experimentation with color” (ibid., p. 39).
In the years that followed, Bonnard would produce some of his most well-known works in this very setting, most notably the 1936-1946 Baignoire series—arguably, in Hyman’s words, “his culminating achievement” (ibid., p. 190). Within this trajectory, Nu aux babouches rouges, together with the earliest bathing paintings from his first years at Le Bosquet, signals a decisive turning point at the threshold of Bonnard’s late masterpiece period.
Bonnard had first turned to the nude as a subject in his art in the 1890s, not long after he had met Marthe. These early compositions, rooted in a darker, more naturalistic palette, contrast with the chromatic intensity of his later work. By 1905, Bonnard’s treatment of the nude shifted decisively toward the luminous, color-saturated interiors now synonymous with his practice. In these early bathing scenes—his first sustained exploration of the motif—he experimented increasingly with vibrant color, diffused light, and the interplay between figure and interior. A further transformation emerged around 1925, as Bonnard embarked upon a new series of bathroom nudes, cooler in tonality yet heightened in chromatic clarity, and notably introducing the reclining bather immersed within the bath. By the time he painted Nu aux babouches rouges in the early 1930s, Bonnard had arrived at a moment of formal resolution, his painterly language fully consolidated as he created compositions, such as the present work, filled with light, color, and atmosphere.
The subject of the nude bather recalls the famed pastels of Edgar Degas. Yet Bonnard’s handling of this motif differs from Degas’s in that he created his compositions not from observation but from recollection, reconstructing scenes in the studio to capture not only what he saw, but what he felt and remembered. In Nu aux babouches rouges, the figure almost dissolves into the richly-worked background, as if Bonnard, seeking to will memories into physical form, can only just grasp at the body through a gauzy, oneiric haze. He alludes to the tension in a 1935 diary note: “The model you have before your eyes, and the model you have in your head” (quoted in ibid., p. 33).
Yet Bonnard’s most enduring source of inspiration was Marthe. Bonnard had met her in Paris in 1893, and after decades living together, they married in 1925. Known for her fragile health, Marthe developed a habitual reliance on bathing, a ritual that became a central subject in Bonnard’s work across painting, drawing, and photography. As art historian and curator Timothy Hyman observed, her bathroom became “the alchemical chamber in which the base metal of the everyday was transformed into gold” (Bonnard, London, 1998, p. 143).
We are made to witness a relationship not between artist and model, but between Pierre and Marthe. Marthe’s body is affirmed as a vessel of human emotion, holding its full measure of psychological and contemplative significance. Timothy Hyman
After years of escaping from Paris to rent seasonal villas in Saint-Tropez, Grasse, and Antibes, Bonnard finally pledged to embrace the colorful, languid life of the south in February 1926, when the couple purchased a home in the hills of Le Cannet, just outside Cannes. The house, christened “Le Bosquet,” and the south more broadly proved revelatory to Bonnard: the Mediterranean light suffused the landscape with radiant color, their hillside home afforded sweeping views across the surrounding mountains, villages, and coastline, and the climate appeared conducive to Marthe’s health. In the year following their purchase, Bonnard oversaw several renovations, most notably the addition of a new tiled bathroom with a large tub installed for Marthe.
By 1931, the couple had taken up permanent residence at Le Bosquet. Inspired anew by his home, a year later Bonnard painted the present work, proclaiming his engagement with the domestic nude within the newly-established interior. Notably, the space encouraged a level of experimentation previously unexplored in Bonnard’s earlier nudes, as Hyman has described, “His nudes in the bath—after having been funereal—became, in the bathroom at Le Cannet, a focus for unprecedented experimentation with color” (ibid., p. 39). In the years following, Pierre Bonnard would go on to create some of his most renowned works in this very space: notably, his Baignoire series—arguably, according to Hyman, “his culminating achievement” (ibid., p. 190). Critically, Nu aux babouches au rouges, alongside other early bathroom paintings from the artist’s first years at Le Bosquet, heralded this period where Bonnard approaches his pinnacle.
By 1931, the couple had taken up permanent residence at Le Bosquet. Inspired anew by his home, about a year later Bonnard painted the present work, reaffirming his engagement with the domestic nude within this newly established interior. The space encouraged a level of experimentation previously unexplored in his earlier treatments of the motif; as Hyman has observed, “His nudes in the bath... became, in the bathroom at Le Cannet, a focus for unprecedented experimentation with color” (ibid., p. 39).
In the years that followed, Bonnard would produce some of his most well-known works in this very setting, most notably the 1936-1946 Baignoire series—arguably, in Hyman’s words, “his culminating achievement” (ibid., p. 190). Within this trajectory, Nu aux babouches rouges, together with the earliest bathing paintings from his first years at Le Bosquet, signals a decisive turning point at the threshold of Bonnard’s late masterpiece period.