Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

In 1907 Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard visited the Palais de Fontainebleau, where they viewed the fresco designed by Primaticcio (1504-1570), Apelles Painting Campaspe and Alexander, mounted above the Porte de l'Escalier de la Duchesse d'Estampes. In it the painter Apelles is seen at his easel, a young boy at his side, as his nude male and female models are posed struggling with each other. Bonnard kept a postcard of this subject. In correspondence with the curators of the 1998 Bonnard exhibition, Antoine Terrasse suggested that in the present painting Bonnard takes the place of Apelles, and having transformed himself in a faun (using his own profile), embraces Campaspe, who is depicted in the form of Marthe de Meligny, Bonnard's companion since 1893, and whom he married in 1925 (see op. cit. p. 96).

Bonnard was very likely making reference to the abduction scenes in the early paintings and watercolors of Paul Cézanne. The painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, an erstwhile member of the Nabi circle, a friend of Bonnard and Vuillard's brother-in-law, was also drawn to similar subject matter set in a mythological context, as in his Cortège de Silene, circa 1907, and Nymphe et centaure, circa 1910.