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Executed around 1933, Femme à sa toilette is a striking example of one of Pierre Bonnard’s most recurrent and intimate themes: the rituals of bathing. The appearance of the nude in the bath in Bonnard’s work is inseparably tied to his encounter, in 1893, with Marthe de Méligny (born Boursin, 1869–1942), the young woman who became his model, muse, and companion. Secretive by nature, she concealed from the artist her age, her true surname, and her humble origins until their marriage in 1925. Of delicate health, Marthe frequently visited thermal resorts for treatment, often accompanied by the painter. At home, she delighted in the long rituals of her toilette, which provided Bonnard with endless opportunities to study the female nude and the play of reflections, light, and colour. These scenes enabled the artist to experiment with architectural elements – most notably shimmering mirrors and richly patterned tiled walls and floors – which frame and intensify his female figure in a multitude of compositions (fig. 1).
By the early 1930s Bonnard was exploring this theme with renewed subtlety, sometimes turning to gouache, a medium that allowed him to heighten the immediacy of his vision. Our sheet is remarkable for its freshness and rarity: unlike some of his more fragmented compositions, the figure here is treated frontally, with colours whose intensity matches that of his oil paintings (fig. 1). Marthe’s body emerges softly amidst iridescent reflections, the light gliding across her skin and echoing against the basin, while the surrounding interior – typically characterised by patterns of tiles – contributes to the sensory effect of the scene.
Soon after its execution in the early 1930s, the work entered the Galerie Jacques Rodrigues-Henriques, in Paris. Jacques Rodrigues-Henriques – son of Gustave Rodrigues-Henriques, a banker and stockbroker, and Gabrielle Bernheim, who later married Félix Vallotton – was himself an art dealer, a collector, and the founder-director of a gallery on Rue Bonaparte. In 1939, the work was acquired by Jacques Dupont (1908–1988), a passionate advocate for the arts. Appointed Inspector of Historic Monuments in 1938, Dupont worked during the Second World War with Jacques Jaujard to safeguard masterpieces from the Louvre and other French museums and, after the country’s liberation, served in Germany as Fine Arts Officer alongside Rose Valland. Recognised for his wartime service, he rose to become Inspector General of Historic Monuments and, in 1957, professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. As president of the Société des Amis du Louvre, he enriched the Museum’s collections – notably through the acquisition of Georges de La Tour’s Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene – and organised major exhibitions in Paris. After remaining in the Dupont family for nearly a century, the work entered a private collection in Paris.
Bonnard’s bathing scenes have often been compared to those of Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir. Yet, as demonstrated by our sheet, they remain profoundly personal: rather than displaying staged poses of professional models, they encapsulate a lifelong meditation on Marthe’s routine, transformed into a private mythology and a unique universe in Bonnard’s œuvre.