NOTES
Here, Pierre Bonnard illustrated an intimate view of a woman undressing. The contours of her body are barely discernible from the swirling background pattern, while her black stockings provide a stark contrast to the otherwise lightly-sketched lines. Bonnard frequently depicted images of nudes in the 1890s as a means of artistic experimentation. His emphasis on flatness and surface patterning in the picture modernizes this otherwise traditional theme.
Bonnard was part of an avant-garde artist group known as the Nabis, along with Edouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton, whose works are also on view in this exhibition. Critics at the time described these artists as “intimists.” Their art, in Bonnard’s own words, expressed their “taste for daily spectacles, their ability to draw emotion from the most modest acts of life.”
