RESEARCH: Pierre Bonnard "At home with Marthe 1937 - 1943"

 

When looking at this work by Pierre Bonnard (oil on canvas piece of art), the first thing that strikes me is the colors he decided to use and that can be one of the aspects that I can use to relate his work with fashion, which is my subject area.

The Painting Planet website also evidenced the fact of the strong colors and some more observations of the image, saying that "Naked in a bath” or “Lady with a dog in the bath” – the culmination of the series nude. A woman’s body, obviously not belonging to an elderly woman, seems to have dissolved in a vessel, and a simple room is filled with magical light, spread out on sparkling colors".

In my point of view, this piece of art can have a really sad meaning, I feel loneliness when I look at it but, however, "As with Bonnard’s other paintings of Marthe in the bath, it is anything but a straightforward depiction of reality. In all of them, Marthe appears with a youthful, supple body, even though she was already well into her 50s when the first was painted. It is as if Bonnard wished to record her forever young – “a mistress of the imagination”, as Dita Amory, a curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, has called her." (Stook A. (20 january 2019 [online] from:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/bath-mrs-bonnard-painters-difficult-marriage-inspired-spellbinding/ . As we can see, This character thet he is constantly painting (he has many more paintings of her) has some meaning for him, perhaps a lover of the past.

In a fashion way, we can see that there is no clothing referencies on this piece of art, However, we can take advantage of more aspects of this image to relate with fashion. In addiction to the vibrant colors that stand out, we can noticed that there are many interesting patterns on the painting too. I can also mention the textures too. In this case, the textures of this painting reminds me the winter and colder seasons. Fabric examples: velvet, knit or even corduroy.