Sunday, February 8, 2009

Bonnard's Waterlogged Wife






Pierre Bonnard's paintings must be amazing in person. Those colors...


From the web, about the top painting:

This is one of a series of paintings that Bonnard made of his wife Marthe in the bath. Though she was in her mid-fifties, the artist depicts her as a young woman. Marthe spent many hours in the bathroom: she may have had tuberculosis, for which water therapy was a popular treatment, or she may have had an obsessive neurosis. The bath, cut off at both ends, and the structure of the wall create a rigorously geometric composition. The effect is strangely lifeless, and almost tomb-like; as if the painting were a silent expression of sorrow for Marthe's plight.

Hmmm, Marthe is like that Gwyneth Paltrow character Margot Tenenbaum in the film The Royal Tenenbaums . She was always in the tub as well...

Right now a hot bath sounds good to me! I've been sledding with my grandchildren a good part of the day...
Hope you are all having a relaxing weekend!
P.S. All the Valentine items in my Etsy shop are now ON SALE!
Check it out!!

4 comments:

artslice said...

Oh, I love these - 2 of my favorite subjects... bathtubs and Bonnard. I'm crazy about all the mixed patterns he uses and his colors are always so unexpected to me. Great post! (I'm up with my hungry, unsleepy daughter at 3:30 am. Blah!)

martha miller said...

oh, torture! i hope that she went back to sleep and that you did, too!!!

love your new Bath woodcut - it will be fun to see the prints!

The Cog said...

Of all places I learned of the Bonnard bathtub paintings in a landscape painting class. It changed forever the way I see color in paintings...

martha miller said...

Hi Corporate Cog (may I call you CC for short?)

Really! That's cool. Did the professor speak about Bonnard's figures in interiors resembling landscape?
So tell me how your perception of color has changed after seeing Bonnard...

I'm enjoying your contour portraits! Glad you are having some time to draw!