Nude and fur hat

Nude and Fur Hat from 1911, also held at Villa Flora in Winterthur, introduces the unusual accessory of a fur hat into the domestic nude setting — an individualizing detail that resists the generalized nudity of the academic tradition and insists on the specific, slightly eccentric particularity of this figure in this room at this moment. The hat may have belonged to Marthe de Méligny, whose personal objects and clothing appear frequently in Bonnard's intimate subjects as markers of her individual presence within the domestic world they shared; or it may be a studio prop used to introduce a specific chromatic and formal note into the composition. Villa Flora's twin holdings of this and Nude with Covered Legs from the same year demonstrate the Hahnloser-Bühler collectors' practice of acquiring thematically related works together, building within their collection the kind of comparative context that allows individual works to illuminate each other. Both paintings demonstrate Bonnard's approach to the nude in the prewar period, when his domestic figure subjects were developing the psychological complexity that would define his mature practice.

The fur hat introduces a textural counterpoint to the smooth skin tones, and Bonnard renders it with different brushwork — shorter, denser strokes — to convey its tactile quality. The juxtaposition of nude body and fashionable accessory creates a domestic intimacy quite distinct from the classical nude tradition.