The Exit of the bath

The Exit of the Bath from 1926 captures one of the liminal moments that Bonnard found particularly rich — the figure stepping out of the bathtub and back into ordinary domestic space, neither fully in the immersive private world of the bath nor yet re-engaged with the outside world. This threshold quality interested him because it suspended the figure between states, producing a particular combination of physical exposure and psychological inwardness that his domestic intimism was equipped to explore. By 1926 Bonnard had been painting Marthe in and around the bath for over a decade; the series had developed from relatively straightforward figure subjects into increasingly concentrated psychological documents of a domestic life growing more enclosed. Marthe was withdrawing from social contact during these years, and the bathtub — her habitual refuge — became correspondingly more central to Bonnard's pictorial world. The canvas's current whereabouts in private hands reflects the dispersal of many important Bonnard works through the international auction market during the late twentieth century.

The wet body against the dry surfaces of the bathroom floor and walls creates a contrast in texture that Bonnard translates into paint by varying stroke length and density. The color temperature shifts between the warm nude and the cooler tile and wall surfaces.