Maquette pour un portrait de Bonnard

Maquette pour un portrait de Bonnard from 1930 at the Musée d'Art Moderne is a preparatory study for a formal portrait of Pierre Bonnard made late in both painters' careers. Bonnard and Vuillard had known each other since art school in the late 1880s and remained close friends and mutual admirers throughout their lives, despite the very different directions their mature work took. This maquette has an intimacy appropriate to a study of a lifelong friend — the painter encountering a face he had known for forty years.

The preparatory quality allows Vuillard to capture Bonnard with a fresh eye unconstrained by commissioned portrait conventions — the color notes rapid and intuitive rather than carefully calculated. The surrounding environment is barely suggested, the focus concentrated on the face and posture that Vuillard would elaborate in the finished portrait.