Nude, Red Chair

Nude, Red Chair from 1905 is an early work in which the bold color of the furniture plays a significant compositional and chromatic role against the nude figure. At this stage Bonnard was in his early thirties, recently returned from a period of concentrated work in the decorative arts and printmaking, and his paintings were beginning to develop the domestic intensity that would mark his mature style. The red chair as a pictorial device anticipates later masters — most notably Matisse — who would also exploit the chromatic interaction between bold furniture and the figure. The painting's current location is not publicly documented.

The red of the chair is the dominant chromatic event in the composition, pulling the eye and establishing a warm temperature against which the pale flesh tones read differently than they would against a neutral or cool ground. The color relationships here are more architectonic than in later Bonnard.