Woman with Mimosa

Painted in 1924 and held at the Metropolitan Museum, this work connects the female figure to the mimosa — the intensely yellow flowering tree characteristic of the Côte d'Azur — in a chromatic pairing that anticipates Bonnard's Le Cannet period. By 1924 Bonnard was spending considerable time in the South; mimosa, which flowers in February against still-cool skies, was associated with the specific tonality of early spring on the Riviera. The woman with flowers subject merges portraiture, still life, and domestic genre in a quintessentially Bonnard composition, the human figure and the bouquet sharing equal pictorial presence.

Brilliant chrome yellow of the mimosa provides the composition's dominant chromatic note, against which the figure's warmer flesh tones and the cool background register. The brushwork is varied — more controlled on the figure, freer in the flower cluster.