Madame Bonnard

Madame Bonnard of around 1900, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, depicts Maria Boursin, the wife of Vuillard's close friend and fellow Nabi painter Pierre Bonnard. The two painters were among the most intimate artistic collaborators of the Post-Impressionist generation, sharing not only formal ideas but social circles, and Vuillard's portraits of Bonnard's family members extended the intimate domestic territory that was his primary subject across the most personal relationships of his life. The NGA holds multiple important Vuillard works in its French collection, and this portrait of Madame Bonnard is one of the more direct figure studies in a body of work where figures often dissolve into their patterned domestic environments.

The figure of Madame Bonnard is given more definition than Vuillard typically allows his portrait subjects, her form emerging from the background with a clarity that suggests interest here in character as well as atmosphere. The paint surface maintains the warm paste-like quality of his mature work, with the figure's dress handled in flattened colour areas that simplify fabric into pure shape.