Self portrait

Painted in 1923 and held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, this self-portrait belongs to Bonnard's group of introspective self-examinations. Self-portrait was never a major genre for Bonnard compared to his domestic subjects, but the surviving works have a particular psychological directness. By 1923 Bonnard was in his mid-fifties, internationally recognised but characteristically modest about his achievements; the self-portrait mode offered a private reckoning. The Art Gallery of New South Wales's holdings of French modernism represent the broad international reach of Post-Impressionist art collecting in the early twentieth century.

The self-portrait is rendered with a directness unusual in Bonnard's work. The figure is placed in the characteristic warm interior light of his domestic environments, but the self-scrutiny of the gaze creates a different emotional register from his observation of Marthe or domestic objects.