Interior with Boy

Painted in 1910 and held at the Phillips Collection, this interior with a child in a domestic setting belongs to Bonnard's observation of family life during his Vernonnet years. The child within an interior — absorbed in play or observation, indifferent to the adult painter — was a subject that combined domestic documentation with the purely formal interest in scale, proportion, and the relationship between a small human figure and a large domestic space. By 1910 Bonnard's colour had warmed and deepened considerably from the Nabi period, and the domestic interior subject could sustain a richly chromatic composition without narrative support.

The child's relatively small figure within the domestic interior creates a scale contrast that Bonnard uses compositionally. The surrounding room is rendered with warm domestic colour. The brushwork builds the interior environment with varied touches that create a lived, atmospheric domestic space.