Sleeping woman on a bed

Painted in 1899 and held at the Musée d'Orsay, this early sleeping figure work is among Bonnard's first treatments of Marthe in the most private domestic state — unconscious, horizontal, surrendered entirely to interior experience. The sleeping figure, unmindful of being observed, allowed Bonnard to study the female form without the charged dynamics of posed portraiture. By 1899, Bonnard had been with Marthe for six years; the intimacy of access to a sleeping model reflects the specifically domestic nature of their shared life. This early sleeping figure anticipates the more intense, colour-saturated treatments of Marthe's private moments that would characterise his work from 1910 onward.

The horizontal sleeping form creates a calm compositional axis. Warm flesh tones and the whites and creams of bedding are rendered with a soft, diffused quality. The surrounding bedroom environment is gently indicated. The palette is tonally restrained relative to his later chromatic intensity.