Self-portrait in the mirror of the bathroom

Painted in 1942 on panel, this is among the most haunting of Bonnard's late self-portraits. By this point Bonnard was elderly, isolated at his villa Le Bosquet near Cannes during the German Occupation, and using a bathroom mirror to study his own aging face. The mirror motif is significant: it introduces a layer of mediation and self-examination, the artist seeing himself reflected and slightly distorted, honest about the marks of time. Now at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, it stands alongside his greatest late works as evidence that Bonnard continued his formal experiments until his death in 1947, never retreating into comfortable repetition.

The panel support gives a smooth, compressed surface to the paint. The face emerges from a shimmering field of warm bathroom tile colors—yellows and ochres—with the mirror frame creating a secondary geometry. Brushwork is tightly controlled in the face but loosens in the surrounding reflective surfaces.