Pierre Bonnard

Femme debout dans sa Baignoire Roger-Marx 81; Bouvet 94 lithograph, 1925, on heavy hand-made buff Japon Impérial paper, the rare 2nd state (of 4), a very fine impression, with full margins, one of 5 proofs of this state before the album edition, signed in pencil by the artist, annotated along the lower edge in pencil by the publisher "Épreuve d'état tirée à 5 sur japon à la forme" with his gallery blindstamp (Lugt 1057b), as well as his essai and second state wetstamps (L. 2921b & 2921d) lower left, in excellent overall condition L. 335x224mm., S. 495x325 mm.

Commissioned by Edmond Frapier for his album, Maîtres et petits maîtres d'aujourd'hui, this important lithograph (close to the painting Femme dans sa Baignoire, cf. Dauberville 1275*) is one of Bonnard's finest in the intimistic series of nudes and interiors that he executed in the early 1920s.

It further shows his preoccupation with informal "snapshot" framing and the diaphanous handling of the subject, avoiding treatment of detail in favour of the shimmering effects of light, which accords well with the artist's contemporary pictorial intentions. It is most probably a portrait of Marthe, his companion of long standing, whom he was to marry the same year.

* Jean & Henry Dauberville, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint de Pierre Bonnard, 1966-1974; see also Françoise Heilbrun & Philippe Néagu, Bonnard Photographe, 1987.