Paul Rosenberg, Paris

Léon Delarocꦯhe, Paris (acquired ♎from the above in 1938)

🌌P൩rivate Collection, Europe (sold: Christie's, New York, November 8, 2006, lot 70)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Jean & Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. III, Paris, 1973, no. 1153,  illustrated p. 140

Excellent condition. Original canvas. Under UV, no evidence of restoration. The pigments are fresh and well-preserved.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

With its beautifully nuanced palette and rich, textural contrasts, Le Corsage rayé is a lavishly colorful rendering one of the artist's most beloved subjects – the female figure within a domestic interior.   Throughout his career, Bonnard depicted Marthe, occupied by a daily routine such as eating, reading or bathing.  Bonnard met Marthe de Méligny (née Maria Boursin) in 1893, when she was a fashionable young Parisian shop girl, and married her in 1925. Discussing Bonnard's portrayals of Marthe, Sarah Whitfield wrote: "Marthe is almost always seen in her own domestic surroundings, and as an integral part of those surroundings.... In a sense many of these works are variations on the theme of the artist and his model as well as on the double portrait. This is the case even when Bonnard is not visible.... We are always made acutely aware that whatever the subject of the painting a nude, a still life, a landscape what we are being asked to witness (and to participate in) is the process of looking. But it is in the paintings of Marthe above all that we find Bonnard portraying himself as the ever-attentive, watchful presence" (Sarah Whitfield, 'Fragments of Identical World', in Bonnard (exhibition catalogue), Tate Galler📖y, London, 1998, p. 17).

The tranquility of the the present picture underscores the relationship between the artist and his model. Bonnard portrays his wife as though caught in a moment of contemplation. A vibrant tabletop occupies the foreground, presaging the boldly-colored still-lifes of his later career.  The energy of the foreground is counterbalanced by the model, whose vibrant shirt commands our attention. Marthe's pose, with her head directed downward, is employed in several of Bonnard's most engaging compositions.  This is perspectival manipulation at its finest, with the artist directing our gaze vis-à-vis that of his model and calling our attention to an area beyond the given pictorial space.  We see this technique in some of Bonnard's Nabis works, such as Femmes au chien from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (fig. 2), and he would continue to refine and reinterpret this perspectiꦐval tactic throughout his career (fig. 3).

The model's tranquility in Le Corsage rayé is offset by a vibrant play of colors on the surface of the canvas. The unmodulated color blocks of Bonnard's Nabis years here give way to a masterly manipulation of color and brushstroke. As Jack Flam wrote for the recent exhibition on Bonnard's late works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "Often, when you stand before one of Bonnard's paintings, the whole spatial structure seems to buckle; empty spaces can appear to bulge forward, while solid objects appear almost concave; space itself is virtually warped by the dense presence of time made visible in the throbbing presence of the paint film... His paintings have a dense, luminous quality that makes them seem to be evocations not only of the things we see, but also of the memories and specters of other presences, which we intuit but that are not clearly visible" (Jack Flam, "Bonnard in the History of Twentieth-Century Art," in Pierre Bonnard, Late Still-Lifes and Interiors (exhibition catalogue), Metropolitan Museum of Artꦆ, New York, 2009).