Free shipping on orders over $60$5 flat rate under $604 items: 10% off · 8 items: 20% off
You save $68.47
Free shipping over $60 · 30-day returns · Dispatched in 1–2 business days
Woman out of the Bath - Pierre Bonnard - Figurative Oil Painting Wall Decor is part of our hand painted oil painting collection from the Pierre Bonnard Paintings selection. Each canvas is worked by a trained artist, then inspected before dispatch — a practical route to owning post-impressionist wall decor at a fraction of gallery pricing.
FEMME SORTANT DU BAIN
circa 1925
Oil on canvas
43 1/4 by 37 1/4 in.
Private Collection, Japan.
Bonnard's paintings of the female nude are the most renowned in his oeuvre. The primary model for these canvases was the eccentric Marthe de Meligny, a young woman of elusive origin whom Bonnard met in Paris in 1893 and who would become his wife in 1925. Marthe's obsession with her health, which resulted in elaborate grooming and bathing rituals, afforded him a glimpse into the female world with which so fascinated him.
Bonnard executed portraits of Marthe across multiple media, including photography (fig. 1), but it is his paintings of her that are bathed in luxurious color and built upon compositional complexities that are novel within the Modernist canon. Sarah Whitfield writes, "Bonnard began painting pictures of Marthe washing early on (from the 1900s), rather in the manner of Degas who had made the subject of feminine hygiene his own. The subject of the nude washing herself in a round zinc tub was one Bonnard treated at least a dozen times in the period between 1914 and 1917 [fig. 3]. [These works] are concerned above all with composition, combining Bonnard's favourite device of creating a painting around an empty space, preferably a round void (for which the tub provided the best possible pretext) with his attachment to classical sculpture (the nude crouching in the tub is surely a series of variations on the theme of the Crouching Aphrodite in the Louvre)" (Sarah Whitfield, Bonnard, (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London & The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 28).
As Whitfield mentions, Bonnard's intimate depictions of nudes are indebted to the tradition of Degas, whose pastels of women at their toilette were a great source of inspiration for the artist (fig. 2). For this work, Bonnard chooses a soft palette similar in tone to Degas's delicate medium, but the medium of oil allows for a more clearly defined depiction of the figure. Balancing the composition, Bonnard has combined sensuous color with strongly defined geometry.
The monumental nude seen in the bathroom, as in the present work, was a major recurring theme in Bonnard's work from his early years before 1900 until his death in 1947. Sasha Newman in the catalogue of Bonnard exhibition in Paris, Washington and Dallas in 1984 discusses the early nudes as follows: "This early exploration of the female subject culminated in a series of nudes painted in the years preceding the turn of the century, including L'Homme et la femme, L'Indolente (Dauberville, no. 219), and La Sieste (Dauberville, no. 227), which resonate with an explicit eroticism unique in Bonnard's work. The emotional charge of these paintings continues to inform his later nudes - modulated, transformed, but ever present - and becomes the central feature in so many of the interiors in the early years of the twentieth century. Bonnard's obsession with the nude is generally focused on the lonely, solitary figure of Marthe" (Pierre Bonnard: The Late Paintings (exhibition catalogue), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. & Dallas Museum of Art, 1984, p. 108).
In the present work, Bonnard has depicted Marthe just after her bath. Considering the rich symbolism of Bonnard's paintings of the nude, John Elderfield has written about the significance of the nude's intense focus on her own body, and the voyeurism inherent in these paintings: 'The self-absorption is, of course, an apartness. But the prolonged, extended, unhurried activity only apparently excludes the beholder, who waits and watches and can imagine closeness amounting to an identification with the never-ageing, painted woman ('He looked after her, feared her, put up with her, loved her,' a common friend wrote: 'her identity almost merged with his in the constant anxiety she caused him.') Not just looked at but looked after, Marthe is supported in these paintings, which are among Bonnard's slowest, their slowness bespeaking the tactile solicitude of the gaze" (J. Elderfield, "Seeing Bonnard", in Bonnard, The Tate gallery, London (exhibition catalogue), 1998, p. 45).
Collectors often choose this figurative image when searching for portrait oil painting that feels substantial rather than decorative or disposable.
We use a 100% hand-painted process: stretched artist-grade canvas, layered oil pigment, and a final protective varnish. There are no inkjet prints or mechanical reproductions in this collection — just a painted figurative artwork made to order.
Build an entryway gallery wall around this portrait oil painting, or let it stand alone as a single statement. The hand painted canvas finish keeps the figurative composition looking intentional in both classic and contemporary rooms.
Whether the search term is portrait oil painting, entryway wall decor, or post-impressionist oil painting wall decor, this hand painted canvas delivers the same thing: a real painted surface, made to your chosen dimensions.
| Size | Price |
|---|---|
| 20 X 24 in | $68.48 |
| 24 X 36 in | $106.48 |
| 30 X 40 in | $146.98 |
| 36 X 48 in | $195.48 |
| 48 X 72 in | $379.98 |
The sizes shown are the reproduction canvas sizes we paint to order. The dimensions given in a work's description refer to the original artwork and will differ from the sizes offered here. Not sure? Read the size guide or e-mail us.
Free on orders over $60; a flat $5 below that. Dispatched in 1–2 business days; 30 days to send it back. Full policy.
Every canvas is painted by hand in oils on artist-grade stretched canvas, with an extra blank border left for framing. How to care for your painting.
Measurements are on the size guide, or e-mail [email protected] and we reply within one business day.
