Marthe bonnard biography of william
Marthe bonnard biography of william hamilton...
Marthe Bonnard is a perpetual presence throughout the artist Pierre Bonnard’s work.
Marthe bonnard biography of william
From his early illustrations in the 1890s to his last luminous canvases of the 1940s, she is the subject of hundreds if not thousands of paintings and drawings. Yet art history has long been unkind to Marthe.
Bonnard’s lustrous baignoires are believed to reflect her neurotic obsession with bathing, while his supposedly reclusive life in the south of France in the 1920s is usually explained by Marthe’s reputed paranoia and hatred of other people.
In more recent decades, their relationship has been the subject of exhibition catalogues, novels, and a lot of journalism. With every exhibition of his work, similar headlines appear: “In the bath with Mrs Bonnard: how the painter’s difficult marriage inspired his spellbinding art.”
But, having spent many years researching Bonnard, I have found that much of what is believed about Marthe may be false.
New evidence in the Burlington Magazine reveals that s