Artwork Information

In the mid 1920s Pierre Bonnard became involved in producing a number of lithographs for the publisher Edmond Frapier, in Paris. The latter, following in the footsteps of Vollard, wished to make the works of selected major French artists available to those who could not afford to acquire paintings. These included works by Goya, Ingres, Gericault, Delacroix, Corot, Manet, Odilon Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Rouault, Maillol, Vlaminck and others. The medium of lithography lent itself to artists who had not trained per se as printmakers, as there was a pleasing immediacy about the act of drawing or painting directly on the lithographic stone. Bonnard focused on themes central to his career as a painter - intimate portraits of women placed around or behind a table, so that the objects displayed there are forms of still life, and the nude in the bath. The latter studies culminated in some of Bonnard's most famous paintings on this theme. Le Bain is remarkable for the manner in which the young woman is seated close to the end of the bath, as if someone else who was sharing the tub with her has just stepped out.