1946, Pierre Bonnard, Young Women in the Garden -- Phillips Collection (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Marthe Bonnard appears in the corner at right, almost unnoticed, while a much younger blonde woman, Renée Monchaty, looks pensively towards the painter. Bonnard met Monchaty, more than 30 years his junior, around 1920. Marthe's anger over their affair was likely the decisive factor leading to the couple's marriage in August 1925, more than 30 years after they started living together. In turn, it is thought that Renée's death a few weeks later must have been a suicide. When Bonnard began the painting in 1921, it probably showed the terrace of Ma Roulotte, but when it was finished more than 20 years later--after Marthe's death in 1942, when Bonnard could bring the painting out once more to be retouched, from memory--it became suffused with the light that fell on the terrace at Le Bosquet: yellow, white, pink, and blue.
1946, Pierre Bonnard, Young Women in the Garden -- Phillips Collection (Washington) (special exhibition)
From the exhibition label: Marthe Bonnard appears in the corner at right, almost unnoticed, while a much younger blonde woman, Renée Monchaty, looks pensively towards the painter. Bonnard met Monchaty, more than 30 years his junior, around 1920. Marthe's anger over their affair was likely the decisive factor leading to the couple's marriage in August 1925, more than 30 years after they started living together. In turn, it is thought that Renée's death a few weeks later must have been a suicide. When Bonnard began the painting in 1921, it probably showed the terrace of Ma Roulotte, but when it was finished more than 20 years later--after Marthe's death in 1942, when Bonnard could bring the painting out once more to be retouched, from memory--it became suffused with the light that fell on the terrace at Le Bosquet: yellow, white, pink, and blue.