Dining Room in the Country

In 1912 Pierre Bonnard bought a modest country house above the Seine, near Vernon, and nicknamed it Ma Roulotte, my caravan. The next year he painted its dining room. The doors and windows stand wide open, so the warm reds and violets of the room run straight into the green of the garden outside, and it becomes hard to say where the house stops. Leaning in at the window from the garden is Marthe, his companion of many years, half in and half out of the room. Two cats have taken the chairs. Bonnard rarely painted in front of his subject; he built pictures like this afterwards, from memory and small pencil notes.