Today is International Day of Idleness (a day which, aptly enough, not many people bother to observe) so this week’s picture is The Siesta, by one of my favourite painters, Pierre Bonnard. The work was painted in 1900, when the artist was in his early thirties. It was once owned by Leo and Gertrude Stein but now hangs in in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
The scene is a Parisian interior, a corner of the apartment-cum-studio which Bonnard shared with his lover, Maria Boursin. Her slight and naked body, lying face down on a distinctly ruffled bed, is the focus of the composition. She seems deeply relaxed, the sociable clutter of teacups and bric-a-brac on the table beside her implying that she has not been alone. The intimate, slightly elevated viewpoint from which she is shown implies the tender and affectionate gaze of a lover. Her lithe, sleeping body has an almost feline air of self-absorption, an animal-like torpor which is in fact echoed not by the presence of a cat – as in Manet’s celebrated depiction of a female nude, Olympia, which Bonnard would certainly have known – but by that of a small white dog, curled up on the floor by the bed. The dog is a traditional emblem of fidelity, so perhaps the artist included it not only to enhance the somnolent mood of his painting but also to symbolise his own devotion to his lover.
Bonnard had met Maria Boursin in 1893, when he was twenty six and she was twenty four. He had recently abandoned his half-hearted attempts at pursuing a legal career, to devote himself to painting, while she was on the run from her past for reasons which still remain obscure. Having been born in Saint-Amand-Montrond, a small...
