Last autumn the small, charming Angleterre cinema in the very centre of Saint Petersburg screened the French director Martin Provost’s film Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe (2023), released in Russia as The Nude Muse.
It is an ironic and rather complex love story between the last of the Impressionists, Pierre Bonnard, and Marthe (Maria Boursin). For anyone interested in Western European art of the early 20th century, this film is a pleasure. Notably, Bonnard was an outstanding colourist, and the director followed his hero, creating vivid, colourful shots. The film has none of the many tales of the bohemian crowd of that time, of the luxury of permissiveness or refined intellectual conversations. The director focuses on the everyday side of the artist’s life, on scenes of daily routine. And this is no accident. Bonnard was a modest man in everyday life, yet bold and open in conveying the erotic dimension through observing a naked young woman at home. He was daring in his colour combinations, which leave no viewer indifferent. Marthe, the woman he loved, adored nature and was simple in her spontaneous sensuality. She was direct in voicing her thoughts and devoted to a world full of trees and flowers, to the house on the riverbank where she loved to swim naked. This woman’s everyday life, so full of life and steeped in eroticism, evidently captivated Bonnard. He painted her in ordinary domestic scenes, his favourite being Marthe taking a bath. In the bath, as if in a cradle, the artist depicted his muse many times.
The film is rather light, yet it leaves the impression that something important in this story has been captured. The artist’s beloved, Marthe, possessed a value that was elusive and far from obvious to many.
Works by Pierre Bonnard can be seen in Russia. They are on display at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in the exhibition of Western European art of the early 20th century. There is also a large collection at the Hermitage.