Nu assis, Fleurs dans les cheveux (Étude de nu) reinterprets the classic theme of the female nude; a motif that would preoccupy Pierre Bonnard for much of his career. The model for this painting was probably his lover and eventual wife, Marthe de Méligny, but he frames this scene of domestic intimacy within the rich artistic tradition of the female nude. The model’s reclined posture finds parallels with innumerable voyeuristic depictions of odalisques over the centuries, but the bright magenta flower tucked into her hair suggests an allusion to perhaps the most famous of them all, Édouard Manet’s Olympia.
As with many of his best works, here Bonnard depicts a quiet and contained interior which serves as a place of repose for this female figure. The canvas vibrates with the colorful texture of fabrics and decorative patterns, most prominently in the blue screen that enlivens many of Bonnard’s interior scenes from this period. Nevertheless the present work diverges from Bonnard’s depictions of nudes during this earlier period of his career. Bonnard commonly rendered the female figure engaged in movement—whether bathing herself, drying off after a bath, taking off a pair of tights or standing at her toilette. Here Bonnard captures a rare, quiet moment of contemplation, the woman’s gaze focused beyond the frame of the picture. Reclined, lost in thought, with a bright flower adorning her hair, this female nude aligns more closely with the neo-classical nudes of the nineteenth century than the intimate bathing rituals more often associated with Bonnard and Degas before him.