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The Plaid Dress

1926
(French, 1867–1947)
France
oil on canvas
Unframed: 77.2 x 46.4 cm (30 3/8 x 18 1/4 in.)
Promised Gift of Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley 8.2020
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: not on view
This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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Did You Know?

Plaid dresses were extremely fashionable in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Paris.

Description

This painting depicts the artist’s wife Marthe holding a yellow cup and saucer as she walks toward a door leading to a sunlit terrace. The profusion of patterns and close color harmonies of Marthe’s plaid dress and the wallpaper behind her make it initially difficult to discern the woman from her surroundings. Bonnard treated everything—whether human or inanimate—with equal importance in his work of this period. The artist said that he wished “to show what one sees on first entering a room, what the eye takes in at one glance; one sees everything, and at the same time nothing.”
The Plaid Dress

The Plaid Dress

1926

Pierre Bonnard

(French, 1867–1947)
France

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