Portrait du docteur Maurice Girardin

Portrait du docteur Maurice Girardin at the Petit Palais is Bonnard's 1917 portrait of one of the most important collectors of the French Post-Impressionist generation. Maurice Girardin, a Paris doctor, assembled an exceptional collection of Bonnard, Vuillard, and their contemporaries that he eventually bequeathed to the Petit Palais, fundamentally shaping that institution's Post-Impressionist holdings. The portrait belongs to a tradition of artist-patron documentation that runs through the entire history of French modernism — Vollard painted by Cézanne, Gertrude Stein by Picasso — and Bonnard's treatment of Girardin reflects both genuine friendship and the artist's characteristically informal approach to portraiture. Unlike Lawrence's portraits of his sitters, which project social authority, Bonnard's portrait of the collector captures him in a specific domestic or semi-domestic environment, the figure integrated into the pictorial field rather than displayed against a neutral ground. The Petit Palais's possession of both the portrait and much of the collection it documents creates an unusually complete record of the relationship between this artist and his most committed collector.

Bonnard situates Girardin within a rich chromatic environment rather than against a neutral ground, the portrait becoming as much a study of an inhabited space as of an individual face. The figure is rendered with Bonnard's characteristic all-over chromatic vibrancy, warm and cool passages building the form without conventional academic shadow.