Portrait of Madame Henri Jean Arthur Fontaine

Painted in 1930 and held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, this formal portrait of Madame Henri Jean Arthur Fontaine belongs to Bonnard's late portrait practice — less frequently undertaken than his domestic and landscape work, but demonstrating his facility with the commissioned portrait in a period when collectors and patrons sought him out specifically. By 1930 Bonnard was internationally recognised; his patrons included the Bernheim-Jeune gallery's circle and various French bourgeois families. A formal female portrait allowed him to deploy his characteristic warm domestic palette within a more conventionally structured composition, the sitter's clothing and jewellery providing opportunities for chromatic observation.

The formally composed portrait is rendered with the warm chromatic intelligence of Bonnard's mature phase. The sitter's clothing and surrounding interior provide zones of varied colour, with the flesh tones rendered in his characteristic warm, light-saturated manner.