Young Woman Writing (Jeune femme écrivant)

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

In this domestic scene, a woman seated at a table hunches over a letter. Pieces of paper are strewn across the red tablecloth, forming a kind of pattern while also attesting to the intensity of her writing process. Bonnard painted this work after taking multiple trips to the Netherlands, and he may have been inspired by 17th-century Dutch pictures of letter writing. The diffuse light coming through the gauzy curtains gives the composition a pearlescent tone, an effect that that often appears in the tranquil yet psychologically charged scenes of everyday life Bonnard painted at this time.

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