Pierre Bonnard’s La robe de chambre rouge (Marthe Bonnard) (1912) is a richly intimate portrait of the artist’s lifelong muse and wife, Marthe de Meligny, painted at a moment when Bonnard was redefining modern interior painting through color, memory, and psychological nuance. Seated and absorbed in a private moment, Marthe is enveloped by a saturated red ground that presses close to the picture plane, dissolving traditional depth in favor of chromatic intensity. Her patterned robe and softly modeled face emerge through Bonnard’s layered brushwork, where color functions less as description than as emotional atmosphere.

Painted in 1912, the work was exhibited extensively from the year of its creation, appearing in seven exhibitions across Paris, Rotterdam, and Munich, signaling its immediate recognition within Bonnard’s circle and the broader European avant-garde.