A Young Woman by the Piano

In this scene a woman in a patterned dress plays the piano. The painting has an extreme foreground with  large white chrysanthemum blooms obstructing our view in the bottom right corner. The closeness of the flowers makes it seem that we are watching this scene from a lower perspective, perhaps that of a child or someone sitting in a chair in this domestic living space. The woman’s dress and the wallpaper are heavily patterned. The dress is flattened and largely unshaded, as is typical for the Post-Impressionist ‘Les Nabis’ style in which Bonnard worked which sat between Impressionism and Abstraction. Bonnard’s signature in the bottom left corner shows an oriental-style stamp reminiscent of the ‘Japonisme’ fashion popular at the time.