The Breakfast Room

Painting the quiet spaces and familiar routines of his household, Pierre Bonnard was interested in translating the experience of “what one sees when one enters a room all of a sudden.” He achieved this not by working directly in front of his motif, but from memory, reimagining—often through a lens of longing or nostalgia—his initial perception of the scene’s colors, shapes, and textures. Although Bonnard was long misunderstood as a “painter of happiness” because of his intimate, domestic subjects and bright palette, some of his paintings, including this one, actually reveal themselves to be much more ambiguous portrayals of detachment and solitude.