DITA AMORY: Here, Pierre Bonnard has crafted a domestic scene in a series of rectangles. We seem to be looking at this dining room straight on. But Bonnard skewed the perspective so that we can see every object on the table’s surface. Consequently, it rhymes visually with the back wall, the window, and other planes throughout the canvas. This strict geometry is softened somewhat by Bonnard’s warm, rich palette, and by the light flooding the scene from the upper right.

But what about the people? It’s dinnertime. The table is set for a convivial gathering. But the girl on the left seems to be warming her feet by the fire, caught up in her own interior world. The woman waiting at the table is also apart, in isolation, without communication. These figures show none of the predictable intimacy of domesticity. Rather, they are lost in thought: inscrutable, opaque. Even the dog marches across the carpet with no apparent interest in others. This pervasive absence of communication is very common in Bonnard’s paintings.