Young Girl Sitting with a Rabbit 1891

Painted by Pierre Bonnard in 1891, this intimate scene, worked in oil on canvas, presents a young girl in a verdant setting, accompanied by a rabbit. The painting's visual experience is dominated by a tapestry of green hues, with patterned leaves creating a backdrop against which the girl and the rabbit are set. Bonnard's technique here seems to challenge traditional representation. Note how he flattens the perspective, pushing the foreground and background into a shared plane. The girl's form merges with the surrounding foliage, creating a sense of unity between figure and environment. This flattening can be seen as a deliberate move away from academic illusionism, towards a more modern understanding of space and form. Moreover, the chromatic scale is mainly composed of green which is interspersed with touches of yellow, orange and white. This color scheme is typical of Bonnard's early style. The artwork destabilizes traditional categories of portraiture and landscape. The very structure of the composition invites us to reconsider our expectations of representation, suggesting that meaning is not fixed, but emerges from the interplay of form and color.