The Plaid Dress

The Plaid Dress — Pierre Bonnard. 1926.

Medium: oil on canvas. Dimensions: Unframed: 77.2 x 46.4 cm (30 3/8 x 18 1/4 in.).

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

This painting depicts the artist’s wife Marthe holding a yellow cup and saucer as she walks toward a door leading to a sunlit terrace. The profusion of patterns and close color harmonies of Marthe’s plaid dress and the wallpaper behind her make it initially difficult to discern the woman from her surroundings. Bonnard treated everything—whether human or inanimate—with equal importance in his work of this period. The artist said that he wished “to show what one sees on first entering a room, what the eye takes in at one glance; one sees everything, and at the same time nothing.”

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.