Forever Nude

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Stepping from the pavement onto the Boulevard Haussmann on that December morning in 1893, she is Marie, a farmer’s daughter from the Midi. Rescued from the commotion of horses and carriages, she is escorted to the far side of the avenue by a diffident young artist named Pierre Bonnard. When at last they speak, she introduces herself as Marthe de Méligny, aristocratic daughter of Italian parents. It was as Marthe that she would, for fifty years, be Bonnard’s lover and his muse. There are no nudes in Bonnard’s work before Marthe. Afterwards, her body, perched naked above a mirror of water, at her toilette, or in the languor after lovemaking would dominate his work. It would be almost forty years before, on the eve of their marriage, Bonnard discovered that Marthe was Marie. In impressionistic, jewel-like sketches, poet and novelist Guy Goffette conjures the artist and his model; visits the gardens, houses and landscapes that Bonnard so gloriously depicted in the radiant colours, the sensual shapes and forms of his genius. Forever Nude is an homage, a love letter, an impassioned record of the artist - great friend of Matisse, great enemy of Picasso - who wanted only ‘to appear before the young artist of the year 2000 on the wings of a butterfly...'

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Guy Goffette is a novelist and essayist. This is his first book to be translated into English.