Forever Nude: A Fiction

On a cold winter morning in Paris in 1893, Marie, a farmer's daughter from the Midi is helped across a bustling street by a diffident young artist named Pierre Bonnard. When the two finally speak she introduces herself not as Marie, but as Marthe de Meligny, the aristocratic daughter of Italian parents. Marthe becomes Bonnard's lover and muse for the next fifty years; before he met her there were no nudes in his work but afterwards her body, perched naked above a mirror of water or at her toilette, would dominate his art. Forever Nude is an homage, a love letter, an impassioned, intimate record of the artist - a great friend of Matisse, a great enemy of Picasso - and an extraordinary evocation of the world of both artist and model.