The Children's Meal

Pierre Bonnard

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painted in 1895, The Children's Meal depicts an intimate domestic scene set in the dining room of Bonnard's family house, Le Clos, in the village of Le Grand-Lemps, showing members of his own family gathered around a table. Scholars have identified the figures as Bonnard's grandmother, his sister Andrée Terrasse with her infant son Charles, and his young nephew Jean. Working within the Post-Impressionist Nabi movement, Bonnard employs flattened forms, patterned surfaces, and the compositional influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints to transform an everyday family moment into a richly decorative pictorial arrangement. The work exemplifies Bonnard's celebrated "intimist" tendency—his abiding fascination with the quiet rituals of domestic life rendered through bold color and decorative structure rather than conventional perspective or narrative.