Pierre Bonnard was born on October 3, 1867 in Fontenay-aux-Roses (France). He had a happy and careless youth as the son of a prominent official of the French Ministry of War. In 1886, Pierre Bonnard entered the University of Paris to study law. As quickly as one year later, Pierre decided to take an additional course at the Académie Julien where he eventually met artists such as Paul Sérusier. Together they created the art group Les Nabis.

Starting from the year 1890, Pierre Bonnard created color lithographs in a studio which he shared with Vuillard and Denis. Bonnard continued and expanded the impressionists' concern for depicting the personal environment of the artist. His naturalism, however, was merely a starting point for adding striking innovations in color and the construction of perspective. After 1920 intense colors dissolve forms yet celebrate the painter's sensuous delight in the southern French landscape and the beauty of the female nude.

Bonnard's stylistic evolution offers a transition from impressionism to a coloristic, abstract art. During his lifetime, critics often found his work old-fashioned, because of his commitment to figuration and the narrow scope of his themes. However, critics now recognize the importance of Bonnard's contribution to the development of abstraction.

Pierre Bonnard died in Le Cannet on January 23, 1947.