Édouard Vuillard was a member, along with Pierre Bonnard, of the Nabis, a circle of painters instilled with a Symbolist sensibility who were interested in glowing colours and interior worlds. Vuillard painted Bonnard’s mistress, Marthe de Méligny, several times. In this version Marthe is aged around thirty and is shown with her dog. This image of cloistered devotion echoes Bonnard’s own secretive relationship with Marthe, whom he did not marry until 1925, more than thirty years after they met. Vuillard gave the completed picture to Bonnard, who kept it all his life.