Stepping from the pavement onto the Boulevard Hausmann 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 Meligny, 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 teh radiant colours, teh sensual shapes and forms of his genius. orever Nude is an homage, a love letter, an impassioned record of the artist who wanted only to appear to the young artist of the year 2000 on the wings of a b