Pierre Bonnard, after taking his baccalaureate, in which he distinguished himself in classics, had studied law at the insistence of his father, and for a short time in 1888 he worked in a government office.

In the meantime he attended the École des Beaux-Arts, but, failing to win the Prix de Rome (a prize to study at the French Academy in Rome), he transferred to the Académie Julian.

After a year's military service, the twenty-three-year-old Bonnard shares a studio in Montmartre with Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard in 1890.