The triptych The Mediterranean is one of the best works of monumental-decorative art ever produced within the circle of the Nabis. The collector Ivan Morozov commissioned it from Bonnard in January 1910 to embellish the main staircase in his Moscow mansion on Prechistenka. The artist was immediately given a photograph of the staircase and an indication of the size. The parts of the triptych would be separated by half-columns and the artist was to take that into account when devising the overall composition.

The triptych presents a view of a garden with the Mediterranean in the distance. The garden is not deserted: in the centre little children are playing about in an amusing manner, while two young women are shown at the sides. Bonnard found the motif in Saint-Tropez where he was staying in September 1910. In a letter to his mother he wrote that the south had staggered him like a spectacle from The Arabian Nights. The impressions of his short trip undoubtedly expressed themselves in the creation of the triptych where an autumn rather than a summer landscape is depicted. In Saint-Tropez the artist met a dark-haired girl with an enormous blue parrot, his future model, and discovered "pebbles, little walls, olive-trees and oaks". The upper part of the right-hand panel is filled with a depiction of a huge oak. Down below is a girl with a green parrot - the change in the bird’s colour was dictated by the painterly requirements of the composition.

The triptych was finished by May 1911. It was displayed at the 1911 Salon d'Automne under the title The Mediterranean. A panel between columns. In November the triptych was sent off to Moscow. There the canvases were glued directly to the walls between the columns on the first floor above the main staircase. In 1912 Bonnard produced two additional panels for the side walls of the stairwell - Early Spring in the Country and Autumn. The Fruit Harvest, both now in the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum.