Pierre Bonnard quotes

Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, associated with the Post-Impressionist movement. Known for his vibrant use of color and intimate domestic scenes, he played a key role in modern art. He influenced generations of artists with his unique style and sensitivity to light. Here are 30 of his quotes:

The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object. (Pierre Bonnard)
Art will never be able to exist without nature. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
A painting that is well composed is half-finished. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Draw you pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
How many days have I spent alone with my cat... and when I say alone, I mean without a material being, for my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values. (Pierre Bonnard)
What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
One does not always sing out of happiness. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
The painter's only solid ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Art is not nature.. There was a lot more to be got out of color. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly. (Pierre Bonnard)
It would bother me if my canvases were stretched onto a frame. I never know in advance what dimensions I am going to choose. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
My first pictures were done by instinct, the others with more method perhaps. Instinct which nourishes method can often be superior to a method which nourishes instinct. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
I have all my subjects to hand. I go back and look at them. I take notes. Then I go home. And before I start painting I reflect, I dream. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
I work in the mornings and in the afternoons I go to the Latin Quarter. It is a long way from the Batignolles district to the Pantheon: Fortunately there is the Metro. It amuses me to see the people squashed together, and among them are some pretty faces which I draw in the evenings, from memory, in my sketchbook. View quote
Pierre Bonnard