Pierre Bonnard Quotes

#1. You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form.

Pierre Bonnard

#2. One does not always sing out of happiness.

Pierre Bonnard

#3. Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole.

Pierre Bonnard

#4. Art is not nature ... There was a lot more to be got out of color.

Pierre Bonnard

#5. Art will never be able to exist without nature.

Pierre Bonnard

#6. You reason color more than you reason drawing ... Color has a logic as severe as form.

Pierre Bonnard

#7. It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting.

Pierre Bonnard

#8. I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

Pierre Bonnard

#9. The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible.

Pierre Bonnard

#10. Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

Pierre Bonnard

#11. The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed)

Pierre Bonnard

#12. The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Pierre Bonnard

#13. You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

Pierre Bonnard

#14. Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

Pierre Bonnard

#15. Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings.

Pierre Bonnard

#16. One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture.

Pierre Bonnard

#17. It is still color, it is not yet light.

Pierre Bonnard

#18. 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.

Pierre Bonnard

#19. 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.

Pierre Bonnard

#20. Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason.

Pierre Bonnard

#21. 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.

Pierre Bonnard

#22. 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.

Pierre Bonnard

#23. 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.

Pierre Bonnard

#24. And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done

Pierre Bonnard

#25. A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Pierre Bonnard

#26. Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.

Pierre Bonnard

#27. Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.

Pierre Bonnard

#28. The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object.

Pierre Bonnard

#29. I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly.

Pierre Bonnard

#30. It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values.

Pierre Bonnard

#31. When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough.

Pierre Bonnard