Pierre Bonnard Quotes

“Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.”

“A painting that is well composed is half finished.”

“Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.”

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

“Art will never be able to exist without nature.”

“The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.”

“After the great Impressionists, and again after Van Gogh and Gaugin, people said, 'Painting is now played out.' But Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Roussel and Vuillard appeared and gave them the lie. 'We were wrong,' said the croakers, 'but this at any rate is the end.' Yet to refute them, and to prove that there is no end to art, still another generation of painters sprang up.”

“The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious”

“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. ”

“Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.”