Quotes from Pierre Bonnard

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

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

It's not a matter of painting life. It's a matter of giving life to painting.

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

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

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.

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

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.

It is still color, it is not yet light.

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole.

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

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.

Art will never be able to exist without nature.

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