38 Quotes by 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.

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 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.