Pierre Bonnard: Quotes about painting

Pierre Bonnard was French painter and printmaker. Explore interesting quotes on painting.
Pierre Bonnard: 48   quotes 34   likes

“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
Painting , Understanding , Learning , Art

“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.”

Pierre Bonnard

quoted in Bonnard; by Sarah Witfield and John Elderfield; Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1998 - ISBN 0-8109-4021-3, p. 9
Bonnard did not paint from life but rather drew his subject and made notes on the colors. He then painted the canvas in his studio from the sketches and his notes

Dreams , Home , Painting

“I should have sent you news of myself long ago, for I know how much pleasure one derives from a letter during one's first days in the regiment. One needs it to be reminded that one is something more than a registered number and that in the past one's existence was different from that of beast. Anyway that is how I felt about the army. I was unable to connect my present existence with my former life as a civilian.... Here [in Paris in his studio in La Rue Pigalle] I am leading a studious and quite exemplary life... I am working on an important picture which is progressing well and which will be exhibited, I hope, at the [Salon des] 'Indépendants. In addition I am planning to do a screen which will also be shown at the exhibition. Otherwise nothing is happening. I may go with Vuillard to see a music publisher, but I do not expect any success as yet in that direction. I have abandoned chromolithography (ouf!) for the moment, but I shall take it up again whenever I feel impelled to interrupt my oil painting, in order to vary my pleasure's.”

Pierre Bonnard

in his letter to Lugné-Poë, End of 1890; as quoted in Pierre Bonnard, by John Rewald; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 17 - note 11
Lugné-Poe was just called then in the French army; Bonnard had left the army already, c. one year ago

Life , Pleasure , Hope , Music

“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
Imagination , Painting , Time , Books