The Power of an Artist's Notebook, Memories

Meditating on modernism
By Pierre Bonnard

The Economist
February 7, 2009

(Excerpt)
Much of the work on view was produced after 1926, when Bonnard and his model, muse and wife, Marthe, moved into "Le Bosguet," an unimposing villa above Cannes. But the many bowls and baskets of luscious-looking peaches and cherries, the plates of cakes and the roses in jugs are not the careful arrangements one would expect a still-life artist to create. The reason for this is that Bonnard did not paint from life. What we see are his memories. To help him recall images that captivated him, the artist always carried a small pocket diary. On its ruled pages he made pencil sketches. Whether his inspiration was a person, an animal, plants or the corner of a room, though, light was his main prey. To help him capture it, he jotted down notes about weather and colours. In one of the four notebooks on display, for example, the words pluvieux froid (rainy, cold) are scrawled across the top of a page.

There was nothing of the romantic arists in a garret about Bonnard. He appeared to live a bourgeois life. His studio was a smallish upstairs bedroom; it didn't even have an easel. He would just cut off lengths of canvas and tack them to the wall. When a picture was finished, he cropped off any remaining blank canvas.