Pierre Bonnard: "Art will never be able to exist without nature".

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color.

A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis, his early work was strongly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, as well as the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists.

Bonnard was a leading figure in the transition from Impressionism to Modernism.

He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject.

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

• "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".

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

• "Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory".

• "You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself".

• "Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings".

• "Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason".

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

• "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".

• "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".

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

• "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".

• "Art will never be able to exist without nature".

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

• "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".

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

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

• "The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object".

• "Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole".

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

• "The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works (On being photographed)".

• "A painting that is well composed is half finished".

• "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 attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life".