Word: bonnards
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...Pierre Bonnard's latter-day success is galling to some Parisian moderns, who think he is an old fogy. He has never followed the fads of Parisian painting, never gone surrealist or cubist, never painted a face with one eye or three. Many of Bonnard's pictures fall into a kind of sentimental fuzziness that reminds people of Renoir...
...four decades Pierre Bonnard has changed neither his style nor his subjects. His lushly colored, impressionist scenes of French life delight the eye, make no demands on the mind. Having neither the audacity of Matisse nor the intellectuality of Picasso, he turns constantly to the commonplace: simple cottage interiors, village streets, somnolent nudes, bowls of fruit or fish, all as familiar and soothing to his fellow Frenchmen as old bed slippers and good wine...
Nobody Home. When the Germans arrived, Bonnard left Paris to live in a mountainside villa near Cannes. Vichy officials made the two-mile climb to his place, asked the old man to paint the portrait of another oldster-Marshal Petain. Said Bonnard: "If Marshal Petain is a good model, I'll paint him. But, remember, if I don't like my work I reserve the right to destroy it." The Vichyites dropped the whole idea...
...Bonnard continues to live in his villa, visits Paris infrequently. He is up each day at 5, walks, putters about in his garden, does all his painting after lunch. When unwanted visitors interrupt his work he emerges blandly from his house, announces that "M. Bonnard is out," and shuts the gate...
Using neither palette nor easel, Bonnard mixes his paints on a dinner plate, tacks his canvas on a wall. When a painting is finished, he trims away the extra canvas. Dealers have learned that a Bonnard picture never fits into a ready-made frame...