Page 21 - Studio International - February 1966

and one leg coming out underneath, an ankle, and his I am in distinguishing between early, middle and late,
slippered foot. And this figure is carrying a palette. So the more conscious I become of continuity and repeti-
Torse de femme vu dans un miroir
1916 Canvas 31 7/8 x 43 3/4 in. Bonnard is walking across the room towards the bath. tion, the more I realise that, in spite of changes of
Signed Forge What really do you think of the very last pictures ? handling and the intensifying of colour, one keeps on
Lent by the collection
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris Sylvester The more I see of Bonnard, the less interested seeing in early Bonnards -even in those painted before
the end of the century—the composition, the vision, of
the late work. This is what impresses me most now
about the relation of earlier to later.
Forge You say repetition. But I think it is extra-
ordinary that one goes on finding these absolutely odd
pictures. I know there is a tremendous continuity of feel
about the pictures. One can never mistake them for any
other artist. But all the way through there are pictures
that strike you somehow as quite unprecedented—
oddities of tone, for instance.
There's a nude which one comes upon towards the
end of the exhibition which is a kind of fierce construc-
tion of darks and lights, when everything that had
gone before had somehow prepared one for nudes con-
structed out of very closely aligned tones. And
suddenly here's this thing that's all elbows and knees
both in the shapes it makes and in the transitions from
one tone to another. It's as though he had pulled a
painting out of a hat which was unlike anything that
he'd ever thought of before.
Sylvester Certainly. He seems in some ways one of the

Above Right
Le boeuf et l'enfant c.1934-46 Nu a la baignoire 1938-41
Canvas 36 5/8 x 46 1/8 in Canvas 40 x 25 in.
Signed Studio stamp
Lent by a private collection, U.S.A. Lent by a private collection. U.S.A.