These two pictures bear the numbers 885 and 886 in the catalogue of Bonnard's work; this means that they date from 1911. They are two variants of the same idea. The first nude, seen from directly in front, is 'taken by surprise'; the second is more intimate, as if the artist had seen his model without being seen himself.

The first came to us direct from the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and the second ten years later, from a German collection. Their elongated format recalls the eighteen-nineties and the 'decorative panels' that the Nabis painted under the influence of Japanese prints. 'No more easel paintings' was their motto. Bonnard remained faithful to this principle for longer than the others, and went further in his application of it. Not for nothing did his friends give him the title of 'Nabi japonard', an epithet which he freely accepted. Apart from his first tall, thin paintings, he produced some five-colour lithographs that could be mounted on a screen à la mode; they depict four intersecting street scenes. One of these screens he later heightened with touches of gouache and framed.

Women and Children dates from the same period, and the little boy is wearing the same fur hat. Bonnard had offered to paint this so that the child's parents should have a work to represent this period in their collection; but his modesty led him to content himself with the smallest study possible.

During the war, when my mother wrote the letter to Bonnard , I asked her to include a question as to his affinities with the Japanese. His answer is charming and a little paradoxical : he mentions the 'gaudiness of colour,' but not the compositional principles that so clearly influenced his work. No doubt this is because the idea of adapting the format of his canvases to suit his conception of the picture had become a basic principle of his art.

My mother writes of these two paintings On seeing this scene with its vibrant pink embodying all the radiance of Bonnard's art, a Parisienne who knew how simple a life he led exclamed How odd to think of poor Marthe in such an elegant hotel, with a bath- room.' This is not the right explanation for this scene of enchantment the light gives it all its elegance. Bonnard never spent money on luxuries, it is true; but he also never confused luxury and comfort. To him the bathroom was a necessity and an inspiration. It is Bon- nard's art that has created this amazing blue apartment out of a modest hotel-room with a place to wash in one a corner behind a lacquered door. And the sumptuous, many-hued, silken coverlet, what humble couch does it conceal? Closer examination reveals that a white sheet has simply been draped over the arms of a perfectly ordinary basket-work chair it is just possible to detect the back of the chair with its adjustable bamboo supports. Bonnard's "mystery of white' plays on a blue wall as if the light of the sky had entered into the blue of the room : just as the immaterial blue of Cézanne's skies becomes one with the landscape beneath. Bonnard has once more found a spiritual a interpretation of everyday reality. He has turned 'nothing' -a simple room--into a miracle this is the achievement of a poet.

I have to confess that although we saw this picture, and savoured the miraculous whiteness of the bed, every day for years, it is only now, reading these lines written by my mother, that we have discovered the humble basketwork chair concealed under the sheet. This illustrates two essential characteristics of Bonnard's art: whereas the Impressionists present us with an obvious reality, a Bonnard picture always has its secret, which may remain a secret until many years have passed; and he loves to find a place for some cloudy and indistinct shape here the coverlet or the pink toque and what is beside it-which will allow the imagination to soar above mere concrete reality.

Inscr. b.1. : Bonnard

Formerly collection Hahnloser-BZhler, Winterthur