From about 1923 onwards Bonnard and my parents spent their winters at Cannes. Every year, he would invite us to his studio to show us the winter's 'harvest' of pictures. When this event coincided with my vacation (I was a student at Vienna and later assistant to Julius von Schlosser) I was allowed to be present. First one had tea-from a very old and odd assortment of cups and saucers-and then one went up to his tiny studio which had canvases pinned all over its walls. In his book Le Bonnard que je propose, his friend Thadée Natanson tells of a similar 'private view' Bonnard had given him in his Paris studio. Bonnard had the habit of painting on simple pieces of canvas, to avoid dependence on the standardized format imposed by ready-made 'stretchers', and to enable him to adapt his pictures as he thought fit. He often cut a strip from a canvas, or added one on. At the top of a large decorative panel entitled Twilight there is a strip of canvas three centimetres wide, while the painting extends round the sides of the stretcher. Here is my mother's account of the memorable occasion that Bonnard used to call "the Hahnloser family's private view.”

Every spring, when Bonnard was collecting together the works for his annual exhibition, we were allowed a preview we could study everything at leisure and tell him which pictures we wanted for our collection. For him this was a chance to talk about his work, and there is not one of his canvases in our collection whose choice he did not approve. He was glad to know that it would be possible to follow his entire evolution at Winterthur. Nothing illustrates this better than the history of the small picture entitled 'The Jetty' . He began it in 1926 or 1928, but we had to wait at least seven years for it : he was always finding something he wanted to put right. Then one fine winter day in 1935, he said casually If you still want to have 'The Jetty', it's ready. I have found out what was throwing it out of true. I have heightened this yellow effect ; everything is in balance now.

It is small, but I think it is quite a successful piece of work These seven years had not changed the price of the picture he remembered the exact terms of our agreement and kept to them although the prices of his pictures had risen considerably in the intervening period.

A little later, the same jetty at La Croisette (on the way from Bonnard's house to ours) was treated quite differently. The jetty itself, now even further off-centre, is seen diagonally, softened by curves and shadows. This time it is caught in the full blaze of the Mediterranean sun, represented by dazzling areas of white.' Bonnard was nearly eighty when he achieved

this transmutation of reality. In 1923, after he had moved to the south for the sake of his wife's health, he had made this paradoxical remark : I can't paint here, there are no colours.' And yet, on a visit to Henri Manguin, as long ago as 1909, he had painted the splendid View of Saint-Tropez on which he later based his famous decorative work for the Morozov palace in Moscow. In this case the painter avoids an excess of light by withdrawing into the half-shadow be- tween the house and the trees. The bright blue of the Mediterranean appears only as a narrow strip on the left. The picture is divided in the middle by a tree; he had a subtle technique of placing the subject off-centre and restoring th balance by means of colour.

Inscr. b.r. : Bonnard

Formerly collection Hahnloser-BZhler, Winterthu