Harry N Abrams [Published date: 1969]. Hard cover, 160 pp. 128 reproductions with 49 in large full color. [From front jacket] Pierre Bonnard's work has slowly but irresistibly made its way to top ranking in art since Impressionism.. Yet, as the reproductions in this book show, his art offers something rare and precious, for it ispainting for the sheer pleasure of painting, free of both theproblems of the world and the problems of the artist. Bonnard painted sunlight and air. He painted warmth, comfort, and intimacy. In his profusion of interiors, the table is always laden with fruit; doors and windows are open, and the lush and heady landscapes flood the room with their inviting radiance. The ambiance is one of sensuous delight.Bonnard's early work shows him a keen and quick observer of Paris street life and of uncomplicated bourgeois pleasures. The commercialized amusements and the darker side of life he left to others. He was at this time associated with the Nabis, seeking to simplify painting after Impressionism and to introduce some degree of spirituality. Strongly influenced by Japanese prints, he was called "the very ultra Japanese Nabi." But what he learned from the Japanese was soon merged with the Impressionist attitude toward color into a new and highly personal kind of painting. His themes became simple-and repetitive: scenes of family life, interiors and terraces, some portraits, still lifes, nudes in or out of the bath. The author of this book, Andre Fermigier, a leading French art critic and historian, conducts us from the early, whimsical glimpses of daily life to the artist's dedication to color and glowing luminosity. We see Bonnard's work distilling its own particular qualities from everyday surroundings, to become a special kind of abstraction in which areas and patches of color assert their own life before allowing the objects to be recognized for themselve - from Amzon