Art: Bonnard: A Shimmer Of Hints

In the luminous, intimate world of Bonnard, all is shifting, dissolving, teasingly half glimpsed

We are looking into a sort of sea cave, shining with internal color. Its walls are covered with a wobbly grid of large tiles: yellow, viridian, mauve-flecked with rose madder. The floor is all sea-green and turquoise speckles, but it's hard to say exactly what color any patch of the gelatinous mosaic is because each is so modified by contrasting touches within its small boundaries. The biggest shape in this aquarium light rises diagonally across the picture: a bath, like an immense open oyster, in which floats the body of a woman, all legs, shining indistinctly in the water. She seems...

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