Bonnard: Drawing Color, Painting Light by Graham Nickson

Bonnard, The French Window, Oil on Canvas, 1932

'Human monocular and bifocal vision is very different to the action of the camera lens. In fact, Bonnard’s paintings get much more complex spatially when he gives up using the camera around 1920, and relies more and more on his drawings as the wellspring for his ideas and images. Bonnard states: “The lens records unnecessary lights and shadows, (whereas) the artist’s eye adds human value to objects.”'

"By committing facts to a small paper rectangle, rather than to a medium canvas as others have done, he was able to successfully use multiple, yet subtle, viewpoint shifts and adjustments by moving his head slightly and keeping his periphery in reserve whilst tackling the centers of his vision. He avoids, however, the fish-eye lens distortion by using a conceptual “imaginary grid” held somewhere in the area of entry into the nearest space into the painting or drawing."

Link Full Text, Artcritical.com

Link Artcritical.com