represent lovely things. A picture by Bonnard, for all its fascinating
overtones, has a life entirely of its own. It is like a flower, which
is beautiful not because it represents, or reminds one of, something
beautiful, but because it is beautiful. A picture by Bonnard escapes
from its subject, and from its author, too. And this is all-important
because it is just this independent life of its own that gives to a work
of art its peculiar character and power. Unluckily, about this detached
life, about a work of art considered as a work of art, there is little
or nothing to be said; so perhaps M. Werth has done well to confine
himself to the task of giving his readers a taste of the quality of an
artist's mind. This task was difficult enough in all conscience; the
mind of Bonnard is subtle, delicate, and creative, and it has needed
subtlety, delicacy, and not a little creative power, to give us even a
glimpse of it.

The first thing one gets from a picture by Bonnard is a sense of
perplexed, delicious colour: tones of miraculous subtlety seem to be
flowing into an enchanted pool and chasing one another there. From
this pool emerge gradually forms which appear sometimes vaporous and
sometimes tentative, but never vapid and never woolly. When we have
realized that the pool of colour is, in fact, a design of extraordinary
originality and perfect coherence our æsthetic appreciation is at its
height. And not until this excitement begins to flag do we notice that
the picture carries a delightful overtone--that it is witty, whimsical,
fantastic.

Such epithets one uses because they are the best that language affords,
hoping that they will not create a false impression. They are literary
terms, and the painting of Bonnard is never literary. Whatever, by
way of overtone, he may reveal of himself is implicit in his forms: