Interior 1913

Pierre Bonnard made this painting, Interior, which is an oil on canvas, sometime in the early 20th century. What strikes me is the way Bonnard builds this room with colour, a kind of honeyed light that dissolves the edges of things. You can really feel the hand of the artist in this piece. It's all about the materiality - the way the paint sits on the surface, thick in some places, thin in others. Look at the way he’s built up the surface of the dressing table, those daubs of emerald and white and lilac. It's like a collection of memories, half seen, half imagined. The colour is what holds the whole thing together, it's what makes the painting sing. Bonnard's like a cousin to Vuillard in some ways, both obsessed with the quiet poetry of domestic spaces. This isn’t about perfection, it's about capturing the feeling of a place, a moment, a mood. It's this kind of subjective truth that really resonates for me.