Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947) was a prolific painter and printmaker and a founding member of the avant-garde, Post-Impressionist group Les Nabis. His unique style is characterized by an unusual vantage point, and radiating, voluptuous color. For Bonnard, the act of painting was an investigation of the physical substance of paint, and relationships between color and light throughout the canvas rectangle. Bonnard painted the familiar: rooms, objects, models, and the rituals of daily life – taking tea, feeding the cat, tending to the dinner table. His paintings began as small drawings and watercolors made on the pages of his diaries, which he worked up in the studio, often with pencil and gouache. The paintings developed slowly and over time. Rather than the object itself, it is the memory of the object that Bonnard captures.