Bonnard and Vuillard are the most domestic of all early 20th-century artists

Bonnard and Vuillard are the most domestic of all early 20th-century artists. Little wonder that Picasso – who never lived alone in all his life yet had an internal rage against domesticity – found them wanting.Today, it is clear that some inner drive toward domesticity led to the triumphs of Bonnard’s painting Something happened to Bonnard around 1900. He was a Parisian, so had an inbuilt knowledge of sophisticated life in the capital. Bonnard was pretty well established as part of the avant-garde when Picasso arrived in Paris at the turn of the century. Bonnard in his late twenties was quite the young master, and had a lot of aplomb We can imagine him as a boulevardier. He wins a prize for designing a poster advertising champagne. He cleverly observes a game of croquet (a new and fashionable sport) in the gardens of his family home.

Bonnard is connected with avant-garde theatre and poetry: he contributes to La Revue Blanche, the most elegant literary and artistic magazine of the day; and, as the painting Indolence shows, he had a dramatic talent for sexual art His first one-man show was in 1896. The influential critic Gustave Geffroy praised his work for its “charmingly malicious individual observation and touch of impudent gaiety”.A bright and successful young man, Bonnard owed much to the liveliness of Parisian culture He was also indebted to gifted contemporaries. Of course Bonnard looked at the sky, and at other aspects of nature too He loved the exercise of sight. Painting isn’t a question of sensibility: it’s a matter of seizing the power, taking over from nature, not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice .. that’s what I hold against Bonnard I don’t want to be moved by him. Bonnard made superb paintings not by “seizing the power” but by some other process. And that process is the heart and the mystery of the Tate exhibition.Another reason for Picasso’s animus may simply have been a matter of different generations and social style Bonnard was born in 1867.

we are content that the world contains calmer, more receptive and meditative souls than Picasso’s. High-key broken colour is a marvel of his palette, and no painter since Bonnard has equalled his effects in this area. Many have tried, but they always end up with vulgarity of colour Bonnard is never vulgar As for painting not being a matter of “sensibility” … Bonnard’s painting brought the heavens within the grasp of his own home and immediate environs.The blue, yellow, mauve and pink that Picasso mocked are precisely the colours that he himself could use separately but could not mingle Bonnard could There are many reasons for admiring him as a technician.