Many representational artists, particularly in the modern period, develop characteristic compositional structures they use more-or-less irrespective of the subjects they paint. With Bonnard, however, the subject has a major influence on the composition, and never is this more evident than with his landscapes, which form a very distinct grouping within his art. He made a point of leaving his own garden relatively untended; likewise, his paintings of landscape delight in the natural disorder of nature and are, by far, the densest, busiest, and most continuously patterned of his works. They are somewhat reminiscent of children's puzzle landscapes in which figures and objects are hidden. The tall, narrow format of some is borrowed from Japanese paintings. The very range of the markings they use is extraordinary. Dots, blocks, lines, bands, patches, scribbles, and streaks of multiple colors picture a landscape of visual glare and noisy movement, and form a flat map-making that opens into an illusion of depth in the time of our viewing. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York