Bonnard's Working Method Instead of painting on stretched canvases, resting at a convenient height and tilting at a comfortable angle on an easel, Bonnard chose to paint on unstretched pieces of canvas that he thumb-tacked to the walls of his studios or hotel rooms. Several pieces of roughly cut canvas were juxtaposed on the wall in several rows, very near each other, often abutting. Bonnard had several works in progress at any one time, of diverse subjects. Once he had mixed a particular color, he applied it on the various compositions he had on the wall. Sometimes he painted various compositions directly on a single large canvas that he did not cut until later on. He did not use a palette, but mixed his colors on plates, and walked back and forth between the wall and the table on which his plates were placed. The paintings [at left] are identified hereafter by their number and date in the Dauberville catalogue raisonné. Top to bottom, first vertical row: D 01898, c.1906; D 559, c. 1909; D 510, 1908. Second row: a painting similar to Vuillard's Femme au chien, 1907, not in Dauberville; D 564, c.1909; D 515, 1908; D 01919, c. 1907. Third row: unidentified framed painting; D 774, 1913 [?]; D 492, 1908; D 424, 1906; and D 01918, c. 1907. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York