Bonnard did not paint from nature or from the model, but worked from preliminary drawings and from memory. Once his composition had been delineated on paper, he would cut a piece of canvas of the right proportions from a large roll, by eye. Once the painting was finished, it was fastened onto a stretcher, and the sometimes less than perfectly perpendicular composition was corrected. Bonnard would add paint to straighten the sides if necessary. Bonnard stated: "I like to work on an unstretched canvas that is larger than the intended picture. This gives me room for alteration." The appeal of a rigid surface, as opposed to the resilient surface of a stretched canvas, was probably one of the reasons why Bonnard resorted to tacking his canvases onto walls. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York