Brassaï, in his book The Artists of my Life, recounts his visit to the painter at Le Cannet in August 1946: "I looked around for his easel, his palette. There were none. Nailed side by side onto the wall were several unstretched canvases on all of which, to my astonishment, Bonnard was working at the same time. Once he had collected a touch of laque de garance, or cadmium yellow, with his nervous, deft fingers, he would then examine each canvas to find the one and only place to put it. In this way, he could nourish several canvases at once until they all came to life. Economy of gesture? The procedure might have seemed a rational one had his "palette" not obliged him to make a tiresome trip back and forth for each color--for the paints were laid out far behind him on a low table. However, he had obviously set this onerous task for himself deliberately. By moving away from the canvases after each stroke, he was better able to judge the effect he was obtaining and to seize the color relationships, as well as to keep an eye out for any empty spaces. [...] When I mentioned my amazement at his strange manner of working to Charles Terrasse, he told me, "My uncle loathes stretchers because they set a limit to the canvas. He wants them to have a larger dimension than the picture he is planning... ." Brassaï, The Artists of My Life (New York: Viking Press, 1982), pp. 8, 10. ©1998 The Museum of Modern Art, New York