nd-mannerist, or the smart symbolism of the caricaturist, or the
half-baked symbolism of the pseudo-philosophical-futuro-dynamitard he
has no truck whatever. His ambition is not to convey, without the aid
of words, certain elementary ideas, unimportant facts, or obvious
sentiments, but to create forms that shall correspond with his intimate
sense of the significance of things. The paraphernalia of symbolism are
nothing to his purpose: what he requires are subtlety of apprehension
and lightness of touch, and these are what he has. So M. Leon Werth
meets people who complain that "Bonnard manque de noblesse."

Bonnard is not noble. A kitten jumping on to the table moves him, not
because he sees in that gesture a symbol of human aspiration or of
feminine instability, the spirit of youth or the pathos of the brute
creation, nor yet because it reminds him of pretty things, but because
the sight is charming. He will never be appreciated by people who want
something from art that is not art. But to those who care for the thing
itself his work is peculiarly sympathetic, because it is so thoroughly,
so unmitigatedly that of an artist; and therefore it does not surprise
me that some of them should see in him the appropriate successor to
Renoir. Like Renoir, he loves life as he finds it. He, too, enjoys
intensely those good, familiar things that perhaps only artists can
enjoy to the full--sunshine and flowers, white tables spread beneath
trees, fruits, crockery, leafage, the movements of young animals, the
grace of girls and the amplitude of fat women. Also, he loves intimacy.
He is profoundly French. He reminds one sometimes of Rameau and
sometimes of Ravel, sometimes of Lafontaine and sometimes of Laforgue.

Renoir never reminded anyone of Ravel or Laforgue. Renoir and Bonnard
are not so much alike after all. In fact, both as artists and craftsmen
they are extremely different. Renoir's output was enormous; he painted
with the vast ease of a lyrical giant. His selections and decisions were
instinctive and immediate. He trusted his reactions implicitly. Also,
there is nothing that could possibly be called whimsical, nothing
critical or self-critical, about him. Bonnard, on the other hand, must
be one of the most painstaking artists alive. He comes at beauty by
tortuous ways, artful devices, and elaboration. He allows his vision to
dawn on you by degrees: no one ever guesses at first sight how serious,
how deliberately worked out hi