Although he was drawn to art and literature, young Pierre Bonnard studied law to please his father. He became a practicing lawyer in 1888, and yet it was not to be: Bonnard failed a necessary law exam and was suddenly free. With friends from the Academy Julien, Bonnard helped found the movement Les Nabis. Their doctrine maintained that painting should be considered “a surface plane covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” As Bonnard would later say, “Certainly colour had carried me away. I sacrificed form to it almost unconsciously.” Bonnard lived with the artist Marthe de Méligny, a muse he would marry in 1925, and eventually isolated himself from his former colleagues. But his concentration on color, light, and feeling endured. This exhibition presents 70 paintings that span the course of Bonnard’s career. They are organized thematically, not chronologically. —Elena Clavarino