It was this central element of color that led to his later, more thorough exploration of color in his subsequent paintings of the 1890s, in conjunction with the increasing presence of Japanese compositional techniques in his work. By 1892, two years after his first experimentation with Japanese styles, he had gained the confidence to rely solely on color to highlight the subject, abandoning traditional European concepts of depth and three-dimensionality. He expressed this idea in his journal in the following words:
Using only one color as a basis, you structure the entire painting around it. Color represents a logic that is just as unrelenting as the logic of form. (Bonnard, qtd. Phillips)
Here, Bonnard reveals his core theory of colorism: that color can be used as the principal means of organizing a painting. He equates color with form in terms of logical importance, a far cry from the old-fashioned European use of color primarily as a compliment to form.
We can see this revelation of color as a method of logically organizing a painting, inspired by Japanese prints, represented graphically in his painting The Checked Blouse (1892). Like many Japanese prints, the entire work exists in one plane, with no apparent depth. As opposed to creating chaos, as we might expect, this lack of perspective allows color to take over and highlight what is important in the scene, a central tenet of Bonnard’s colorist method. Upon first looking at the painting, we are immediately attracted to the bright red and white checks that are its namesake. The color draws our eye to the center of the painting, while the horizontal and vertical lines create a very definite plane. Further framing the vibrant blouse are three blocks of pink, the woman’s face and hands. This hue is clearly not a true skin color, showing the development of Bonnard’s colorist tendency to exaggerate natural colors to a more heightened reality. The pink of the woman’s face is surrounded by the brown of the wall behind her, further inspiring us to look into this domestic scene. A planar work such as this one would be impossible without color, making it necessarily the chief means of organization in the piece, a method adapted from the Japanese woodblock prints. Bonnard’s palette is obviously brighter here than in his earlier works: the violent reds and pinks of The Checked Blouse outshine the more peaceful blues and earth tones of Woman at the Piano and Women with Dogs. While his colors have not yet reached the intensity of those seen in his later works, like Dining Room in the Country, they are clearly progressing in a more vibrant direction.