And so, Returning to Bonnard’s 1912 work, Dining Room In the Country, we see that this shocking use of color is not, as the Terrasses suggest, solely a product of his move to the South of France. On the contrary, it is a logical continuation of his development as a colorist, a progression that commenced not in the Midi but in dreary Paris with his 1890 exposure to the cheery Japanese woodblock prints. As such, the South provided not an origin for but an ideal place to continue a trend started by these prints. The art world had already been made aware of the similarities between the South and Japan by Vincent Van Gogh, who explained his move to Provence by saying that “[he] believed that by looking at nature under a brighter sky one might gain a truer idea of the Japanese way of feeling and drawing” (Van Gogh, qtd. Tralbout 218). Perhaps Bonnard, like Van Gogh, moved south in order to be closer to the bright colors of his beloved Japanese prints? For there, he could continue to incorporate Japanese brightness of tone into his art, not through only small, flimsy prints, but through the influence of full-scale nature. Starting in the 1890s and continuing through the rest of his career, Bonnard developed his concept of tone as both a means of organizing a painting and a primary vehicle of conveying meaning, all in brilliant color.