As such, Bonnard’s development as a colorist is evident as early as 1890 in his work of that year Young Woman at the Piano, created soon after his introduction to the Japanese prints. In this work, we can see that his colorist tendencies started not by incorporating the brilliant light of the South, but by adapting the Japanese technique of highlighting important elements of a painting with large blocks of color, in this case, a fairly tame shade of blue. His Japanese influence is clearly evident: a solitary woman, hearkening to the recurring theme of geisha in the Ukiyo-e prints, dominates the frame. In this painting, Bonnard translates the female subject into the context of everyday French bourgeoisie, depicting a woman in a fairly plain dress playing the piano in what is most likely her living room. Our eyes are drawn to her by the bright blue of her dress, which contrasts with the dull earth tones of the rest of the room. This use of color to highlight an important element of the painting is early evidence of Bonnard’s passion for color. Her dress is depicted with a large block of blue, covered in a pattern, and bounded by a strong black line. Japanese prints often contained large blocks of a single color, such as the one of her dress, and made frequent use of patterns and strong, calligraphic outlines to define figures. The minimal shading of her body creates a sense of flatness, giving her image a high-impact quality. However, the woman is faced diagonally away from us and we can follow the line of the keyboard toward the rear center of the work, showing us that Bonnard has not yet departed from the European notion of one-point perspective. The color scheme of the work, with the exception of the blue, also consists primarily of dull colors, the backdrop against which Bonnard’s soon-to-develop brilliant palette must emerge. We witness here in this work the birth of Bonnard as a colorist: he draws our attention to an everyday domestic scene by the use of color, foreshadowing the more dramatic usage of color present in his later works, including those composed during his inhabitation of the Midi, which can certainly be traced back to the early influence of the Japanese prints.