The painter Pierre Bonnard was a divisive figure in his age, reviled and revered, considered both forward-thinking and hopelessly retrograde, depending on who you asked around the turn of the century. (Henri Matisse loved him, Pablo Picasso couldn’t stand him). Bonnard was a member of Les Nabis, a group of artists who bridged the gap from the impressionist movement to modernism—until they decided he had reverted too closely to impressionism again. But he always had a champion in Phillips Collection founder Duncan Phillips, an early purchaser of his art and host of his first museum show, who remarked, “With us Bonnard is at home.” Not only is Bonnard at home at the Phillips in the career-spanning exhibition Bonnard’s Worlds, this show exemplifies the best of what the Phillips Collection does: championing early modern art, contextualizing it, and showing its enduring relevance. 

Co-organized with Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum, the show is arranged not chronologically but by subject, working mostly from outside scenes to inside ones. Enter at the top of the stairwell and head to the right, where a room is occupied with wide-open vistas. Peek into a small vestibule of self-portraits, then make your way to a roomful of garden and familial gathering scenes. These give way to interiors and domestic depictions, followed by intimate tableaus of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as a whole section of tablescapes. Some paintings are from the late 1800s, before he’d settled into what would become his signature style, but his work didn’t develop strictly linearly, so it’s smart to arrange them in a way that allows them to be observed on their own terms. 

In his diary, Bonnard called what he did “painting, or the transcription of the adventures of the optic nerve,” and so much of his work is about the act of seeing and how eyes actually take in and piece together visual information. His visual effects are not necessarily accurate, but ring true to what it’s like to observe, such as in “Before Noon,” where a patch of sunlight filtering through a garden is rendered as a gauzy cloud of white and yellow. He’s fond of visual puzzles and trickery, like mirrors that first appear to be views into separate rooms, or using foliage to create a framing effect as in his large and sumptuous landscape “The Palm.” Few artists capture how fleeting a moment or a feeling can be quite so well. 

There’s a jigsawed, dream logic quality to how the compositions come together: Scenes will appear to be constructed from multiple vantage points, moments that approach realism exist alongside radically altered perspectives, and patterns are flattened so that the pleasing arrangement of floor tiles or gingham tablecloth prints are prominently displayed. In some scenes, shadows and patches of light are exaggerated or made central, in others, such as “Dining Room on the Garden,” they are eliminated completely. These colliding effects create the sensation of not knowing quite where one is, and the viewer must orient themselves within the image. 

Bonnard once proclaimed, “Painting must, above all, be decorative,” and in his hands, light, texture, and color themselves become the adornment. That’s not to say that these paintings are purely decorative or only about looking, or that there aren’t psychological depths to be plumbed. Bonnard’s muse was his wife, Marthe, who was ill for parts of her life and with whom he had a complex and ever-evolving relationship. She shows up in dozens of his works, including 20 or so in this exhibit, a constant presence in his home and life. Oftentimes, she’s the focal point—resplendent or seductive—and other instances she’s caught only in glimpses, cropped into a corner or a smudgy figure blending into the backdrop. In these instances, Bonnard’s windows and doors box her out, confine and banish her. Marthe’s illness may have required her to take frequent baths or seek warmth in the refuge of the bathroom, and this inspired Bonnard’s many bath scenes, a fascinating look at how deceptively similar scenes appear completely different colored from day to day, both literally and emotionally. 

Bonnard worked through the turn of the 20th century, a time of rapid social and artistic transformation, and perhaps navigating that age and the onset of modernism is what has helped his work endure. His art continues to inspire, evidenced by the accompanying exhibit Jennifer Bartlett: In and Out of the Garden and complementing show from local artist Sydney Vernon, Interior Lives. A joint Jennifer Bartlett and Bonnard exhibition was originally planned as one production slated for 2020 before they were canceled due to COVID, but 2020’s loss is today’s gain, since there are significantly more Bonnard paintings on view this go-round, almost 60 in total. That’s plenty of worlds to get lost in for an afternoon. 

Bonnard’s Worlds is on view through June 2 at the Phillips Collection. phillipscollection.org. $10–$20.