Chicago postscript

But after all, my Bonnard wasn’t there.

It’s what Bonnards do—vanish into museum storerooms, go travelling suddenly across the world, without warning, without apology, taking the light with them like stained glass when the sun is gone from it.

It is a worthy occupation chasing them; something I’ve done for more than half my fifty years; a journey I’ve bequeathed to Isabel, the heroine of my Bonnard novel Nude Against the Light. Something that redeems her life.

image: Pierre Bonnard, The Seine at Vernonnet