John Berger's "Pierre Bonnard"

Just finished the short essay. For Berger Bonnard's nudes are "far and away the best pictures." He discusses several but ends on the Grand Nu Bleu (1924). Below the picture I quote from Berger's essay re why he thinks the nudes so important.

Grand Nu Bleu (1924)

From Berger:

     And now we come to the harsh paradox which I believe is the pivot of Bonnard's art. Most of his nudes are directly or indirectly of a girl whom he met when she was sixteen and with whom he spent the rest of his life until she died at the age of sixty-two. The girl became a tragically neurasthenic woman: a frightened recluse, beside herself, and with an obsession about constantly washing and bathing. Bonnard remained loyal to her.
     Thus the starting point for these nudes was an unhappy woman, obsessed with her toilet, excessively demanding and half 'absent' as a personality. Accepting this as a fact, Bonnard, by the strength of his devotion to her or by his cunning as an artist or perhaps both, was able to transform the literal into a far deeper and more general truth: the woman who was only half present into the image of the ardently beloved.