Pierre Bonnard, The White Interior (1932)

Photo: Musée de Grenoble, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADADGP, Paris

I dream of seeking the absolute,” Pierre Bonnard wrote to Henri Matisse early in November 1940. The phrase leaps off the page—for many reasons. First, there is the context. The letter dates from the years of the Second World War, when shortages and deprivations, even in the unoccupied South of France where both artists lived, made travel all but impossible. Unable to exchange their usual visits, deprived of their tête-à-tête studio conversations, Bonnard and Matisse wrote to each other more often and more fully during the wartime years than at any time in their long friendship. Yet the great bulk of their correspondence from this difficult period has little to do with painting; instead, there are reports on how each of these elderly men was feeling and inquiries into the other’s condition. (Both were feeling mortal in the 1940s. Bonnard, born in 1867, died at the beginning of 1947, aged seventy-nine; Matisse, two years younger, died in 1954, just short of his eighty-fifth birthday.)

The pair exchanged comments on the weather, news of how friends and acquaintances were surviving the war, and helpful suggestions for preserving well-being. “I advise you as well as your wife to take every precaution to avoid the flu, which is everywhere at the moment,” Matisse wrote. “About ten days ago I caught it