I stand in a corner of the room, near to this table bathed in sunlight. The eye sees distant masses as having an almost linear aspect, without relief, without depth. But near objects rise up towards it. The sides trail away. And these shifts are sometimes rectilinear – for what is distant; sometimes curved – for planes that are near. The vision of distant things is a flat vision. It is the near planes which give the idea of the cosmos as the human eye sees it, of a universe that is rolling, or convex, or concave…

Bonnard, in an interview with Charles Terrasse, 1927