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We look down onto papers and books piled on a small wooden table with delicate, spindle legs, with a dog and cat on a sofa in the background in this vibrantly colored, stylized, vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with dabs and visible brushstrokes in butterscotch and golden yellow, azure and navy blue, apple red, and white. The square table takes up most of the bottom two-thirds of the composition. Its surface is almost entirely covered with a spread of papers and stacks of books, including two thick, white volumes near the front, right corner and a thin red book on the other front corner. Smaller squares between the books are painted with streaks and washes of turquoise blue, scarlet, and brick red. A tall, narrow vase with abstracted, ice-blue flowers sits behind the stacked books, to our right. Beyond that, at the back right corner of the table, a sheet of paper reads “ALBUM MUSICAL,” with the final L partially obscured by a piece of bubblegum-pink paper set askew atop the stacked books. The artist’s name appears in rust-red letters on a paper at the back left corner of the table: “Bonnard.” The rug beneath the table is dominated by a vivid, azure-blue ring. The blue ring is surrounded by a white band decorated with widely spaced, black ovals dotted with pale lemon yellow. At the center of the blue ring is a black circle dotted with abstracted rosettes made with rings of apricot orange and gray around yellow centers. At the back edge of the rug, at the top left corner of the painting, a white cat sits and brown spotted dog lies on a mustard-yellow sofa, which has a wooden arm on the end we can see. There is a tangerine-orange chair next to it, in the upper right corner of the painting, and a teal-blue block there could be a pillow. The floor between the furniture is goldenrod yellow.

Pierre Bonnard

Work Table, 1926/1937

East Building, Ground Level — Gallery 103-E

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 121.9 x 91.4 cm (48 x 36 in.)

framed: 129.54 × 99.06 × 4.45 cm (51 × 39 × 1 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

2006.128.12

Artists / Makers

Pierre Bonnard (painter) French, 1867 - 1947

Image Use

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Inscription

center left on upper left of paper on table: Bonnard

Provenance

Acquired 1937 from the artist by (Bernheim-Jeune, Paris); sold to Pierre Loeb.[1] Paul Rosenberg, Paris.[2] private collection, Switzerland, in 1965. Paul Mellon [1907-1999], Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA, with life interest to Mrs. Mellon; life interest released 2006.

[1] Early provenance and Swiss collection per Jean Dauberville, Bonnard: catalogue raisonné, 4 vols., Paris, 1966: no. 1356.

[2] During World War II the painting was confiscated from the Rosenberg collection by the Nazi Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). Documents from the National Archives in Washington indicate that the painting had been selected by Hermann Goering on 9 July 1941 from the Jeu de Paume (OSS Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, Attachment 5, Liste der für die Sammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring abgegebenen Kunstgegenstände, dated 20 October 1942, 1 Nachtrag, no. 31, National Archives RG239/Entry 73/Box 78, copy in NGA curatorial files). Goering traded the picture to the dealer Gustav Rochlitz, from whom it was recovered after the war. The records of the Munich Central Collecting Point indicate that the painting was restituted to France on 27 March 1946 (Munich property card #8046, National Archives RG260/Box 503, copies in NGA curatorial files). It was exhibited in 1946 in Les Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections privées françaises retrouvés en Allemagne par la Commission de Récuperation artistique et les Services allies, no. 52.

Associated Names

Bernheim-Jeune
ERR
Goering, Hermann, Reichsmarschall
Mellon, Paul
Munich Central Collecting Point
Rochlitz, Gustav
Rosenberg, Paul

Exhibition History

1935: [exhibition], Reid and Lefevre, London, 1935, no. 32.

1939: Parisjsche Schilders, Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam, 1939, no. 16, repro., as De schrijftafel.

1946: Les chefs -doeuvre des collections françaises retrouvées en Allemagne par la Commission de récupération artistique et les services alliés, Orangerie, Paris, 1946, no. 52, repro., as La table de travail.

1948: Pierre Bonnard, Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948, no. 53, repro., Table with Music Album.

1964: Bonnard and His Environment, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1964-1965, no. 40, repro., as Table with Music Album.

2009: Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, no. 20, repro.

2012: Pierre Bonnard, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2015: Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947): Painting Arcadia, Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2015-2016, no. 48, ill. 81 (French cat.); no. 20, repro. (Spanish cat.); no. 86, repro. (English cat.).

2017: Matisse - Bonnard. "Long live painting!", Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 2017-2018, no. 32, repro.

2018: Fascination Japan: Monet, Van Gogh, Klimt, Bank Austria (BA-CA) Kunstforum, Vienna, 2018-2019, pl. 80.

Bibliography

1966: Dauberville, Jean, and Henry Dauberville. Bonnard: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. 4 vols. Paris, 1966-1974: 3:289, no. 1356.

1969: Fermigier, André. Pierre Bonnard. New York, 1969: 27, repro., as Table with Music Album.