id: 135518
accession number: 1958.57
share license status: CC0
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.57
updated: 2024-04-25 11:08:14.900000
At the Café, c. 1897–99. Edouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940). Oil on board, laid on cradled panel; unframed: 28.8 x 27.5 cm (11 5/16 x 10 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.57
title: At the Café
title in original language:
series:
series in original language:
creation date: c. 1897–99
creation date earliest: 1897
creation date latest: 1899
current location:
creditline: Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.
copyright:
---
culture: France, 19th century
technique: oil on board, laid on cradled panel
department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
type: Painting
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
---
CREATORS
* Edouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940) - artist
After attending the Lycée Condorcet, Édouard Vuillard entered the studio of history painter Diogène Maillart (1840-1926). In 1886 he enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he was taught by Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911) and Bouguereau (q.v.). The following year he was accepted into the École des Beaux-Arts and was briefly in the atelier of Gérôme (q.v.). At this time he also studied seventeenth-century Dutch painting and the works of Chardin (1699-1779). By 1889 Vuillard was persuaded by his friend painter and theorist Maurice Denis (1870-1943) to join the newly formed group of artists known as the Nabis. The Nabis based many of their ideas on synthetism, first developed by Gauguin (q.v.) and Émile Bernard (1868-1941), in which the artist was to work not from nature but from memory. Vuillard's initial synthetist works reveal a preoccupation with pattern and bright colors, denying the three-dimensionality of the object. By 1892, however, his colors were more subdued, reflecting his desire to mimic the unusual lighting effects that he had seen in symbolist theater. Vuillard's first major commissions date from this time, including nine panels for the dining room of Alexandre Natanson and four decorative panels for the library of Dr. Henri Vaquez. In 1898 Vuillard visited Venice and Florence, and the following year he and Bonnard (q.v.), a fellow member of the Nabis, made an excursion to London. Later they went to Milan and Venice and eventually to Spain. Vuillard also made trips to Brittany and Normandy. His first public commission came in 1912, when he was asked to paint panels for the foyer of the Comédie des Champs-Elysées in Paris. During that period he moved beyond the synthetism of the Nabis and returned to a more traditional perspective. At the same time he was accepting commissions for portraits. In 1936 he was chosen to paint a mural at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and was subsequently elected to the Institut de France.
---
measurements: Unframed: 28.8 x 27.5 cm (11 5/16 x 10 13/16 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work:
support materials:
inscriptions:
inscription: Signed lower left: E Vuillard
translation:
remark:
---
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900
opening date: 2021-07-01T04:00:00
Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (July 1-September 19, 2021); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (co-organizer) (October 23, 2021-January 23, 2022).
title: Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection
opening date: 2022-09-11T04:00:00
Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
---
LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* {'description': 'Louisville, Ky., J. B. Speed Memorial Museum. The Hanna Collection of Modern Masterpieces (1944), no cat.', 'opening_date': '1944-01-01T00:00:00'}
* {'description': 'Dayton Art Institute. The Little Show (1945), no. 12, Café Scene, lent by L. C. Hanna Jr., Cleveland.', 'opening_date': '1945-01-01T00:00:00'}
* {'description': 'New York, Jacques Seligmann & Co. É. Vuillard. His Dynamic Early Period (1948), no. 10, Le café, private collection, New York.', 'opening_date': '1948-01-01T00:00:00'}
* {'description': 'CMA; New York, Museum of Modern Art. Édouard Vuillard (1954), 59 (repr.), 101.', 'opening_date': '1954-01-01T00:00:00'}
---
PROVENANCE
Ambroise Vollard, Paris. André Weil, Paris. Jacques Seligmann, New York. Theodore Schempp, Brodhead, Wisc. Purchased from him by Leonard C. Hanna together with a Gauguin painting, 7 June 1943. Bequeathed to the CMA in 1958.
date:
footnotes:
citations:
---
fun fact:
digital description:
wall description:
---
RELATED WORKS
---
CITATIONS
“Annual Report of the Year 1958.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 6 (June 1959): 111–158.
page number: Mentioned: p. 122
url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25142346
Henning, Edward B. “Pierre Bonnard: La Terrasse de Café.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 2 (February 1978): 58–65.
page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 64-65, fig. 7
url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159565
Henning, Edward B. “New Paintings by Four Artists from Britain.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 10 (December 1982): 311–323.
page number: Mentioned and reproduced: p. 312, fig. 3
url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159795
Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.
page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 630-631, Vol. II, no. 220
url:
Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “The Nabi City.” In Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889-1900. Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown, 222-261. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.
page number: Mentioned: P. 233; Reproduced: P. 260, no. 179
url:
---
IMAGES
web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.57/1958.57_web.jpg
print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.57/1958.57_print.jpg
full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1958.57/1958.57_full.tif