{
"data": {
"id": 150507,
"accession_number": "1981.63",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Andr\u00e9 B\u00e9nac, 1936. \u00c9douard Vuillard (French, 1868\u20131940). Oil on fabric; unframed: 124 x 96.8 cm (48 13/16 x 38 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kaminsky, 1981.63",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Andr\u00e9 B\u00e9nac",
"creation_date": "1936",
"creation_date_earliest": 1936,
"creation_date_latest": 1936,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 20th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Unframed: 124 x 96.8 cm (48 13/16 x 38 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 1.24,
"height_inch": 48,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.968,
"width_inch": 38,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right: E. Vuillard 1936\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304599,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1981",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1981. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982).",
"opening_date": "1982-02-17T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 182153,
"title": "Monet to Dal\u00ed: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Monet to Dal\u00ed: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008).",
"opening_date": "2006-05-27T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Albi, Mus\u00e9e Toulouse-Lautrec. Exposition \u00c9douard Vuillard (1868-1940): Peintures, Aquarelles, Dessins (1960), no. 88, Portrait de Monsieur B\u00e9nac, 1936, collection particuli\u00e8re, Paris.",
"opening_date": "1960-01-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Andr\u00e9 B\u00e9nac, until his death in October 1937. His widow, Mme B\u00e9nac, until 1945. Their daughter, Mme Caudrelier-B\u00e9nac, and her husband. Louis Caudrelier-B\u00e9nac, their eldest son. London sale, Sotheby's, 7 April 1976 (70, repr.), Homme assis \u00e0 son bureau, for \u00a32,200 to William Pall, U.S. Gary Katz, Cleveland. Through Mitchell Shaheen (Brett Mitchell Coll., Inc., Lyndhurst, Ohio), on loan to the cma in 1977 as promised gift. Bought by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kaminsky, North Royalton, Ohio, 1980. Given to the CMA in 1981.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "In the final two decades of his life, Vuillard focused primarily on painting portraits of notable figures in finance, politics, art, and literature.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Vuillard belonged to the artistic movement called The Nabis, the Hebrew term for prophet. The Nabis banded together in the late 19th century to create a new artistic language based upon the expressive potential of decorative color and stylized forms. Vuillard's success as part of this group encouraged wealthy patrons to seek his services, but for more realistically rendered portraits. The present piece was requested by the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution d'\u00c9l\u00e9ctricit\u00e9, the Paris company for which the sitter, Andr\u00e9 B\u00e9nac, was president. The commission was made to commemorate B\u00e9nac receiving the Grand Croix, the highest award of the Legion of Honor. Vuillard made two versions of the portrait-this one meant for B\u00e9nac and another one, now in Zurich, Switzerland, (see photo), to remain the property of the company. In each case, the sitter appears in his living room/office, and he holds an identical pose, showing the same warm, friendly smile. However, in the museum's portrait, Vuillard omitted a significant portion of the surrounding room and altered the format from horizontal to vertical. The viewer can focus more easily upon the man represented because the diagonal of the table has been cut closer to the sitter and no longer leads the eye away toward the window. Photo of: Vuillard. Andr\u00e9 B\u00e9nac, 1935-36; distemper on canvas; 51 in. x 61 1/2 in. Fondation Rau pour le Tiers-Monde, Zurich.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60474812"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1981.63-andre-benac"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1981.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 2 (February 1982): 39\u201382.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 80, no. 52",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159758"
},
{
"citation": "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. 634-636, Vol. II, no. 222",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1981.63",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1981.63/1981.63_web.jpg",
"width": "696",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "438272",
"filename": "1981.63_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1981.63/1981.63_print.jpg",
"width": "2649",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "6922477",
"filename": "1981.63_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1981.63/1981.63_full.tif",
"width": "4224",
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}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kaminsky",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 150507,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1833,
"description": "\u00c9douard Vuillard (French, 1868\u20131940)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "After attending the Lyc\u00e9e Condorcet, \u00c9douard Vuillard entered the studio of history painter Diog\u00e8ne Maillart (1840-1926). In 1886 he enrolled at the Acad\u00e9mie Julian, where he was taught by Tony Robert-Fleury (1837-1911) and Bouguereau (q.v.). The following year he was accepted into the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts and was briefly in the atelier of G\u00e9r\u00f4me (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 \u00c9mile 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 Com\u00e9die des Champs-Elys\u00e9es 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.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1868",
"death_year": "1940",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1981-12-08T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1936,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1936",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:45:58.818000"
}
}