Provenance

Thaddée Natanson

French, 1869 - 1951

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Two pale-skinned women are shown from the waist up behind a counter in an interior space in this nearly square painting. Loosely painted patterns on their clothing, bunches of flowers to our right, and the background to our left create a patchwork of claret red, ivory white, forest green, deep burgundy, and golden yellow. The woman standing closer to us takes up the left half of the composition. She faces our right in profile. Her features are painted with blended strokes so are indistinct. Her auburn hair is pulled up, and her high-collared, garnet-red and white striped shirt has long sleeves with puffy shoulders. She looks down at a red vase of flowers she holds at its base with the hand we see. The second woman stands at the first woman’s far shoulder. She turns her face slightly toward us, and also gazes down at the flowers on the counter. Her high-necked shirt is ruby red. Four wine-red vases in front of the women are filled with dark maroon-red or cream-white flowers, perhaps chrysanthemums, forest-green and tan greenery, and one vivid, tomato-red blossom. A gap between two vases could be another vase either patterned with white and celestial blue or reflecting those colors. A dark red and two white blossoms are in the lower left corner of the composition, next to a long, lidded box with light brown sides and a navy-blue top. A loosely painted form in the upper left corner, over the first woman’s shoulder, could be a figurine or another person. Though the details are vague, there is a suggestion of a face turned leftward. She has blond hair and wears a long, loose marigold-yellow garment. The right arm, to our left, could be raised to shoulder height, and she stands before a crimson background, maybe a curtain. The rest of the background is painted with dots and touches of apple red, maroon, orange, sage green, dark brown, and butter yellow. The artist signed the canvas near the lower right corner, “E. Vuillard.”
Edouard Vuillard, Woman in a Striped Dress, 1895, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1983.1.38

Woman in a Striped Dress

Edouard Vuillard · 1895 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.38

Two dogs stand near each other in the middle of a petal-pink street in front of two oyster-white buildings that fill the background in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely and thickly painted, with brushstrokes visible throughout, so details are indistinct. The dog closer to us is peach-colored while the other is white with dark brown patches, and they face each other. We look slightly down onto the street, and it comes almost halfway up the composition. A stone-gray wheelbarrow sits a bit above and to the left of the dogs, over a narrow, light gray horizontal stripe running the width of the road that could delineate the sidewalk. The two stories we see of the buildings have tall slate-blue windows, most covered with shutters. Each also has a band painted in patches of gray and brown running across the foundation. The building on our right has a narrow rust-red door while the other has two blue doors to match the shutters. Three small, navy-blue squares could be street numbers over the doors. The artist signed the painting near the lower right, “Bonnard.”
Pierre Bonnard, Two Dogs in a Deserted Street, c. 1894, oil on pressed board, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.3

Two Dogs in a Deserted Street

Pierre Bonnard · c. 1894 · oil on pressed board ·  Accession ID  1970.17.3