Peinture/Nature Morte

c. 1924

Patrick Henry Bruce

Painter, American, 1881 - 1936

Cylindrical, C-shaped, and triangular forms are painted with flat areas of vivid pink, purple, navy, royal, and light blue, turquoise, white, black, and gray in this abstract, horizontal painting. A rectangular form, jutting into the picture from the lower left corner, suggests a table, on which the shapes are stacked. The table has square, gray legs and a black top surface. The inner surface of the one leg we can see is carnation pink. The objects on top are painted with precise, well-defined edges. Each form is made of two colors: one for a top surface, and another for the side surfaces. For instance, one cylinder, near the lower left corner of the composition, is sky blue up the side, and white on the top surface. Another cylinder nearby also has a white top, but the side is violet. A Pacman-shaped object near the back, right corner of the table is pale, shell pink on the top surface and flamingo pink on the sides. Where the objects are white, the weave of the canvas is visible. Where the objects are painted, the colors are applied thickly, with visible brushstrokes and texture. Some pencil lines are visible as well, demarcating the edges of some objects. The background behind the table has stripes angling slightly down to the right in bands of white, navy, denim blue, and turquoise. Vertical bands near the upper right corner read as an abstracted column, in shades of turquoise and light blue. A triangular form with one band of pale purple and another of light yellow stretches across the background behind the table.
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After a few years of formative study in New York, Patrick Henry Bruce relocated to Paris in 1903, where he remained for over 30 years. Through Gertrude and Leo Stein, the famous American collectors living in Paris, he met Henri Matisse and absorbed the lessons of the Paris school of modernists. The palette of Peinture/Nature Morte (Painting/Still Life) is testament to Bruce’s exposure to Matisse, as well as to his keen interest in contemporary color theory.

The canvas is one of 25 related still-life paintings Bruce created from 1917 through 1930, all inspired by objects in his Paris apartment. Emerging from the collage-like combinations of broad, flat areas of color is a horizontal plane abstracted from one of the artist’s four antique tables. On the table appear drinking glasses, mortars and pestles from the artist’s collection of African artifacts, draftsman’s tools, and wooden moldings and magnets used to secure drawings to a table or wall.

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Peinture/Nature Morte, c. 1924

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Collection of the artist [1881-1936], Paris; left 1933 by the artist in the possession of Henri-Pierre Roché [1879-1959], Paris; by inheritance to Mme Henri-Pierre Roché, Paris;[1] on consignment from March 1966 with (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); acquired 1967 by (Noah Goldowsky Gallery, New York);[2] purchased 23 January 1968 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Roché was married first to Germaine Bonnard, from 1927 to 1948, but the couple separated in 1933. His second wife, who inherited the painting, was Denise Renard, whom Roché married in 1948.
[2] In a letter of 28 December 1967 from Noah Goldowsky to Hermann Warner Williams Jr., director of the Corcoran, in NGA curatorial files, the painting was described as “one of the group of fourteen paintings left in the possession of Henri Pierre Roché by Mr. Bruce. They were brought to America at the request of Madame Henri Pierre Roché to be sold for her.” The early provenance for the painting is also delineated in William C. Agee and Barbara Rose, Patrick Henry Bruce, American Modernist: A Catalogue Raisonné, exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (Houston, 1979): 205.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1967

  • Noah Goldowsky Gallery, New York, 1967, as Formes.

1976

  • Corcoran [The American Genius]. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1976, unnumbered catalogue, as Forms.

1977

  • The Modern Spirit: American Painting 1908-1935, Scottish Royal Academy, Edinburgh; Hayward Galery, London, 1977, no. 65, as Forms.

1979

  • Patrick Henry Bruce: American Modernist, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1979-1980, unnumbered catalogue.

1980

  • La Pintura de los Estados Unidos de museos de la ciudad de Washington [Painting in the United States from Public Collections in Washington], Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1980-1981, no. 47, repro.

1985

  • Henri's Circle, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 20 April-16 June 1985, unnumbered checklist.

2005

  • Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, no. 85.

2008

  • The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009

  • American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June-18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013

  • American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013-28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1959

  • Seuphor, Michel. "Peintures Construites." L'Oeil 58 (October 1959): 37, repro.

1970

  • Wolf, Tom M. "Patrick Henry Bruce." Marsyas 15 (1970-1971): 82, fig. 12, as Multiple Shapes.

1972

  • Hunter, Sam. American Art of the 20th Century. New York, 1972: 86, repro., as Forms.

1973

  • Phillips, Dorothy W. A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Vol. 2: Painters born from 1850 to 1910. Washington, 1973: cover, 108, repro., 109, as Forms.

1974

  • Cook, Kenneth H. "Patrick Henry Bruce." News and Records (South Boston, VA) (31 October 1974): D:1-3, as Forms.

1977

  • Agee, William. "Patrick Henry Bruce: A Major American Artist of Early Modernism." Arts in Virginia 17, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 27, repro.

1979

  • Agee, William C., and Barbara Rose. Patrick Henry Bruce, American Modernist: A Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1979: no. D18, 30, 31, 32 fig. 17, 36, fig. 28, 204-205, repro. 205.

  • Brown, Milton, et al. American Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Photography. New York, 1979: 383, repro., as Forms.

1981

  • Davidson, Abraham A. Early American Modernist Painting, 1910-1935. New York, 1981: 288, repro., 289.

1983

  • Brown, Milton W. One Hundred Masterpieces of American Painting from Public Collections in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., 1983: 144, 145, repro.

1996

  • Addison Gallery of American Art Sixty-five Years: A Selective Catalogue. Andover, Massachusetts., 1996: 338 n. 2.

2000

  • Cash, Sarah, with Terrie Sultan. American Treasures of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. New York, 2000: 183, repro.

  • Weiss, Jeffrey. "Patrick Henry Bruce, Peinture/Nature Morte (Forms No. 5)." In Bruce Robertson, Twentieth-Century American Art: The Ebsworth Collection. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle. Washington, D.C., 2000: 58, repro.

2001

  • Agee, William C. "New Perspectives: Stanton Macdonald-Wright in the Twentieth Century." In Will South, Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism. Exh.cat. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 2001: 6, repro.

2002

  • Moss, Dorothy. "Peinture/Nature Morte." In A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Edited by Eleanor Heartney. London, 2002: 234-235, repro.

2011

  • Moss, Dorothy. "Patrick Henry Bruce, Peinture/Nature Morte." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 234-235, 281, repro.

Inscriptions

On crosspiece of stretcher: two stickers, "Bruce/6/92 x 73/30F"; On upper center of wood frame: "S-5332" and "28-3/4 x 36-1/4"; two stickers from Noah Goldowsky;

Wikidata ID

Q20192247

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