Café du Dôme

1925/1926

Guy Pène du Bois

Painter, American, 1884 - 1958

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Guy Pène du Bois painted Café du Dôme at the beginning of a lengthy stay in France, where he lived from 1924 to 1930. These years constituted the most productive period of his artistic career, and it was during this time abroad that he developed his mature style. The Café du Dôme was a popular gathering place for American artists and Parisian bohemian society. This painting typifies Pène du Bois’s penchant for representing fashionable, mysterious people engaged in undefined, but potentially suggestive, behavior. In Café du Dôme, two women in evening attire sit in a corner of the café at an empty wooden table. Their body language is tense, and the scene is purposely ambiguous. The viewer, drawn into the interaction by the gaze of one of the women, is left to wonder what has made the pair restless and uneasy.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on wood

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 55.2 x 46 cm (21 3/4 x 18 1/8 in.)
    framed: 66 x 56.8 x 2.9 cm (26 x 22 3/8 x 1 1/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1963.10.136

More About this Artwork

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

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Café du Dôme, 1925/1926

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist; (Kraushaar Galleries, New York); sold 11 June 1926 to Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1925

  • Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Guy Pène du Bois, C.W. Kraushaar Art Galleries, New York, 1925, no. 6.

1926

  • The Exhibition of Tri-National Art: French, British, American, Wildenstein Galleries, New York, 1926, no. 28, as Polish Sisters at the Café du Dome.

1927

  • 13th Annual Exhibition of American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1927, no. 35.

1928

  • Eleventh Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., no. 77.

1965

  • The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

Bibliography

1931

  • Cortissoz, Royal. Guy Pène du Bois. New York, 1931: 9.

1965

  • Paintings other than French in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 56, repro.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 48, repro.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 145, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 258, repro.

2014

  • Fahlman, Betsy. "Complicating the Modern Woman: Guy Pène du Bois in France." Antiques (May-June 2014): 98-99 fig. 1, 101.

Inscriptions

lower left: Guy Pene du Bois [19]25; lower right: Guy Pene du Bois [19]26

Wikidata ID

Q20192546

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