Pierre Bonnard

The Table

1925

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Not on display

Artist: Pierre Bonnard 1867–1947
Original title: La Table
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1029 × 743 mm
frame: 1256 × 965 × 113 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Courtauld Fund Trustees 1926
Reference: N04134

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This painting was bought as a result of the Courtauld Fund. In January 1924 the wealthy textile manufacturer Samuel Courtauld gave the large sum of £50,000 to create a trust for buying Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works for the Tate Gallery. Between 1924 and 1927 the Trust bought nineteen paintings by artists such as Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. This donation transformed the Tate’s Collection of modern art by non-British artists. This significant painting was acquired only a year after it was made, and was the first work by Bonnard to enter the Tate Collection.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947

N04134 La Table (The Table) 1925

Inscribed 'Bonnard' b.r.
Oil on canvas, 40 1/2 x 29 1/4 (103 x 74)
Presented by the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund 1926
Prov: With Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (purchased from the artist); through Independent Gallery, London; the Trustees of the Courtauld Fund
Exh: RSA, Edinburgh, April-August 1932 (211); RSA, Edinburgh, April-August 1946 (104); Samuel Courtauld Memorial Exhibition, Tate Gallery, May-September 1948 (1); Bonnard and his Environment, Museum of Modern Art, New York, October-November 1964 (34, repr.); Art Institute of Chicago, January-February 1965 (34, repr.); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March-May 1965 (34, repr.); Pierre Bonnard, RA, London, January-March 1966 (179)
Lit: Douglas Cooper, The Courtauld Collection (London 1954), No.1, p.83, repr. pl.64; Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard (Paris 1973), No.1310, Vol.3, p.255, repr. p.254 and facing colour plate
Repr: Burlington Magazine, XLVIII, 1926, p.64

The woman is probably Marthe Bonnard, the artist's wife. She is looking towards a dog whose muzzle is faintly visible on the left, and seems to be preparing its food in a bowl.

A similar drawing in coloured chalks, said to have been made in 1929, is reproduced in T. Natanson, Le Bonnard que je propose (Geneva 1951), pl.77.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.66-7, reproduced p.66