The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 19, 2024

At the Café

At the Café

c. 1897–99
(French, 1868–1940)
France, 19th century
oil on board, laid on cradled panel
Unframed: 28.8 x 27.5 cm (11 5/16 x 10 13/16 in.)
Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1958.57
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Vuillard once said, “I don’t do portraits. I paint people in their surroundings.”

Description

This scene of two women in a Parisian café has a hushed atmosphere that is heightened by the warm palette and glow of gaslight. Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton were close friends and painted together in the 1890s, but Vuillard’s quiet café and Vallotton’s riotous Bistro (2020.114) could not be more different in mood.
  • Ambroise Vollard, Paris. André Weil, Paris. Jacques Seligmann, New York. Theodore Schempp, Brodhead, Wisc. Purchased from him by Leonard C. Hanna together with a Gauguin painting, 7 June 1943. Bequeathed to the CMA in 1958.
  • “Annual Report of the Year 1958.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 6 (June 1959): 111–158. Mentioned: p. 122 www.jstor.org
    Henning, Edward B. “Pierre Bonnard: La Terrasse de Café.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 2 (February 1978): 58–65. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 64-65, fig. 7 www.jstor.org
    Henning, Edward B. “New Paintings by Four Artists from Britain.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 10 (December 1982): 311–323. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 312, fig. 3 www.jstor.org
    Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 630-631, Vol. II, no. 220
    Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “The Nabi City.” In Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889-1900. Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown, 222-261. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021. Mentioned: P. 233; Reproduced: P. 260, no. 179
  • Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
    Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (July 1-September 19, 2021); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (co-organizer) (October 23, 2021-January 23, 2022).
    CMA; New York, Museum of Modern Art. Édouard Vuillard (1954), 59 (repr.), 101.
    New York, Jacques Seligmann & Co. É. Vuillard. His Dynamic Early Period (1948), no. 10, Le café, private collection, New York.
    Dayton Art Institute. The Little Show (1945), no. 12, Café Scene, lent by L. C. Hanna Jr., Cleveland.
    Louisville, Ky., J. B. Speed Memorial Museum. The Hanna Collection of Modern Masterpieces (1944), no cat.
  • {{cite web|title=At the Café|url=false|author=Edouard Vuillard|year=c. 1897–99|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1958.57