The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of June 21, 2025

Street Scene from Above

1899
(French, 1867–1947)
France, 19th century
lithograph
Sheet: 53.1 x 41 cm (20 7/8 x 16 1/8 in.); Image: 37 x 22.5 cm (14 9/16 x 8 7/8 in.)
Gift of the Hanna Fund 1948.156.5
Catalogue raisonné: Bouvet 62
Location: not on view

Description

This suite of color lithographs collected Pierre Bonnard’s observations of city life, ranging from animated street scenes to distant observations glimpsed from the artist’s Montmartre studio window. Rather than memorializing the famous monuments of Paris, Bonnard preferred to depict small neighborhood scenes populated by urbanites shopping and strolling and by vendors selling their wares. The setting for one of the prints is the second-largest public park in Paris, the Bois de Boulogne, which was a popular place for families to relax, stroll, and enjoy carriage rides around the lakes. Two prints are nocturnal scenes in which gaslight emanating from shop windows is reflected on the wet streets, creating passages of bright yellow in the otherwise dark compositions. Bonnard’s favorite subjects, such as the Parisienne—a young, fashionable, modern woman—as well as children and dogs, appear repeatedly throughout the prints in the suite.
  • The Art Institute of Chicago
  • 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. 230; Reproduced: P. 250, no. 163
  • 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).
    Prints by Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 3, 1985-March 2, 1986).
    Urban Vicissitudes. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 2-September 29, 1985).
  • {{cite web|title=Street Scene from Above|url=false|author=Pierre Bonnard, Published by Ambroise Vollard; Printed by Auguste Clot|year=1899|access-date=21 June 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1948.156.5