Bridge (1899): Art, History and Details

Bridge (1899) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947); Published by Ambroise Vollard; Printed by Auguste Clot.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Bridge
• Date: 1899
• Creator attribution: Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947); Published by Ambroise Vollard; Printed by Auguste Clot
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 40.9 x 53.3 cm (16 1/8 x 21 in.); Image: 27 x 41 cm (10 5/8 x 16 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1948.156.9

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Francis, Henry. "The Art of Pierre Bonnard." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 37, no. 1 (January 1950): 5-8.
• 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.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.