Family Scene (1893): Art, History and Details

Family Scene (1893) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947).

The work and its context

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

Pierre Bonnard favored domestic scenes, often focusing on the intimacy of family life. This early lithograph is one of several that he made depicting his sister Andrée and her infant son Jean, born the year before. Bonnard included himself in the image at lower right, gazing at his nephew. The awkward cropping of the figures of the artist and his sister, along with the flat planes of color throughout the image, suggest the influence of Japanese woodblock prints on Bonnard during this period.

Object facts

• Title: Family Scene
• Date: 1893
• Creator attribution: Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph on beige wove paper
• Dimensions: Image: 28.8 x 19.8 cm (11 5/16 x 7 13/16 in.); Sheet: 56.5 x 43.5 cm (22 1/4 x 17 1/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2020.150

A detail from the museum

The embossed mark below the lower left corner of this print indicates that it was included in L'Estampe Originale, a monthly luxury publication during the 1890s that featured original prints.

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bouvet, Francis. Bonnard: The Complete Graphic Work. New York: Rizzoli, 1981.
• Chapin, Mary Weaver. “Family Life.’” In Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889-1900. Mary Weaver Chapin and Heather Lemonedes Brown, 100-137. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.
• Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “Curating Private Lives: Two curators thousands of miles apart collaborate on a show that depicts everyday life in Paris at the turn of the 19th century.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 18-21.

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.