Nursemaids’ Promenade, Frieze of Carriages (1895): Art, History and Details

Nursemaids’ Promenade, Frieze of Carriages (1895) 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:

This charming scene of a nanny and her three charges extends across four panels meant to be mounted as a folding screen. Pierre Bonnard emulated the solidly colored flat forms of Japanese color woodcut prints, which he collected. He featured the screen in his first solo exhibition at Paris's prestigious Galeries Durand-Ruel in 1896.

Object facts

• Title: Nursemaids’ Promenade, Frieze of Carriages
• Date: 1895
• Creator attribution: Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithographs on wove paper, screen with four panels
• Dimensions: Sheet: 137.4 x 47.3 cm (54 1/8 x 18 5/8 in.); Image: 137.4 x 47.3 cm (54 1/8 x 18 5/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2008.31

A detail from the museum

Although this screen was issued in an edition of 110, only about 20 copies survive today.

Collection credit

Gift of Nancy and Joseph P. Keithley by exchange

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bouvet, Francis. Bonnard: The Complete Graphic Work. New York: Rizzoli, 1981.
• 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.
• Basch, Sophie. Le Japonisme, Un Art Français. Œuvres En Sociétés. Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2022.

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.