The Evening Meal
Paris, about 1903
Oil on canvas
37.4 x 45.5 cm
The scene shows Bonnard’s sister Andrée Terrasse and two of her children, Robert, and, silhouetted against the lamp, Vivette.
They are seated for an evening meal in the Terrasse’s home at Le Grand-Lemps in the rural south of France. Bonnard painted many such intimate domestic scenes on a small scale using his family as models. Despite the feeling that we intrude into the setting, the canvas was actually painted back in his studio in Paris from a sketch.
Bonnard exhibited his works at this date with a group of artists known as the Nabis (Prophets). They looked beyond Impressionism to a more decorative effect.
Purchased 1963 (No. 63.2)
