Terms and conditions of use
Siesta
(La Sieste)
(1900)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
109.0 × 132.0 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1949
Gallery location
Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Siesta belongs to Pierre Bonnard’s ‘realist’ period, during which he painted frank portraits documenting his relationship with his model and muse Marthe Boursin while exploring the new possibilities offered by photography. Bonnard took a sequence of photographs of Marthe at their apartment when sunlight flooded their bedroom. Siesta relates to those images, but not slavishly so, as Marthe’s pose has been reconfigured to evoke the Borghese Hermaphrodite, a famously erotic sculpture in the Louvre. Siesta was well known among Paris’s literary and artistic circles and was once owned by Gertrude Stein.
Artwork Details
Inscription
inscribed in ochre paint l.c.r.: Bonnard
Accession Number
2053-4
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Dame Carol Colburn-Grigor CBE through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Human Figures Interiors
Subjects (specific)
bedcovers bedrooms dog (species) nudes (representations) repose (activity) sleeping wallpapers women (female humans)
Provenance
Acquired from the artist by Ambroise Vollard (1866–1939) (dealer-collector), Paris, before November 1905; collection of Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) and Leo Stein (1872–1947), Paris, after November 1905 until 1907; exchanged (for a Renoir) with Ambroise Vollard, Paris, 1907; with Galerie Bernheim-Jeune (dealer), Paris, by 1914; collection of Sir Kenneth Clark (1903–83), Upper Terrace House, Hampstead, London, until (c. 1943); collection of Mrs S. Kaye, Cookham-on-Thames, Berkshire, by 1943/47–1949; with Lefevre Gallery (dealer), London, 1949; from where purchased, on the advice of A. J. L. McDonnell, for the Felton Bequest, 1949.
Exhibited: Salon d’Automne, Paris, 1905, no. 152 as Sommeil; Picasso and his contemporaries, Lefevre Gallery, London, 1943, no. 3; Bonnard and his French contemporaries, Lefevre Gallery, London, June-July 1947, no 10 as L’Atelier de L’Artist lent by Mrs S. Kaye, England; Bonnard, Museum of Modern Art, New York and Cleveland Museum of Art, 1948, no. 26, lent by Mrs S. Kaye, England.
Frame
Reproduction, 1986, based on photographs from 1906
Frame
Bonnard’s La Sieste, 1900, acquired in 1949, was requested for loan to Paris in 1984. The frame on the painting at the time was not in good condition. There were losses in the ornament and one section was warped. The origins of the frame are not clear, but it likely to be the frame in which the painting was acquired. Stylistically it may relate to C18th. Italian or French forms.
Given it’s condition, a temporary frame was made to send the painting to Paris in 1984. The question of whether to reframe the painting or restore the existing frame was resolved through archival evidence.
La Sieste had been in the collection of Gertrude Stein and former Deputy Director Collections, Ken Hood, recalled the painting in a photograph of the Stein apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Paris reproduced in an exhibition catalogue. Whether the Steins or Bonnard chose the frame remains unknown but a basis existed for reproducing an early, near contemporary, framing of the work.
The photograph, dated to early 1906, was held in the Cone Archive at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A copy of the photograph was provided by the Museum in January 1985.
This photograph was used to extrapolate the form and finish of the frame from 1906.
The frame appears to be in the style of C18th. Spanish frames and in 1906 may have been a recycled antique frame.
The reproduction was carved from sugar pine and gilded with 23 carat gold leaf.
The frame was completed in October 1986 and fitted to the painting.
The painting was cleaned in 2003.
Frame Details
Framemaker
Reproduction - crafted by the NGV
Date
1986
Materials
carved sugar pine and gold leaf