Provenance

Paul Rosenberg

French, 1881 - 1959

Explore Selected Works

See all 22 works of art
Georges Braque, Peonies, 1926, oil on wood, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.90

Peonies

Georges Braque · 1926 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1963.10.90

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Sketch for Madame Moitessier, graphite on wove paper, Gift of Paul Rosenberg, 1951.14.1

Sketch for Madame Moitessier

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres · · graphite on wove paper ·  Accession ID  1951.14.1

A woman plays an upright piano as two boys play checkers at a table in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted with areas of flat color and pattern. The people have pale, peachy skin and dark brown hair. Their facial features are painted with dots or short strokes of black. The piano is against the wall to our left. The woman wears a short-sleeved, lemon-yellow dress with a long skirt. A music book is propped on the music stand, and loosely painted objects line the top of the instrument. The wall behind the piano is patterned with white and pale yellow flowers under and around arches against a cranberry-red background. The table where the boys play is in the middle of the room. The players sit in wooden chairs and wear black and white striped jackets with white collars. The boy to our right looks at the board while resting his left cheek, closer to us, in his hand. The other boy looks on with his arms on the table in front of him. The checkerboard sits on a red and white striped cloth, which has lines of black dots in the white strips. Beneath the table is a floral rug with blue and black flowers against a red background. The border is painted loosely with leafy shapes against bright white. Beneath the area rug the floor or another carpet is garnet red with a diamond-shaped grid painted in orange. A petal-pink, upholstered chair sits in front of a tall wardrobe in the back corner of the room. A picture with two violins against a blue background hangs on the side of the furniture to our right. A chest of drawers next to the wardrobe holds a few bowls or objects and a white statue, about half human height. The statue is of a person standing with one knee bent in front of the other, one elbow tucked by the side with that hand held to the chest, and the other bent elbow raised overhead. Pictures hang on the wall around the statue, and the wallpaper there is ivory white with a dark yellow pattern. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner, “Henri Matisse.”
Henri Matisse, Pianist and Checker Players, 1924, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.25

Pianist and Checker Players

Henri Matisse · 1924 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1985.64.25

A jumble of abstracted objects, including a stringed instrument, tableware, and fruit, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color in muted fawn brown, cream, bright white, fern green, slate gray, and black. Many forms are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. To our left, a musical instrument, perhaps a lute, sits next to appears to be lined paper, perhaps abstracted sheet music, at the center of the composition. In front of the paper, two pieces of pale yellow fruit sit on a silver plate. A rolled up white napkin sits next to the plate in front of an urn and a jug. A steel-gray goblet sits to the left of the plate. The background behind the table is painted with zones of moss green, sky blue, and gray. The edges appear torn, as if the painting is done on a loose canvas or sheet of paper that was then affixed to a support. The surface of the painting is rough and appears scratched throughout, and looks as if paint had been applied when nearly dry. The artist signed and dated the painting in white near the lower left corner: “G Braque 28.”
Georges Braque, Still Life: The Table, 1928, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.92

Still Life: The Table

Georges Braque · 1928 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.92

A woman wearing a sheer white blouse, short red and gold vest, and full-legged, patterned pants cinched below the knee lies back and looks at us with hooded eyes in this horizontal painting. Her shoulders lean back against an oversized white pillow, up along the right edge of the composition. Her body tips toward us, and her knees are bent so her feet are together in the lower left corner. Her right arm rests along the side of her body, and she props herself up with her other arm. That hand has a gold band on the ring finger. Her light skin is tinged with green on her face. Her head rolls slightly away from us so she looks down her cheeks at us with slitted, dark eyes through heavily lined lids. She has dark brows, and her rose-red lips are parted. The angle of her head creates a slight double chin. Gold hoops with dangling fringe or chains hang from her ears, and she wears three strands of dark beads around her neck. Her black hair is plaited in a thick braid that comes down over her left shoulder, closer to us. A cap made of gold-colored disks and red fringe sits on the far side of her head. The woman’s clothing is more loosely painted. We may see her breasts and pink nipples through her sheer, silver-gray tunic, which has long, voluminous sleeves. The short, bolero-style vest is strawberry red and gold, with narrow cap sleeves. A sea-blue sash around her waist is striped with overlapping burnt-orange and black lines. Her pants have flaring legs gathered with a button just below her knees. The pattern is of sage-green circles with swipes of rust-red in the center, suggesting flowers and vines against a black background. Her knees are spread open so her feet can barely be contained within the composition. Her teal-green slip-on shoes have the suggestion of flowers painted with dabs of yellow, black, and red, and a pompom atop each toe box. A red and gold cushion sits just beyond her feet. On it is a tray of oranges and an emerald-green jug. The pillow the woman leans on is propped against a short section of wall or piece of furniture painted with a border of roses. The room opens up beyond this, and has a turquoise and brown rug leading back to a cranberry-red sofa, on which a gray piece of fabric has been draped. The wall above is patterned with yellow and green diamonds and pink flowers against a laurel-green background. The artist signed the lower left, “A. Renoir. 70.”
Auguste Renoir, Odalisque, 1870, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.207

Odalisque

Auguste Renoir · 1870 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.207

Abstracted objects, including a guitar, vase, papers, and playing cards, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. The brown table has an oval top and a curving pedestal foot. At the center of the jumble on the tabletop, a guitar lies on its side with the neck facing us and reaching to our right. Beneath the black fretboard and neck, the curving form of the guitar is painted tomato red. The upper half is represented by a squared-off brown form. The guitar seems to rest atop or in front of an array of stacked shapes, like splayed pieces of paper, in white, lavender purple, and pale blue. A curving form painted in turquoise to our left seems to be a vase holding a spray of three flowers. The vase is shown against a white square painted with horizontal black lines, like sheet music. A dark gray form at the middle of the table, beneath the guitar, could be the silhouette of a bird facing our left. Just to the right of the bird, a pair of playing cards lie on a blue area. Painted in turquoise against gray, one card has six dots and the other one club. A chair with a curved, arching top and a gray upholstered seat is pulled up to the table to our right. The front left leg is light gray with turned knobs near the foot and halfway up the leg; the right leg is painted black, as if in shadow. Panels of pale tan suggest wainscotting behind the table beneath a pale gray wall across the background. The overall impression of the painting is fragmented as even single objects seem to be broken up into planes and areas of color. The artist signed and underlined his name with red paint in the lower left corner: “Picasso.”
Pablo Picasso, Still Life, 1918, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.195

Still Life

Pablo Picasso · 1918 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.195

Shown from the knees up, young woman with ivory-white skin sits facing us in a brown armchair with her hands loosely clasped in her lap in this vertical portrait painting. Her hair is parted in the middle and gathered at the back of her head. Her head is turned to our left, and she looks off into the distance with dark brown eyes under thin, arched brows. She has a long nose and a pale, petite mouth. Her steel-blue dress has elbow-length sleeves and a brown fur collar. The blue dress is marked with off-white, zigzagging lines, and shadows are created with gray smudges. The armchair frames her torso, being just taller than her shoulders and wider than her arms. The chair, her hair, and collar are all ginger brown. Wavy lines and angled strokes of smoke gray and black delineate the texture of her hair, collar, and folds of her dress. Her facial features, clothing, and the chair are outlined in black and set against a taupe background. The artist has signed and dated in the upper right, “Picasso 23.”
Pablo Picasso, Madame Picasso, 1923, oil on linen, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.194

Madame Picasso

Pablo Picasso · 1923 · oil on linen ·  Accession ID  1963.10.194

We look down onto papers and books piled on a small wooden table with delicate, spindle legs, with a dog and cat on a sofa in the background in this vibrantly colored, stylized, vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with dabs and visible brushstrokes in butterscotch and golden yellow, azure and navy blue, apple red, and white. The square table takes up most of the bottom two-thirds of the composition. Its surface is almost entirely covered with a spread of papers and stacks of books, including two thick, white volumes near the front, right corner and a thin red book on the other front corner. Smaller squares between the books are painted with streaks and washes of turquoise blue, scarlet, and brick red. A tall, narrow vase with abstracted, ice-blue flowers sits behind the stacked books, to our right. Beyond that, at the back right corner of the table, a sheet of paper reads “ALBUM MUSICAL,” with the final L partially obscured by a piece of bubblegum-pink paper set askew atop the stacked books. The artist’s name appears in rust-red letters on a paper at the back left corner of the table: “Bonnard.” The rug beneath the table is dominated by a vivid, azure-blue ring. The blue ring is surrounded by a white band decorated with widely spaced, black ovals dotted with pale lemon yellow. At the center of the blue ring is a black circle dotted with abstracted rosettes made with rings of apricot orange and gray around yellow centers. At the back edge of the rug, at the top left corner of the painting, a white cat sits and brown spotted dog lies on a mustard-yellow sofa, which has a wooden arm on the end we can see. There is a tangerine-orange chair next to it, in the upper right corner of the painting, and a teal-blue block there could be a pillow. The floor between the furniture is goldenrod yellow.
Pierre Bonnard, Work Table, 1926/1937, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2006.128.12

Work Table

Pierre Bonnard · 1926/1937 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2006.128.12

A wood table is piled with stylized and abstracted objects, including a jug, lemons, a knife, guitar, newspaper, and a smoking pipe in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. We look down onto the top of the table and at the front, where the grain of the wood is painted in tan against a lighter background. Concentric black and white circles make up the knob on the face of the table’s single drawer. There are two rows of objects on the table. Along the front, near the left corner of the table, the knife hangs with its blade slightly over the open drawer. A newspaper with the title “LE JOUR” rests next to the knife. Next to the newspaper are two yellow pieces of fruit, near the front right corner of the table. Behind the fruit, the right third of the pitcher is marine blue and the left two thirds is mostly straw yellow, with one round olive-green area near the handle. Next to the pitcher is a tobacco pipe, and, at the back left edge of the table, the guitar. The instrument rests on its side so the front of the soundboard faces the viewer, and the neck extends to our left. The instrument is bisected lengthwise into two halves that appear to be spliced together, and the edges and features of the halves are not symmetrical or aligned with each other. The bottom half of the guitar is painted a beige color, and is curved like a typical guitar body. The top half is painted black, and the contour of the instrument’s body rises into two pointed peaks instead of mirroring the rounded forms below. The sound hole is markedly smaller on the bottom half, and the two halves of the hole do not exactly line up. A rectangular form behind the table could be a screen. The left side is fern green, the right side black. Behind the screen is a wallpapered wall above wood paneling. The wallpaper is patterned with teardrop shapes, dots, and zigzagging lines in fawn brown against parchment white. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “G Braque 29.”
Georges Braque, Still Life: Le Jour, 1929, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.91

Still Life: Le Jour

Georges Braque · 1929 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.91

A bare-chested woman with brown skin holding a basket of fruit nearly fills this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces us but she turns her squat face slightly to our left. Her eyes, nose, ears, and parted lips are outlined with sand-brown and black. Her hair is painted with streaky bands of dark brown and black. She has broad, muscular shoulders, a wide neck, and her breasts droop over a wide stomach with a sagging six pack. One thick arm rests in her lap, and the other braces a square basket of yellow and green fruits on her other thigh. That foot is propped up, presumably on an unseen rung of her chair, and the other foot is flat on the floor. Her lap and legs are covered with tan-colored cloths mottled with mossy green and another in steel gray, all outlined in black. The background is laid in with blocks of earth brown, golden tan, black, gray, and white. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner in white paint, “G. Braque 26.”
Georges Braque, Nude Woman with Basket of Fruit, 1926, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.88

Nude Woman with Basket of Fruit

Georges Braque · 1926 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.88

Bibliography

1933

  • Eglington, Laurie. "Paul Rosenberg Now in New York Comments on Art." The Art News 32 (December 2, 1933): 3-4.

1941

  • "Rosenberg Opens." The Art Digest 16 (15 November 1941): 6.

1959

  • "Paul Rosenberg, Art Dealer, Dies." [obit.] The New York Times. (1 July 1959): 31.