Work Table

Painted in 1931 and held at the National Gallery of Art, this still life of a work table belongs to Bonnard's mature phase when the table surface — covered with tools, papers, and accumulated objects — had become one of his primary subjects for chromatic investigation. The work table differs from his dining table subjects in its connotation of activity and production rather than consumption and leisure; the artist's own table, with its disorder of materials, offered a subject whose very disorder promised chromatic richness. By 1931 Bonnard's still life practice had reached its most confident maturity — the table surface treated with the same radical approach to colour and spatial distortion that he applied to his garden and bathroom subjects. Working between Le Cannet and Vernonnet, he maintained an intensive practice of both large-scale and intimate works. The NGA's holding of this still life places it within the American national collection's comprehensive engagement with French Post-Impressionist painting collected during the transformative decades of the mid-twentieth century.

The work table's accumulated objects are arranged with characteristic Bonnard spatial ambiguity — the table surface tipping toward the picture plane. Varied objects create a rich field of chromatic incident. The palette is warm and varied, the still life surface built through accumulated colour relationships.