Cover of the second L'Album d'estampes originales de la Galerie Vollard (The Album of Original Prints from the Vollard Gallery)

Pierre Bonnard

(1897)

A lithograph by Pierre Bonnard created as the decorative cover for the Vollard Gallery’s 1897 portfolio, where the artist uses lithographic color and hand-lettered text to promote an album of original prints.

You first notice sheets of prints splayed across a warm, flattened table—pale green impressions, loose red lettering spelling the album title, and a dark cat pawing a ball punctuate a large, quietly empty expanse of paper, giving the scene a casual, intimate domesticity.

The image shows how late-19th-century artists like Bonnard brought painterly sensibilities—flattened color, decorative layout, and playful typography—into lithography, helping to elevate printmaking as an expressive, modern medium and blurring the line between commercial design and fine art.

Palette

Art Terms

Lithography Print Typography Graphic design Post-Impressionism

Exhibitions

French Paintings from the Molyneux Collection

1952

The Mrs. Adele R. Levy Collection: A Memorial Exhibition

1961

Women of the Nineties: Fin-de-Siècle Prints

1979

Color Reproductions: Modern Watercolors and Pastels

1934