Painting
Portrait of Ambroise Vollard with a Cat
Ambroise Vollard sits in the middle of a room crowded with pictures, a small tabby cat on his lap. Pierre Bonnard painted the Paris dealer bald, bearded and hunched, his eyes lowered, in a dark suit that goes almost black against the woodwork behind him. The Petit Palais says the cat was a device Bonnard thought up to stop his sitter falling asleep. Vollard's heirs gave the canvas to the City of Paris in 1950.




