Figural
GUY PÈNE DU BOIS (1885–1958)
Table for Two, 1945
Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 22 1/8 in.
Signed (at lower left): Guy Pene du Bois
RECORDED: Betsy Fahlman, typescript checklist of Guy Pène du Bois’s group exhibitions, chronology, and paintings, circa 1980, Hirschl & Adler Galleries archives
EXHIBITED: Staten Island, New York, Staten Island Museum, November 14–December 14, 1954, Guy Pène du Bois, no. 28
EX COLL: the artist; [Kraushaar Galleries, New York, 1961]; to I. David Orr, New York, 1961, and by descent to the present
Pène du Bois loved to explore the enigmatic relationships between men and women, as apparent in Table for Two, which features an attractive young couple seated across from one another, in what the reflections on the window and the rivets on the side panel on the right suggest is the dining car of a train. Executed in 1945, the work exemplifies the painterly approach Pène du Bois adopted during late 1930s and 1940s, when he turned his attention to smaller and more introspective canvases executed with soft brushwork. As the critic Margaret Breuning described it, the “brittleness and hardness of surface” that typified his monumental canvases of the 1920s and 1930s had been replaced by a “sensuous evocation of form” (Margaret Breuning, “Du Bois Softens,” Art Digest 21 [November 15, 1946], p. 13). This comment would certainly apply to Table for Two, the artist’s fluent handling imbuing the image with an ethereal quality that complements the seemingly tentative connection between the subjects. Indeed, Pène du Bois’s innate powers of observation and his gift for characterization are very much in evidence, the poses and gestures of the duo giving us a sense that, emotionally remote from one another, they each inhabit a world of their own. Are they bored with life or with each other? Suffice to say, the painting stands as a provocative commentary on the synergy between the sexes: it’s wistful and poignant in one sense, yet gently lighthearted, too.
