Born in Brooklyn, New York, Pène du Bois was the son of Laura and Henri Pène du Bois, a literary critic and journalist of French descent who named his offspring after his friend, the writer Guy de Maupassant. As a boy, Pène du Bois grew up in an intellectual atmosphere that embraced French culture and the language itself––he spoke primarily in French until age nine. In 1898, the family left Brooklyn and moved to Staten Island, initially residing in West Brighton before relocating to the Fort Wadsworth section. In 1899, having demonstrated an ability for drawing as a student, Péne du Bois enrolled at the New York School of Art (known today as the Parsons School of Design), where he received instruction from such esteemed painters as the impressionist William Merritt Chase and Kenneth Hayes Miller, an urban realist, and fraternized with fellow students such as George Bellows and Edward Hopper. His teachers also included Robert Henri, the celebrated painter who challenged the academic art establishment by painting gritty images of everyday life in a vigorous realist style that reflected his “art for life’s sake” philosophy––a dictum that Pène du Bois would embrace as well.
Intent on refining his technical skills, Pène de Bois lived in Paris during 1905–06, where he attended classes at the Académie Colarossi in addition to studying privately with the Art Nouveau painter and printmaker Theophile Steinlen and, when not in class, familiarizing himself with the work of impressionists and post-impressionists such as Paul Cézanne. Taking his cue from the examples of painters such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jean-Louis Forain and Steinlen, he began making sketches of the leisure-goers he encountered in cafés, parks, operas, and music halls or promenading along the city’s boulevards. In so doing, Péne du Bois embarked on what would emerge as his signature theme: the interaction of people.
Following the death of his father in 1906, Pène du Bois returned to New York where, until 1912, he supported his family by working first as a police reporter and then as a music critic for the New York American (his father’s former employer) while painting images of everyday people in his spare time. One year later his standing in the art community was such that as a member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, he was invited to serve on several of the committees involved in organizing the legendary Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art), which was instrumental in introducing vanguard European painting to American audiences. In that same year, Pène du Bois was hired as the editor of Arts and Decoration, where he wrote numerous articles, among them an insightful essay in which––despite his devotion to the Henri tradition––he sought to explain the goals and objectives of modern European art to his readers. During 1913–14, Pène du Bois also worked as an assistant to Royal Cortissoz, an influential critic at the New York Tribune, after which he went on to write essays and commentaries for the New York Evening Post and magazines as such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and International Studio, all the while impressing his readers with his acuity and nonconformity. Following his marriage to Florence Sherman Duncan, a painter-turned-designer of children’s wear, in 1911, Pène du Bois continued to live in Staten Island, residing in the old Millspaugh house on Richard Road and later in a residence on Taylor Street.
During this early period, Pène du Bois worked in an aesthetic characterized by sketchy brushwork and a low-keyed palette––legacies of his early training under Henri and Chase. Through his participation in the exhibitions of the Society of Independent Artists and other local group shows, his images of daily life caught the attention of the dealer John Kraushaar, who began handling his work in 1913 and would continue to promote him until 1947. Pène du Bois also exhibited his work at the Whitney Studio Club, where he had first one-man show in 1918, as well as at commercial venues such as the Montross Gallery and the Daniel Gallery. Two years later, he joined the faculty of the Art Students League, where, until 1924, he inspired younger painters such as Raphael Soyer.
By 1920, Pène du Bois’s style had reached a new level of maturity. In keeping with his desire to chronicle the crème-de-la crème of society––from fashionable ladies and businessmen to lawyers, entertainers, and museum goers––he painted humorous and carefully observed renditions of stylish New Yorkers interacting with one another, interpreting his figures as anonymous participants, seemingly devoid of emotion. Through the efforts of John Kraushaar, his work was brought to the attention of some of the most prominent collectors of the day, among them Chester Dale, Albert C. Barnes, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Duncan Phillips.
Weary of teaching, writing, and editing and financially secure after receiving an advance from the Kraushaar Galleries (he had his first solo exhibition there in 1922), Pène du Bois and his family relocated to Garnes, France, in 1924. For the next six years, he focused exclusively on painting, continuing to create satirical and sharply observed images of the beau monde of Paris and New York. Imbuing his Art Deco forms with a greater degree of stylization than in the past and working on larger formats, he attracted particular attention for his method of interpreting his figures as sleek, firmly rounded forms, as apparent in classic works such as Mr. and Mrs. Chester Dale Dining Out (1924, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Café du Dome (1925–26, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); and Americans in Paris (1927, Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Following his return to the United States in 1930, Pène du Bois began writing again and, to augment his income further, established the Guy Pène du Bois Summer School in Stonington, Connecticut (1932), and likewise taught at the Cooper Union School of Art. Throughout these years and into the following decade, he also added portraits and the occasional still life and landscape to his repertoire of motifs. Mellowing over the course of time, Péne du Bois also adopted a more fluent mode of painting that, along with taking a more sympathetic approach towards his subjects, imbued his oils with a sense of atmosphere and a contemplative mood. Although sales of his work slowed down during the Depression, Pène du Bois continued to exhibit in the various national annuals, including those of the venerable National Academy of Design, where he was elected an associate member in 1937 and an academician in 1940––the year that he published Artists Say the Silliest Things, an informative and entertaining book featuring Pène du Bois’s musings on the people and events that shaped his life and career. Awards and prizes continued to come his way too, as well as a key sale: Pène du Bois’s Cocktails, which received the First Altman Prize at the National Academy of Design in 1945, was acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York one year later.
After the death of his wife in 1950, Pène du Bois lived with his daughter, the artist Yvonne Pène du Bois, and her family. Having suffered from heart problems for several years, he passed away in Boston on July 18, 1958. Although largely forgotten in the ensuing years, his images of chic urbanites, flappers, and the denizens of bars, cafes, galleries, and other entertainment establishments were reintroduced to art audiences in 1980, when he was accorded a one-man show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
