Photographed by Scott Wolff. Scanned from a slide. Color corrected by Pat Cagney.

La Desserte (The Remains of the Meal)

Artist Étienne Prosper Berne-Bellecour (French, 1838 - 1910)

CultureFrench

Date1876

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions51 × 76 1/2 in. (129.5 × 194.3 cm)
Overall, Frame: 62 1/4 × 87 3/4 × 5 1/8 in. (158.1 × 222.9 × 13 cm)

InscribedUpper right: E. Berne-Bellecour, 1876. Monogrammed DF (the commissioner's initials?) on napkin, lower right.

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number2000.24

Collections

European Art before 1945

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThe painting depicts an elegant after-dinner setting featuring an elaborate dessert table furnished with fruit, wild strawberries, biscuits, a silver Baroque coffee pot and creamer, silver demitasse cups, and celadon ground coffee cups before a Canterbury Box with Georgian glass decanters. The dessert has just been served, as the table settings are disheveled. Indeed, the painting's title, LA DESSERTE - though it sounds much like the French word for the after-dinner course, le dessert - is actually a clever play on words that translates to "the remains of the meal." What Berne-Bellecour depicts, then, is a deserted dessert with overturned cups and stacked plates.

Label TextÉtienne Prosper Berne-Bellecour French, 1838-1910 La Desserte (The Remains of the Meal), 1876 Oil on canvas Etienne Prosper Berne-Bellecour made his reputation as a painter of meticulously detailed military subjects and battle scenes. Here, he depicts a field of combat of nother sort. Dinner is over and the guests have departed, leaving behind a fantastic array of silver, glass, ceramics, linen, fruit, buscuits, and table decorations-- casualties of an incredible meal! Museum purchase 2000.24ProvenanceChrysler Museum of Art Purchase, 2000. Exhibition HistoryParis, Salon of 1876. Published ReferencesEmmanuel Bénézit, 1854-1920. DICTIONNAIRE CRITIQUE ET DOCUMENTAIRE DES PEINTRES, SCULPTEURS, DESSINATEURS ET GRAVEURS DE TOUS LES TEMPS ET DE TOUS LES PAYS. Vol. 1. Paris: Gründ. 1976: 675. Auction catalog. 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN ART. New York: Christie's. 10/18/2000: 96, no. 70. Terry Ward Libby, _Masterpieces: A Celebration of Food and Art in Virginia_ (Richmond, VA: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2005), 132-133, 148. ISBN: 0-917046-79-X Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 45, fig. 43. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1