Decorated Mirror Frame with Mirror

In 1903 the Amsterdam collector Andries Bonger wrote to the painter Odilon Redon about something he badly wanted: a small house furnished to his own taste and decorated by Redon and by Bernard. Five years later he had part of it. This is carved wood, painted in colour, a little over two metres tall, with a mirror set into the middle of it, made to hang on a wall in that house rather than to be studied like a picture. Bernard produced a second frame to go with it, and the museum keeps the pair. Both reached Amsterdam in 1996, when the State of the Netherlands bought what was left of Bonger's collection from the heirs of his widow.