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Patrick Henry Bruce

Date: 1917–18

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.21

Text Entries: Only recently has Patrick Henry Bruce come to be understood as a pioneering American modernist. The great-great-grandson of the American statesman Patrick Henry (known for his imperative "give me liberty or give me death"), Bruce was born in the United States but spent most of his adult life in France. In New York, Bruce studied with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri; later, in Paris, he became a friend and student of Henri Matisse. Bruce was well-versed in contemporary art theory and often frequented the salons of Gertrude and Leo Stein in Paris. His friends included the French artists Sonia and Robert Delauney as well as the Americans Edward Hopper, Man Ray, and Guy Pène du Bois. It was the work of French artist Paul Cézanne with its emphasis on underlying form, however, that Bruce was most drawn to. A consummate perfectionist, Bruce destroyed work that he felt was not up to his standards and left behind only around one hundred objects. Among the twenty-five surviving abstract still lifes, Peinture holds a distinct place as the first in a series. With its simplified, architectonic forms seen from multiple points-of-view, Peinture is a synthesis of Bruce's earlier stylistic excursions exploring structure and colored shapes. In 1930, Bruce stopped exhibiting his work. A fear that his art could not be understood in his lifetime coupled with a growing sense of dislocation led him to abandon painting in 1936. This same year he returned to New York from Europe-having already destroyed much of his work and personal papers-and took his own life.