Robert Vonnoh (American, 1858–1933)
The Baby’s Bottle
Oil on canvas
18⅛ × 21⅝ in.
Signed lower right: “Vonnoh.”
Provenance: Berry-Hill Galleries, New York; Private Collection, Louisiana; Christie’s, New York, May 25, 1989, lot 238.
Exhibited: American Art in Louisiana Private Collections, 1870–1970, Louisiana Art and Science Center, Riverside Museum, Baton Rouge, February–March 1985.
A tender and intimate moment rendered with Impressionist sensitivity, Robert Vonnoh’s The Baby’s Bottle captures the quiet universality of maternal affection. Softly modeled forms, a muted palette, and fluid brushwork create an atmosphere of warmth and immediacy, emphasizing gesture and light over detail. The sitter’s gentle concentration and the infant’s relaxed stillness exemplify Vonnoh’s gift for finding poetic resonance in everyday domestic life.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Vonnoh studied at the Massachusetts Normal Art School and at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he absorbed the techniques of French Impressionism. A respected teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago, he became known for portraits and plein-air landscapes that balance naturalism with painterly freedom. The Baby’s Bottle reflects Vonnoh’s mature style—intimate in scale, emotionally sincere, and suffused with a luminous tranquility characteristic of late nineteenth-century American Impressionism.
