CMA: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
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CMA: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
@cmaeuropepaint.bsky.social
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Sharing public domain works from the Modern European Painting and Sculpture department of Cleveland Museum of Art.
Automated #artbot thanks to @andreitr.bsky.social and @botfrens.bsky.social
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A Woman from the Land of Eskimos https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.249
Although many artists of the Romantic movement sought evidence of ideal existence in the Orient and the Near East, Cogniet instead chose to depict an Eskimo with her distinctive tattoos. Indeed, this painting is among the first to use images of an unspoiled, "primitive" culture as an embodiment of truth and beauty. When this painting was shown in an 1826 exhibition, the accompanying catalogue stated that it was "painted after nature." However, the artist never traveled to the Arctic. Still, he may have actually seen an Eskimo. In 1825 a Paris newspaper reported that an Eskimo woman and her dog were performing in the city as part of a curiosity show. The show also included a massive panoramic view of Baffin Bay (located between northeast Canada and Greenland). That painting may have inspired the dark sky and icy landscape in Cogniet's picture.
December 19, 2025 at 1:23 PM
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Ruined Church https://clevelandart.org/art/2010.18
Ruined Church
December 19, 2025 at 12:22 PM
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The Little Milkmaid https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.31
The Little Milkmaid
December 19, 2025 at 9:58 AM
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St. Joan of Arc https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.273
St. Joan of Arc
December 18, 2025 at 6:36 PM
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The Seine at Bas-Meudon https://clevelandart.org/art/1993.236
Although born and trained in Holland, Jongkind spent much of his life painting outdoors in France. In this depiction of Bas-Meudon near Paris, the artist applied paint in small patches of bright color to suggest the intensity of outdoor light. Although typcially finished in the studio from open-air sketches, Jongkind's oil paintings achieve a convincing immediacy that greatly impressed the young Claude Monet. The two met in the early 1860s and spent part of a summer painting together along the coast of Normandy. "From that time he was my real master," Monet later acknowledged, "it was to him that I owe the final education of my eye."
December 18, 2025 at 4:21 PM
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Portrait of a Woman in a White Dress https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.1147
Portrait of a Woman in a White Dress
December 18, 2025 at 9:42 AM
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The Farm at the Entrance of the Wood https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.73
One of the most celebrated female artists of the 19th century, Bonheur established an international reputation by exhibiting at the Paris Salons. Empress Eugènie, wife of Napoleon III, visited her studio to personally confer the Legion of Honor, making Bonheur the first woman to receive the award. This painting may have been inspired by the rustic houses in the vicinity of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where Bonheur lived for more than 40 years.
December 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM
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Saint in Red Cloak https://clevelandart.org/art/1957.506.2
Saint in Red Cloak
December 17, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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Crucifixion https://clevelandart.org/art/1950.345
Crucifixion
December 17, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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Dante and Virgil Meeting the Shades of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.40
Based on The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem of the 1300s, this painting depicts Dante and the ancient Roman poet Virgil encountering the souls of Paolo and Francesca on a visit to Hell. Although in love with Paolo, Francesca was forced to marry his deformed brother for political reasons. When the jilted husband discovered the lovers embracing, he murdered them, apparently consigning them to Hell due to their adulterous affair.
December 17, 2025 at 12:06 PM
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Pine Tree https://clevelandart.org/art/1982.124
Segantini painted this picture in the Swiss Alps, where he lived from 1886 to 1899. The composition is a study for an unrealized painting of Adam and Eve in paradise. Segantini’s distinctive technique is characterized by brilliant colors applied in small strokes to create an unusually vibrant surface. The artist may have intended that the bent, twisted tree, struggling for survival against alpine storms, is a metaphor for human perseverance.
December 17, 2025 at 9:21 AM
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Still Life with Herring, Bread, and Cheese https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.254.2
This painting forms a pair with the Still Life with Pipe and Matches, shown nearby. Along with several other paintings, they decorated the dining room of the artist's home, each painting representing a different stage of a meal. In this composition the artist focused his attention on rendering textures, which are as varied as the objects themselves: the skin of the smoked herrings, whose highlights echo the silver of the goblet and the cover of the pitcher; the spongy surface of the bread; the velvety crust of the cheese; and finally the soft wood surface (pine?) that supports this still life. The Latin inscription translates: "How virtuous and how great to live with simple things."
December 16, 2025 at 6:37 PM
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The Beach at Deauville https://clevelandart.org/art/1946.71
During the 1860s, Boudin executed many paintings and watercolors representing well-to-do tourists and vacationers enjoying seaside resorts in Normandy, principally Trouville and Deauville. In this scene, the informally posed figures suggest a sense of relaxation and intimacy. The overturned chair in the foreground underscores the impression of a casually observed moment, as though a sea breeze or a quick departure by its former occupant has upended it. The majority of Boudin's small oil paintings of beach scenes of the 1860s were executed on wood panel. After laying down a thin white ground, Boudin seems to have begun painting directly, not drawing or laying in guidelines for the forms. The result is a freshness and airiness appropriate to a windy day at the beach.
December 16, 2025 at 5:09 PM
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The Windmill https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1042
The Windmill
December 16, 2025 at 2:02 PM
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Self-Portrait with a Maulstick https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.279
Self-Portrait with a Maulstick
December 16, 2025 at 10:47 AM
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Glaucus and Nydia https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.128
"It was one of the few moments in her brief and troubled life that it was sweet to treasure." Weaving a rose garland as a present for her beloved master Glaucus, the blind servant Nydia resists speaking of her love for him. The scene is based on Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's enormously popular historical novel <em>The Last Days of Pompeii </em>(published in 1835), a melodramatic epic set in ancient Roman times, which culminates with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Responding to the 19th-century appetite for things antique, the artist filled his historical scenes with depictions of Roman frescoes and statuary. Dutch by birth, Alma-Tadema made this picture in Brussels for a London art dealer. But the demand for such paintings became so great that he moved to England, where he achieved great financial and social success.
December 16, 2025 at 9:20 AM
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Plaque: Eagle with Snake https://clevelandart.org/art/1960.93
Plaque: Eagle with Snake
December 15, 2025 at 5:46 PM
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Elisa Pearson Playter https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.46
Elisa Pearson Playter
December 15, 2025 at 4:05 PM
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The Dock of Deauville https://clevelandart.org/art/1939.165
This painting treats a common theme in Boudin's mature art, ships at harbor. Boudin typically did not depict the busy commercial life or human tasks related to ships; rather, he seemed always to strive for an overall mood of calm, harmony, and light. Although Boudin's brushwork was quite sketchy at this time, he was still able to suggest the complex sails and structures of large vessels. Here he rubbed light tones around the ships' masts, often overlapping the darker lines of the wood and rigging with white or gray tones as if to evoke the passing wind and shifting positions common to nautical life.
December 15, 2025 at 12:52 PM
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Greek Cavalry Men Resting in Forest https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1032
A leading figure of the French Romantic movement, Delacroix painted traditional historical subjects, but in a dramatic, expressive manner. The Greek struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s caught the imagination of numerous French artists, who identified the Greek cause with their own revolution thirty years earlier. Like British Romantic poets, French artists regarded the Greek war of independence as a struggle for the survival of Western democracy and Christian civilization.
December 15, 2025 at 11:50 AM
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Capri https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.5
Located in the Mediterrean Sea, south of Rome, the island of Capri has been famous since Roman times for its spectacular scenery and mild climate. In the 19th century it became the home of many European nobles, and attracted artists from across the continent. Here Benouville captured the beauty of the island's rocky coastline, focusing his attention on a path leading toward the city of Capri and past the rocky outcropping of Monte Solaro. Fascinated by the Italian landscape, Benouville spent years in Italy drawing and painting the countryside. From 1838 to 1845 he made at least three trips there, and in 1845, after winning the Prix de Rome-a fellowship allowing promising artists to study in that city-spent much of the next 25 years in Italy. Although trained to paint landscapes in a very formal manner, after leaving France Benouville began to paint his subjects with a much more personal, nontraditional approach. This may account for this picture's unusual composition, in which much of the canvas is given to indistinct, but beautifully painted stone, sky, and water.
December 15, 2025 at 10:13 AM
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Imaginary View of Arnhem https://clevelandart.org/art/2958.1938
Imaginary View of Arnhem
December 14, 2025 at 7:03 PM
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Midnight https://clevelandart.org/art/1923.602
This painting depicts Abbeville, a city in northern France famous for its canals and architecture. It lies near the seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Cazin's hometown and where he spent the last decades of his life painting the countryside, beaches, and nearby towns. Cazin specialized in landscapes, often influenced by his knowledge of English and Dutch painters. The title, <em>Midnight</em>, and the image itself suggest silence and stillness—Cazin's hallmarks—but only rarely did he attain this almost surrealistic atmosphere. Cazin was educated in Paris at the famous Ecole Gratuite de Dessins (Free School of Drawing), an innovative and unorthodox institution teaching drawing from memory. He studied there with fellow artists Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911). They all shared an interest in Symbolism—the movement that sees symbols in reality and perceives reality through symbols.
December 14, 2025 at 3:39 PM
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Portrait of a Woman Near a Balustrade https://clevelandart.org/art/1926.235
Portrait of a Woman Near a Balustrade
December 14, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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Still Life with Asparagus https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.284
Rousseau was profoundly influenced by the atmospheric still lifes of Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), whom the artist and other French painters like François Bonvin (1817-1877) rediscovered in the mid-1800s. A comparison with Chardin's work, also shown in this gallery, indicates that Rousseau similarly depicted foodstuffs on a simple kitchen table, concentrating on rich textures and restrained colors.
December 14, 2025 at 10:56 AM