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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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
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Dr. Johann Henning Kjetil Hjardemaal https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.51
The sitter (1812-1844) was born on the island of Saint Thomas, at that time a colony in the Danish West Indies. He was sent to Copenhagen to study medicine and later set up practice at Satrup in Schleswig, then part of Denmark. For health reasons, he returned with his wife to the Virgin Islands, where they both died in 1844.
December 14, 2025 at 9:15 AM
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Head of Christ https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.247
Head of Christ
December 13, 2025 at 6:17 PM
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Arion on a Sea Horse and Bacchante on a Panther (pair) https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.238
Part of a series of six paintings that decorated Etienne Bartholony's house in Paris, these paintings emulate ancient Roman designs. Crisp, cut-out forms are set against a gold background painted in imitation of mosaic. Arion was an ancient Greek poet who escaped death by riding away on the back of a sea creature who had been attracted by the poet's song. In the companion picture, a bacchante---a female worshipper of the wine god Bacchus---rides a panther, the god's symbolic animal. These works were shown at the 1857 Paris Salon exhibition.
December 13, 2025 at 3:49 PM
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A Woodland Fête https://clevelandart.org/art/1954.832
A Woodland Fête
December 13, 2025 at 12:05 PM
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Summer https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1056
This painting is a smaller version of a mural on the same subject painted for the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, which has a companion mural titled <em>Winter</em>. A writer at the time described <em>Summer</em> as "filled with joy, happiness, rest, and the apotheosis of life." Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso were among the many modernists influenced by Puvis de Chavannes’s dreamlike themes and anti-naturalistic style of simplified, flattened forms.
December 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
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Beggars by a Door https://clevelandart.org/art/2010.21
Beggars by a Door
December 12, 2025 at 3:45 PM
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Self-Portrait in Rome https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.171
Vernet stands before the Villa Medici, seat of the French Academy in Rome, where he was director from 1829 to 1835. The palette, brushes, and maulstick on the stepladder hint at his talent for painting large canvases. The artist's sideward glance, disheveled hair, and burning cigarette lend him a romantic aura. The recipient of numerous commissions for military paintings, Vernet was patronized by Jérôme Bonaparte (the youngest brother of Napoleon) and later taught at the École des Beaux-Arts.
December 12, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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Portrait of Louis XVIII https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.1134
Portrait of Louis XVIII
December 12, 2025 at 12:31 PM
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Portrait of Henri Gratien, Comte Bertrand https://clevelandart.org/art/1940.1211
Bertrand was a military engineer and companion of Emperor Napoleon, who described the bridges his friend Bertrand built for the French crossing of the Danube at Wagram in 1809 as the finest since the Romans.
December 12, 2025 at 8:05 AM
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General Jean-Baptiste Kléber (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids") https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.17.1
In 1810, Gros exhibited a massive painting of Napoleon at the 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, one of the rare French triumphs in the failed campaign to conquer Egypt (1789-1801). After Napoleon first fell from power in 1814, the painting went into storage, until the new king Louis-Philippe chose to resurrect it for a history museum in Paris. However, perhaps to diminish Napoleon's significance, the government asked Gros to amplify the original with an addition at each end. This painting incorporates General Kléber, a famously successful military leader who had been excluded from the original painting.
December 11, 2025 at 6:44 PM
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The Sunlight https://clevelandart.org/art/1996.274
The Sunlight
December 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
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Little Brother and Sister https://clevelandart.org/art/1917.745
Rodin spent years exploring new ways of representing the human emotions of love and affection experienced at different stages of life. The bodies and gestures of the children here suggest an innocent foreshadowing of the mature couple in the artist’s celebrated sculpture <em>The Kiss </em>of 1882. Both works feature a strong tactile contrast between the rough-hewn lower area and the smooth surfaces of the nude body above. Upwardly spiraling forms, combined with shifting areas of light and shadow, infuse the sculpture with dynamic energy.
December 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
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Combat for the Colors https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1049
Combat for the Colors
December 11, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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The Poplars at Saint-Rémy https://clevelandart.org/art/1958.32
Van Gogh painted this autumnal landscape while at an asylum near Saint-Rémy in southern France. Although at first limited to painting from memory in his room, he soon resumed working outdoors. This painting reveals the full power of his mature style. Trees twist and lean against a darkening sky, while the intense colors applied with charged brushstrokes convey his emotional reaction to the subject. Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 1958.32
December 11, 2025 at 8:18 AM
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Homage to a Bishop https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.127
Homage to a Bishop
December 10, 2025 at 5:52 PM
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Fragment of a Leg (right leg) https://clevelandart.org/art/1917.289
Fragment of a Leg (right leg)
December 10, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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Tannhäuser https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1038
This painting is based on act I of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera <em>Tannhäuser</em>, a medieval tale of the struggle between sacred and profane love. Seduced by Venus, the deeply religious minstrel Tannhäuser is seen reveling in the pleasures of the goddess's court before guilt compels him to return to the real world. The sensuality of the story, and indeed of Wagner's music, is matched by Fantin-Latour's thick repetitive brushwork, which seems to draw a dreamy veil over figures and landcape. This painting was shown at the Paris Salon exhibition of 1886. An earlier version had been shown more than 20 years before.
December 10, 2025 at 2:59 PM
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Torso https://clevelandart.org/art/1918.571
Torso
December 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
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Jean d'Aire https://clevelandart.org/art/1917.723
In 1884 Rodin received a commission to create a large public monument honoring six French men who volunteered to be taken prisoner by an English army in exchange for the English releasing the town of Calais from a brutal 11-month siege. This reduced cast depicts one of the volunteers from the monument. Rather than idealized heroes, Rodin portrays the prominent citizens known as burghers as ordinary men experiencing personal confrontations with death. Jean d’Aire faces his fate with stoic resolve. The thick folds of his tunic weigh heavily on his body, as if symbolic of an internal struggle between his willingness to sacrifice his life and a desire to live. His intense glare into space seems to betray the dread and anxiety raging within his mind. Immensely popular as an independent sculpture, Rodin made numerous versions in various sizes.
December 10, 2025 at 10:18 AM
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The Age of Bronze https://clevelandart.org/art/1918.328
Rodin’s earliest surviving life-size sculpture,<em> The Age of Bronze</em> is an enigmatic and provocative image of a man awakening to new consciousness. The figure originally held a spear in one hand; by removing the weapon, Rodin stripped the sculpture of narrative symbols and focused on the sensuality and psychological power of the male nude. Contemporaries found the figure so realistic they falsely accused Rodin of making a cast from a living person. Museum trustee Ralph King commissioned this cast from the artist in 1916 with the intention of donating it to the museum. Rodin personally supervised the exceptionally fine casting and finished it with his favorite patina, a deep reddish tone he called “crushed grape.”
December 9, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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Clio, Muse of History https://clevelandart.org/art/2003.6.5
Clio, Muse of History
December 9, 2025 at 1:37 PM
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Virgin and Child Enthroned https://clevelandart.org/art/1951.332
Virgin and Child Enthroned
December 9, 2025 at 11:07 AM