{
"data": {
"id": 105480,
"accession_number": "1923.602",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Midnight, 1891. Jean-Charles Cazin (French, 1841\u20131901). Oil on fabric; framed: 113 x 112.4 x 11.4 cm (44 1/2 x 44 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.); unframed: 88 x 89 cm (34 5/8 x 35 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Charles W. Harkness Gift, 1923.602",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Midnight",
"creation_date": "1891",
"creation_date_earliest": 1891,
"creation_date_latest": 1891,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 113 x 112.4 x 11.4 cm (44 1/2 x 44 1/4 x 4 1/2 in.); Unframed: 88 x 89 cm (34 5/8 x 35 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 1.13,
"height_inch": 44,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 1.124,
"width_inch": 44,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"depth": 0.114,
"depth_inch": 4,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.5
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.88,
"height_inch": 34,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.89,
"width_inch": 35,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right: j. c. cazin. 91\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Paris, Champ de Mars. Salon (1891), no. 181, Minuit (repr.).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Chicago. World's Columbian Exposition (1893), rev. cat., no. 3034, Midnight Moonlight, Abbeville, France, lent by Charles T. Yerkes, Chicago.",
"opening_date": null
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Shipped with two other works by Cazin from Knoedler Paris to the branch in New York, 16 May 1891 (stock number 6834), as \"Night with Stars.\"",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Sold 12 November 1891 to R. K. McNeely, Philadelphia, as \"Night,\" (Cazin's Studio). (Sales book no. 6, p. 314).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Charles T. Yerkes, Philadelphia and Chicago, by 1893.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "New York sale, Estate of Mary Adelaide Yerkes, American Art Association, 19-20 February 1912 (lot 142, repr.), as \"Moonlight at Midnight.\"",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Edward S. Harkness, Cleveland, OH.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1923.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 6
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Cazin preferred to paint in his studio using memory techniques learned in his artistic training which he later passed on to his own students.",
"description": "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, Midnight, and the image itself suggest silence and stillness\u2014Cazin's hallmarks\u2014but 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\u20131904), Auguste Rodin (1840\u20131917), and Alphonse Legros (1837\u20131911). They all shared an interest in Symbolism\u2014the movement that sees symbols in reality and perceives reality through symbols.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60503420"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "\"Bequest of Mrs. Charles W. Harkness.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 4 (1917): 63.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 63",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25136090"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 30",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook_80839/page/n32"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 37",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1928/page/n41"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 116-118, Vol. I, no. 44",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1923.602",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_web.jpg",
"width": "901",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "127270",
"filename": "1923.602_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "3370",
"filesize": "1839447",
"filename": "1923.602_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_full.tif",
"width": "5682",
"height": "5633",
"filesize": "96041996",
"filename": "1923.602_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [
{
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt0_web.jpg",
"width": "904",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "122040"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt0_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "3360",
"filesize": "2375667"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt0_full.tif",
"width": "6037",
"height": "5967",
"filesize": "108090420"
},
"date_created": "2013-05-21T18:37:14",
"annotation": ""
},
{
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt1_web.jpg",
"width": "906",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "638734"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt1_print.jpg",
"width": "1558",
"height": "1536",
"filesize": "1890812"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1923.602/1923.602_alt1_full.tif",
"width": "1558",
"height": "1536",
"filesize": "7181908"
},
"annotation": ""
}
],
"creditline": "The Charles W. Harkness Gift",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 105480,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1751,
"description": "Jean-Charles Cazin (French, 1841\u20131901)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Jean Charles Cazin was educated in Boulogne-sur-Mer and England before completing his high-school degree in Lille. He had always shown artistic promise and by 1863 was living in Paris and submitting a landscape painting to the Salon des Refus\u00e9s. He enrolled at the \u00c9cole Gratuite de Dessin, where he studied drawing under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897), an innovative and unorthodox instructor who had developed his own teaching method based on drawing from memory. Many other young artists were attracted to his teaching style, including Fantin-Latour (q.v.), Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Cazin's friendship with his mentor led to a teaching position at the \u00c9cole Sp\u00e9ciale d'Architecture in Paris, and he later became the director of the \u00c9cole de Dessin and curator of the museum in Tours. In 1871, after the devastation caused by the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Cazin and his wife, Marie Guillet, an artist who had studied under Bonheur (q.v.), left for England. During this period he turned to the decorative arts and created ceramics influenced by Japonism. Cazin's pottery served to support his family during this time of postwar economic depression; he would eventually hire his own staff to produce the ceramics that he would then decorate. After the traditional tour of Italy and a short stay in Antwerp, he returned to France in 1875 and settled near Boulogne-sur-Mer. There he painted landscapes and the beaches of this coastal town. Cazin received the L\u00e9gion d'Honneur in 1882, a gold medal at the Universal Exposition of 1889, and a Grand Prix in 1900.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1841",
"death_year": "1901",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1923-09-24T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1891,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1891",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 05:41:02.241000"
}
}