{
"data": {
"id": 120827,
"accession_number": "1941.552",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of Catherine Clemens and Her Son, John Marcus Clemens, c. 1800. Richard Cosway (British, 1742\u20131821). Watercolor on ivory in a gold and split pearl frame; framed: 9 x 7.3 cm (3 9/16 x 2 7/8 in.); sight: 8 x 6.1 cm (3 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection, 1941.552",
"current_location": "203B British Painting and Decorative Arts",
"title": "Portrait of Catherine Clemens and Her Son, John Marcus Clemens",
"creation_date": "c. 1800",
"creation_date_earliest": 1795,
"creation_date_latest": 1805,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 19th century"
],
"technique": "watercolor on ivory in a gold and split pearl frame",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Framed: 9 x 7.3 cm (3 9/16 x 2 7/8 in.); Sight: 8 x 6.1 cm (3 1/8 x 2 3/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.09,
"width": 0.073
},
"sight": {
"height": 0.08,
"width": 0.061
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
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"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 335533,
"title": "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting",
"description": "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (January 18-March 19, 1950).",
"opening_date": "1950-01-18T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 335560,
"title": "Chefs d\u2019Oeuvre de la Miniature et de la Gouache",
"description": "Chefs d\u2019Oeuvre de la Miniature et de la Gouache. Mus\u00e9e d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, Switzerland (organizer) (June 15-August 15, 1956).",
"opening_date": "1956-06-15T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311444,
"title": "Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum",
"description": "Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-06-07T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311503,
"title": "Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America",
"description": "Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 26-October 17, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1993-03-26T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 202388,
"title": "Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives",
"description": "Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 10, 2013-February 16, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2013-11-10T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Main Gallery Rotation, Gallery 202, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 5, 2009 - April 6, 2009).",
"opening_date": "2009-01-05T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Main European Rotation, Gallery 202, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 30, 2012 - July 23, 2012).",
"opening_date": "2012-01-30T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Leo Schidlof (1886-1966), Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "Before 1930-1930",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1930-1941",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1941-",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
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"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Portraits of mothers with their children were much more common in the 1700s and 1800s in Britain than were portraits of fathers with their children.",
"description": "This sensitive portrait of Catherine Clemens and her son, John Marcus, was painted around 1800 and exemplifies the prettiness for which Cosway was so well known. The artist\u2019s trademark turquoise blue sky is reflected in the boy\u2019s brilliant blue eyes and the bow on the frock that slips informally off his shoulder. This miniature also showcases Cosway\u2019s mature technique of delicate stipplework throughout the faces, contrasted with looser brushstrokes for the hair and garments. Both John Marcus and his mother are swathed in white ruffled fabric, against which the paleness of their skin seems even more pronounced. Like his contemporaries, Cosway used the bare ivory ground to enhance the creaminess of flesh tones. John Marcus wears a coral necklace, frequently given to children during this period as a talisman believed to ward off illness. His innocent, childish gesture of reaching down his mother\u2019s dress for her breast is awkward considering his disproportionately large size. The fact that he is still young enough to wear a gown rather than breeches suggests that he is under four years old, and yet his head and lips are larger than his mother\u2019s. During the final decades of the eighteenth century, aristocratic women as prominent as the Duchess of Devonshire were electing to breastfeed their children rather than send them to wet nurses, and this may be a delicate reference to Catherine Clemens\u2019s philosophy of \u201cnatural\u201d parenting.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80016471"
],
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"citations": [
{
"citation": "Think (International Business Machines Corp.) (March 1950).",
"page_number": "16 (repr.)",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. Portrait Miniatures; The Edward B. Greene Collection. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 26, no. 8; reproduced: pl. VI, no. 8, cover",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/PortraitMiniatures/page/n53"
},
{
"citation": "Comstack, Helen. \"The Edward B. Greene Collection of Miniatures.\" The Connoisseur 128, no. 532 (October 1951): 137-144.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 138",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lister, Raymond. \u201cEdward B. Greene Collection of Portrait Miniatures.\u201d Apollo: The International Magazine for Collectors 55 (January 1952): 20.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 20; reproduced: cover",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Geneva (Switzerland). Chefs-d'oeuvre de la miniature et de la gouache. Gen\u00e8va: Le Mus\u00e9e, 1956.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 99",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Masterpieces of Miniatures and Gouache.\" The Connoisseur 138 (October 1956): 82-83.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 82-83",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, and Alan Chong. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "p. 282",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Dario Robleto. Disembodied: Portrait Miniatures and Their Contemporary Relatives. 2013.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: p.35, 86, 69",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.",
"page_number": "Cat. no. 67, pp. 255-257",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 197",
"url": ""
}
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"creditline": "The Edward B. Greene Collection",
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{
"id": 3700,
"description": "Richard Cosway (British, 1742\u20131821)",
"extent": null,
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"role": "artist",
"biography": "Richard Cosway was Arguably the most fashionable miniature painter in London during the art form\u2019s golden age in
late-eighteenth-century Britain. Also an accomplished painter in oils, Cosway was equally well known for his flamboyant character and the stunning art collection that secured his reputation as an arbiter of taste and model of connoisseurship. His elegant portraits in miniature were coveted by sitters who sought glamour even if it was at the expense of truthfulness. Cosway and his wife, Maria (ne\u00e9 Hadfield), maintained an elite circle of friends who helped define what
was au courant for the age and who consisted primarily of cultural luminaries and young members of high society revolving around George Augustus Frederick, the prince of Wales himself. His steady patronage from 1780 until 1808 fixed Cosway\u2019s popularity within fashionable society. From 1785 Cosway\u2019s miniatures were signed on the back: \u201cPrimarius Pictor Serenissimi Walliae Principis\u201d (Principal Painter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales), a pompous Latin designation that garnered the artist both fame and ridicule. Cosway was a successful artist-celebrity in his own time, and, in spite of being criticized periodically for being too superficially pretty, his miniatures have always been among the most desired by collectors. The Cleveland Museum of Art owns five miniatures by Cosway, painted between 1785 and 1805, that are representative of the artist\u2019s stylistic range during the height of his career.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1742",
"death_year": "1821",
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1941-12-05T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1795,
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"date_text": "c. 1800",
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"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:00:09.854000"
}
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