{ "data": { "id": 131422, "accession_number": "1954.153.125", "share_license_status": "Copyrighted", "tombstone": "Jazz Band (125 of 150), 1920. William Sommer (American, 1867\u20131949). Ink, graphite, and color on paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, 1954.153.125", "current_location": null, "title": "Jazz Band (125 of 150)", "creation_date": "1920", "creation_date_earliest": 1920, "creation_date_latest": 1920, "artists_tags": [ "May Show", "male" ], "culture": [ "America, Ohio, Cleveland" ], "technique": "ink, graphite, and color on paper", "support_materials": [], "department": "Drawings", "collection": "DR - American - Cleveland School", "type": "Drawing", "dimensions": {}, "state_of_the_work": null, "edition_of_the_work": null, "copyright": null, "inscriptions": [], "exhibitions": { "current": [ { "id": 177916, "title": "Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age", "description": "Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 28-July 18, 2004).", "opening_date": "2004-03-28T00:00:00" } ], "legacy": [ { "description": "Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; March 28 - July 18, 2004. \"Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age\", no exhibition catalogue.", "opening_date": "2004-03-28T00:00:00" } ] }, "provenance": [], "find_spot": null, "related_works": [], "former_accession_numbers": [], "did_you_know": "William Sommer co-founded the Kokoon Klub, a group of vanguard artists who were among the most active in Cleveland in the early 1900s.", "early_education_description": null, "artlens_description": null, "description": "One of Cleveland\u2019s most innovative and prolific artists, Sommer came to Cleveland in 1907 to work in the commercial lithography industry. However, he hated the work and devoted almost all of his free time to producing experimental art. His modernist paintings strongly influenced other Cleveland artists, including the young Charles Burchfield, who in 1915 made a special trip to visit Sommer at his home in the Cuyahoga Valley. Often living on the brink of bankruptcy, Sommer worked incessantly using any materials at hand. He painted this watercolor, whose dynamic forms capture the spirit of the Jazz Age, on the back of an invitation to an exhibition opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.", "external_resources": { "wikidata": [ "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80022742" ], "internet_archive": [] }, "citations": [ { "citation": "\"Current Exhibitions\", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 04, April 2004", "page_number": "Mentioned & reproduced: p. 2", "url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2004-04/page/n1/" }, { "citation": "Robinson, William H., Kathleen McKeever, \"And All That Jazz\", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 05, May 2004", "page_number": "Mentioned & reproduced: cover, p. 4-6", "url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2004-05/page/n3" } ], "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1954.153.125", "images": {}, "alternate_images": [], "creditline": "Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund", "image_credit": null, "sketchfab_id": null, "sketchfab_url": null, "gallery_donor_text": null, "athena_id": 131422, "creators": [ { "id": 9405, "description": "William Sommer (American, 1867\u20131949)", "extent": null, "qualifier": null, "role": "artist", "biography": "Born in Detroit to a family of German immigrants, Sommer first studied drawing at the age of 11 with Julius Gari Melchers. Pursuing a career in commercial lithography, Sommer apprenticed at Calvert Lithography in Detroit, 1881\u201388, and subsequently worked at various lithography shops in Boston, New York, and England. In 1890 he went abroad for a year of study at the Kunstakademie in Munich. In 1891 he returned to New York and spent the next 16 years working as a commercial lithographer. In 1907 he moved to Cleveland to work for the Otis Lithograph Company, where he became friendly with William Zorach. Around 1910, and under the influence of Abel Warshawsky, Sommer began to experiment with impressionist colors; subsequently he experimented with a fauvist palette. He exhibited with the Cleveland \u201csecessionists\u201d at the Rorimer-Brooks Studios in early 1911 and cofounded the Kokoon Klub that summer. Around 1914 he moved to Brandywine, a rural valley about 20 miles south of Cleveland, where he converted an abandoned schoolhouse into a studio that became an important meeting place for modern artists, poets, and musicians. In May 1918 Sommer designed stage sets and programs for a production of Everyman by the Cleveland Play House. He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1922\u201350). In the 1930s and 1940s he exhibited on a regular basis in Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. During the Depression he was employed by various New Deal art programs to paint murals for Cleveland Public Hall (1933), Cleveland Public Library (1934), the post office in Geneva, Ohio (1938), and the Akron Board of Education (1941). After the death of his wife in 1945, he was struck by chronic bouts of depression and alcoholism. Sommer died in Brandywine.
\"Transformations in Cleveland Art\" (CMA, 1996), p. 238", "name_in_original_language": null, "birth_year": "1867", "death_year": "1949", "use_in_caption": true, "include_extent": false, "weight": 1 } ], "legal_status": "accessioned", "accession_date": "1954-02-04T00:00:00", "sortable_date": 1920, "date_added_to_oa": null, "date_text": "1920", "collapse_artists": false, "on_loan": false, "recently_acquired": false, "record_type": "component", "conservation_statement": null, "has_conservation_images": false, "cover_accession_number": "1954.153", "is_nazi_era_provenance": false, "impression": null, "alternate_titles": [], "is_highlight": false, "updated_at": "2026-07-04 11:16:28.027000" } }