{
"data": {
"id": 143148,
"accession_number": "1967.130.b",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Woman and Man Playing Cards (verso), 1792. Benjamin West (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1738\u20131820). Black crayon; sheet: 32.3 x 40.7 cm (12 11/16 x 16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1967.130.b",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Woman and Man Playing Cards (verso)",
"creation_date": "1792",
"creation_date_earliest": 1787,
"creation_date_latest": 1797,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "black crayon",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "light brown laid paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - American 18th Century",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 32.3 x 40.7 cm (12 11/16 x 16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.323,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
"width": 0.407,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301129,
"title": "Year in Review: 1967",
"description": "Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967).",
"opening_date": "1967-11-29T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 191183,
"title": "American Drawings from the Permanent Collection",
"description": "American Drawings from the Permanent Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 19-July 12, 1998).",
"opening_date": "1998-04-19T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "cma 1967; cma 1990b; cma 1998.",
"opening_date": "1967-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; 4/19/98 - 7/12/98. \"American Drawings from the Permanent Collection.\"",
"opening_date": "1998-04-19T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "[Sven Gahlin, Ltd.].",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Benjamin West was born into poverty in rural Pennsylvania, the youngest of ten children, but rose to become the first American artist to train in Italy and command a successful career as a history painter in England.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Born in rural Pennsylvania, trained in Italy, and based in London for the entirety of his career, Benjamin West exemplifies the transatlantic character of colonial-era American art. In England, his success as a history painter propelled him to the position of court painter by 1772. West\u2019s study of the head of a screaming man, believed to be done in preparation for a now-lost painting commissioned by King George III (1738\u20131820), was likely not drawn from life. It was modeled on the ideas of French artist Charles LeBrun (1619\u20131690), whose lectures on depicting the passions of the soul were surely known to the academic West. Working out the facial expression of terror, West emphasized the musculature of the man\u2019s neck, jawline, and brow with thick, emphatic strokes. He employed light brown paper as a midtone and rubbed shadows beneath the man\u2019s chin and flying hair. The purpose of the drawing is not entirely understood. In Pharaoh and His Host Lost in the Red Sea, an oil sketch West likely executed prior to Cleveland\u2019s drawing, the dramatic twist of the pharaoh\u2019s screaming head strongly resembles that in Cleveland\u2019s sheet. However, a drawing in Boston believed to depict the lost painting indicates a composition quite different from West\u2019s oil sketch, leaving the role of this crayon study in the creation of the final painting uncertain.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80043426"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1967.130.b-woman-and-man-playin"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 200-201, 295, cat. no. 82",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1967.130.b",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1967.130.b/1967.130.b_web.jpg",
"width": "1115",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "917342",
"filename": "1967.130.b_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1967.130.b/1967.130.b_print.jpg",
"width": "1918",
"height": "1536",
"filesize": "2716142",
"filename": "1967.130.b_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1967.130.b/1967.130.b_full.tif",
"width": "1918",
"height": "1536",
"filesize": "8841396",
"filename": "1967.130.b_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Dudley P. Allen Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 143148,
"creators": [
{
"id": 2553,
"description": "Benjamin West (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1738\u20131820)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1738",
"death_year": "1820",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1967-10-27T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1787,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1792",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "part",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": "1967.130",
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-07-21 11:12:34.908000"
}
}