{
"data": {
"id": 174043,
"accession_number": "1972.905",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "A Builder of Boats, c. 1904. John George Brown (American, born England, 1831\u20131913). Oil on canvas; framed: 98 x 120 x 11 cm (38 9/16 x 47 1/4 x 4 5/16 in.); unframed: 80 x 101.6 cm (31 1/2 x 40 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 1972.905",
"current_location": "207 American Realism",
"title": "A Builder of Boats",
"creation_date": "c. 1904",
"creation_date_earliest": 1889,
"creation_date_latest": 1909,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America, late 19th-early 20th Century"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 98 x 120 x 11 cm (38 9/16 x 47 1/4 x 4 5/16 in.); Unframed: 80 x 101.6 cm (31 1/2 x 40 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.98,
"height_inch": 38,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5625,
"width": 1.2,
"width_inch": 47,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"depth": 0.11,
"depth_inch": 4,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.3125
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.8,
"height_inch": 31,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 1.016,
"width_inch": 40,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed lower right: J.G. Brown N.A.",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA 1973: \"Year in Review for 1972,\" Bulletin, LX (March, 1973), p. 82, no. 115.",
"opening_date": "1973-03-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Atlanta, High Museum of Art, April 2 - July 31, 1994: \"John George Brown: The Dignity of Years\".",
"opening_date": "1994-04-02T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1972-",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [
"905.1972"
],
"did_you_know": "The object held in the sitter\u2019s right hand is a drawing compass.",
"description": "Brown's preference for rural subjects in a time when the United States was undergoing rapid industrialization suggests nostalgia for the past. Indeed, A Builder of Boats, an image of an elderly craftsman working alone with hand tools in a tranquil setting replete with his sleeping dog, offered its contemporary audience a distinct alternative to mechanized factory production.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117230297"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1972.905-boat-builder"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "American Federation of Arts. American Art Annual. Florence N. Levy, ed. volume XI. Boston: Noyes, Platt & Co, 1914.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 479",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. \"A Check List: American Paintings and Water Colors of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Early Twentieth Centuries in The Cleveland Museum of Art.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 60:1 (January, 1973). pp. 1-36.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 23",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \"The Year in Review for 1972.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 60:3 (March, 1973). pp. 63-115.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 82, fig. 115; Mentioned: p. 109",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Recent Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, July-September, 1972.\" The Art Quarterly. 36 (Spring/Summer, 1973).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 114",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lurie, Ann Tzeutschler and William S. \"Annual Report for 1972.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 60:6 (June, 1973). pp. 171-205.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 178",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 231",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n250"
},
{
"citation": "Rice, Pierce, \"J. G. Brown, The Bootblack Raphael.\" American Art & Antiques. 2:3 (May/June, 1979).",
"page_number": "Reproduced",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Placidi, Kathleen S. \u201cBeyond Bootblacks: \u2018The Boat Builder\u2019 and the Art of John George Brown.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 10 (December 1990): 366\u2013382.
Published as: The Boat Builder",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 366-368; Reproduced: p. 367, fig. 2",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161306"
},
{
"citation": "Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 24",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Truettner, William H., and Roger B. Stein. Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 154, fig. 172",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Hoppin, Martha J. The World of J.G. Brown. Chesterfield, MA: Chameleon Books, 2010.",
"page_number": "Mentioned pp. 221, 223, and 242, notes 60 and 61; reproduced p. 222.",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1972.905",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.905/1972.905_web.jpg",
"width": "1146",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "678727",
"filename": "1972.905_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1972.905/1972.905_print.jpg",
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"height": "2650",
"filesize": "5258937",
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"full": {
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"width": "4698",
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "The Payne Fund Gallery",
"athena_id": 174043,
"creators": [
{
"id": 6490,
"description": "John George Brown (American, born England, 1831\u20131913)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1831",
"death_year": "1913",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1972-07-31T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1889,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1904",
"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 08:51:20.626000"
}
}