{
"data": {
"id": 147521,
"accession_number": "1973.31",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Little Milkmaid, c. 1865. Th\u00e9odule Ribot (French, 1823\u20131891). Oil on fabric; unframed: 46.3 x 38.3 cm (18 1/4 x 15 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1973.31",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Little Milkmaid",
"creation_date": "c. 1865",
"creation_date_earliest": 1860,
"creation_date_latest": 1870,
"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": "Unframed: 46.3 x 38.3 cm (18 1/4 x 15 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.463,
"height_inch": 18,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"width": 0.383,
"width_inch": 15,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower left: t. Ribot \r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301805,
"title": "Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century",
"description": "Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973).",
"opening_date": "1973-07-10T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 301878,
"title": "Year in Review: 1973",
"description": "Year in Review: 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 17, 1974).",
"opening_date": "1974-01-30T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304507,
"title": "The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900",
"description": "The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 12, 1980-January 18, 1981).",
"opening_date": "1980-11-12T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 360714,
"title": "Redefining Genre: French and American Painting 1850-1900",
"description": "Redefining Genre: French and American Painting 1850-1900. Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN (September 24-December 17, 1995); Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL (January 5-February 4, 1996); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (February 24-April 21, 1996).",
"opening_date": "1995-09-24T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Exposition Thedule Ribot. Palais National de l'\u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (1892).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Exposition Ribot. Bernheim Jeune & Cie, Paris, France (February 2-8, 1911).",
"opening_date": "1911-02-02T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Sale, H\u00f4tel Drouot, Paris, April 6, 1882, no. 82, probably sold to Bernheim-Jeune)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"\u201cBernheim,\u201d presumably referring to Bernheim-Jeune, is written in as the buyer of the Ribot in an annotated copy of the sale catalogue.
"
],
"date": "1882",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Probably Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1882-",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Consul Eduard Friedrich Weber [1830-1907], Hamburg",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Weber is listed as the owner of a painting, La petite laiti\u00e8re, with a title and size matching those of the CMA picture in an 1892 exhibition of works by Ribot. It seems unusual that the painting was with Weber in 1892, and was subsequently sold in the estate sale of Ribot\u2019s widow in 1896. But because the Cleveland painting appears neither in an 1887 auction of paintings from his collection, nor in a 1907 catalogue of his nineteenth-century paintings, it is possible that Weber sold the work privately and it was eventually added to the estate sale in 1896.
"
],
"date": "By 1892 - by 1896",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "(Ribot (his widow) estate sale, H\u00f4tel Drouot, Paris, France, May 30, 1896, no. 3)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1896",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Probably Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"The Ribot was likely exhibited at Bernheim-Jeune in the 1911 Exposition T. Ribot (no. 13, La petite laiti\u00e8re), as art historian Gabriel Weisberg does not believe that the artist painted any other versions of the subject.
"
],
"date": "1911",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "(Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"It appears that this painting was once again with Bernheim-Jeune: the presence of a Bernheim-Jeune stock number (6292) on the stretcher corresponds to the gallery's purchase of Ribot's \"Jeune fille au chien\" in June 1931 from an unidentified seller. The gallery's archives do not record the date it was sold to the subsequent owner.
"
],
"date": "1931-",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "(Galerie Brame and Lorenceau, Paris, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "By 1972-1973",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1973-",
"sortorder": 8
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Members of Ribot's family are the likely models for many of his figure compositions, in which the subjects engage in humble activities, such as preparing meals or gathering in groups to read to each other.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": null,
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60472527"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1973.31-the-little-milkmaid"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Ho\u0302tel Drouot. Catalogue de tableaux modernes. April 6, 1882.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Ho\u0302tel Drouot. Catalogue de tableaux modernes. April 6, 1882.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sertrat, Raoul. Exposition Th. Ribot: au Palais national de l'E\u0301cole des beaux-arts : ouverte du 3 mai au 31 mai 1892. Paris: Impr. de l'art, E. Me\u0301nard, 1892.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Ho\u0302tel Drouot. Tableaux, e\u0301tudes, aquarelles, dessins par The\u0301odule Ribot. May 30, 1896.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Ribot, The\u0301odule. Exposition Ribot: du jeudi 2 au mercredi 8 fe\u0301vrier 1911 ... : Paris ... chez MM. Bernheim Jeune & cie. Paris: Bernheim Jeune, 1911.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Gabriel P. Weisberg, fax to Roger Diederen, Jan. 25, 1996, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Guy-Patrice Dauberville, letter to Victoria Sears Goldman, Feb. 2, 2016, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "
d'Argencourt, Louise, Roger Diederen, and Alisa Luxenberg. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lefort, Paul. \"Theodule Ribot.\" Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1891): 298-309.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \"The Year in Review for 1973.\" The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXI, no. 2 (February, 1974):31-78.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 50; Mentioned: p. 74, no. 42",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Recent Accessions of American and Canadian Museums.\" The Art Quarterly 37 (Spring 1974): 98-114.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 101; reproduced: P. 112",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\u201cAnnual Report for 1973.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 6 (June 1974): 179\u2013213.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 186",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152530"
},
{
"citation": "Weisberg, Gabriel P. \"Theodule Ribot: Popular Imagery and The Little Milkmaid.\" The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXIII, no. 10 (October, 1976):253-263.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 2545, fig. 1; Mentioned: p. 262, no. 4",
"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. 212",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n232"
},
{
"citation": "Weisberg, Gabriel P. The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing, 1830-1900. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980.",
"page_number": "Referenced: no. 9, p., 47, Reproduced",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sutton, Denys. \u201cCross-Currents in Nineteenth-Century French Painting.\u201d Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 113 (April 1981): 244\u201354.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 248, fig. 11",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 198",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "D'Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four; European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 190",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Faroult, Guillaume and Sophie Eloy. La collection La Caze: chefs-d'\u0153uvre des peintures des XVIIe et XVIIIe sie\u0300cles. Paris, France: Muse\u0301e du Louvre, 2007.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 137, fig. 105",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Weisberg, Gabriel P. \"Theodule Ribot: la Vie dans l'Art.\" In The\u0301odule Ribot, 1823-1891: Une De\u0301licieuse Obscurite\u0301. Emmanuelle Delapierre, Luc Georget, Gabriel Weisberg, eds., 22-35. Paris: LienArt, 2021.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 30, fig. 7",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1973.31",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 147521,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1582,
"description": "Th\u00e9odule Ribot (French, 1823\u20131891)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Th\u00e9odule Ribot first tried to study art at the trade school in Ch\u00e2lons, \u00c9cole des Arts et M\u00e9tiers. When his father died in 1840, Ribot had to help support his family. He worked as a bookkeeper in Rouen, married early, and left for Paris in 1845. There he did various jobs, studied in the atelier of Auguste-Barth\u00e9l\u00e9my Glaize (1807-1893), and, in 1848, went to Algeria to work as a foreman for three years. Back in Paris, he befriended the painter Bonvin (q.v.), who held an exhibition of pictures by his friends in his studio in 1859. These artists, including Fantin-Latour (q.v.), Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), Antoine Vollon (1833-1900), and J. A. M. Whistler (1834-1903), depicted ordinary subjects from their immediate environments without relying on narrative, and they generally used somber colors, limited illumination, and broader brushwork that contrasted with academic standards and methods. Their work elicited a positive response from Courbet (q.v.), considered the father of realism in France. Ribot first exhibited at a Paris Salon in 1861, when his kitchen scenes won generally favorable reviews. To underscore a humble life-style for the artist, his early biographers claim that the dark, inky backgrounds of his pictures were the result of Ribot's painting by lamplight in his free evenings at home. He continued to depict working-class and peasant subjects in a style variously described as Dutch or Spanish by critics, and he participated in the Salons and provincial and international art exhibitions. Always interested in expanding exhibition opportunities for independent painters like himself, he signed a petition in 1863 that decried the Salon jury's numerous rejections that year and contributed to the official decision to hold the Salon des Refus\u00e9s. Ribot sold his pictures through art galleries in Paris, such as those of Louis Martinet, Alfred Cadart, and Bernheim Jeune, and the French state bought his St. Sebastian (Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris) in 1865. In 1878 he was named to the Legion of Honor. The following year a serious illness kept Ribot from painting for two years, and his production fell off after this period. In 1884 his fellow artists, including Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), Boudin (q.v.), Fantin-Latour, Monet (q.v.), Puvis de Chavannes (q.v.), and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), held a banquet in his honor and gave him a medal inscribed \"To Th\u00e9odule Ribot, the independent painter.\" It is ironic, then, that the year after his death a major retrospective exhibition was organized at the official art school, the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1823",
"death_year": "1891",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1973-05-07T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1860,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1865",
"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": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-06-19 11:13:35.536000"
}
}