{
"data": {
"id": 148958,
"accession_number": "1977.116",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Curious One, 1823. Antoine Pierre Mongin (French, 1761\u20131827). Oil on paper mounted to canvas; unframed: 43.5 x 34.6 cm (17 1/8 x 13 5/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, 1977.116",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Curious One",
"creation_date": "1823",
"creation_date_earliest": 1823,
"creation_date_latest": 1823,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on paper mounted to canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Unframed: 43.5 x 34.6 cm (17 1/8 x 13 5/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.435,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.346,
"width_inch": 13,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower left: P. Mongin/1823. [effaced]\r\nInscribed on wall lower right: institution de jeunes demo[iselles] / dirigee par mme wachsam\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 302666,
"title": "Year in Review: 1977",
"description": "Year in Review: 1977. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1977-January 22, 1978).",
"opening_date": "1977-12-28T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 224290,
"title": "Impressionist Gardens",
"description": "Impressionist Gardens. National Galleries of Scotland (July 31-October 17, 2010); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (November 23, 2010-February 27, 2011).",
"opening_date": "2010-07-31T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Paris. Salon (1824), no. 1236, Le curieux; \u00e9tude d'apr\u00e8s nature.",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Paris, Grand Palais; Detroit Institute of Arts; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution (1974-75), 270 (repr.), no. 132. Text by Robert Rosenblum.",
"opening_date": "1974-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "National Gallery of Scotland (7/31/2010 - 10/17/2010) and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (11/23/2010 - 2/27/2011): \"Impressionist Gardens\"",
"opening_date": "2010-07-31T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Thomas Robinson, Providence.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "His sale, New York, Moore's Art Galleries, 16-18 November 1886 (lot 184), Young Ladies' Institute, 17 x 12\u017e in., as by V. Bertin.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Wendell P. Colton.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Victor D. Spark, New York.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Bought by Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, 20 November 1977. Given to the CMA in 1977.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 5
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Here a young man uses a ladder to climb over a garden wall. The sign at his right translates into \"School for Young Ladies under the Direction of Mrs. Wachsam\"\u2014wachsam being the German word for \"watchful.\" Apparently, overcome by curiosity, the man cannot resist his desire to see the young women concealed behind the wall. Scenes with amorous, sometimes voyeuristic overtones are common in the work of Mongin. The artist also seems fascinated with depicting the exact details of his settings. In 1824, a critic who saw The Curious One wrote that Mongin's paintings are \"portraits of houses coated in plaster, garden trees, almost trivial details, and this pleases me greatly. Full of naivet\u00e9, this is what I need in a landscape, as in a representation of man's actions.\" The critic's comments clearly demonstrate his appreciation for Mongin's work, as well as the artist's belief in the inherent relationship between nature and man.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60473218"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1977.116-the-curious-one"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"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. 205",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n225"
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1977.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 1 (January 1978): 2\u201342.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 19; Mentioned: p. 39, no. 38",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159560"
},
{
"citation": "Talbot, William S. \u201cSome French Landscapes: 1779-1842.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 3 (March 1978): 75\u201391.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 82, fig. 9",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159571"
},
{
"citation": "Lurie, Ann Tzeutschler. \u201cFerdinand Georg Waldm\u00fcller in the Cleveland Museum of Art: Portrait of Crescentia, Countess Zichy (later Countess Sz\u00e9chenyi) with a Parrot and a Camellia in a Mountainous Landscape.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 1 (1994): 3-17.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 16",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161437"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 463-465, Vol. II, no. 160",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.116",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1977.116/1977.116_web.jpg",
"width": "661",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "394062",
"filename": "1977.116_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1977.116/1977.116_print.jpg",
"width": "2515",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "5313332",
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"full": {
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 148958,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1670,
"description": "Antoine Pierre Mongin (French, 1761\u20131827)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Few documents have survived relating to Antoine-Pierre Mongin's life, and one can only attempt its reconstruction by interpreting the works that have survived. He studied at the London Royal Academy of Arts from 1782 to 1785 and exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon between 1791 and 1824. Mongin painted many subjects-rural and urban landscapes, scenes of military life, genre scenes and those inspired by literature. He also narrated subjects from French history ranging from Joan of Arc to Napoleon.1 Almost all his works that have appeared at auction since 1920 are gouaches, and only a half-dozen of his paintings have been recorded.2 Since the 1975 exhibition French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution, publications have brought to light additional information about him. A book, published in 1977 about Godefroy Engelmann, one of the initiators of lithography in France, points out the fundamental role that Mongin played in Engelmann's establishment in Paris in 1816.3 Mongin, who knew Paris's artistic milieu, had propagated lithography even before Engelmann arrived. He captured the interest of writer and theoretician Quatrem\u00e8re de Quincy, but especially of the artists Bertin (q.v.), Girodet (q.v.), and Carle Vernet (1758-1836). Bernard Jacqu\u00e9, curator of the Mus\u00e9e de l'Impression sur \u00c9toffes in Mulhouse, recently researched another facet of Mongin's artistic talent: he designed wallpaper for Jean Zuber & Compagnie in 1802.4 His panoramic landscapes established a new fashion, and designs such as the Gardens of France of 1821 were still being printed in the late 1840s.5\r\n1. Robert Rosenblum, French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution, exh. cat., Paris/Detroit/New York (1975), 553.\r\n2. Ibid., 553.\r\n3. Michel Melot, review of L\u00e9on Lang's book, Godefroy Engelmann imprimeur-lithographe: Les incunables, 1814-1817 (Colmar, France, 1977), in \"Les premi\u00e8res lithographies fran\u00e7aises,\" Nouvelles de l'estampe no. 34-35 (July-October 1977).\r\n4. Bernard Jacqu\u00e9, Le papier peint, d\u00e9cor d'illusion (Barembach, France, 1987).\r\n5. London sale, Christie's (3 July 1990), lot 129, p. 143.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1761",
"death_year": "1827",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1977-10-20T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1823,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1823",
"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": [
"The Curious One (Le Curieux)"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-17 11:22:17.556000"
}
}