id: 149396 accession number: 1978.51 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1978.51 updated: 2024-03-26 01:59:42.711000 The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome, 1817. Léon Cogniet (French, 1794–1880). Oil on canvas; framed: 58 x 51 x 7.5 cm (22 13/16 x 20 1/16 x 2 15/16 in.); unframed: 44.5 x 37 cm (17 1/2 x 14 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1978.51 title: The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1817 creation date earliest: 1817 creation date latest: 1817 current location: creditline: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: oil on canvas department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960 type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Léon Cogniet (French, 1794–1880) - artist Léon Cogniet came to painting just as the pictures by Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) challenged the established neo-classical style and academic hierarchies. Straddling these two worlds, Cogniet experimented with different subjects and composition but generally retained a relatively traditional technique. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1812 and studied with Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833), but he was friendly with Delacroix (q.v.), Géricault, and other romantics. Aiming for the most esteemed rank of history painter, Cogniet won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1817 (Helen Freed by Castor and Pollux, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris) and made his Salon debut while studying in Rome (Metabus, King of the Volscians, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres). The French state first bought his paintings at the 1824 Salon (Marius on the Ruins of Carthage, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse), and three years later he was commissioned for a series of the life of St. Stephen for the church of St. Nicolas-des-Champs in Paris (in situ). Around the late 1820s Cogniet became especially enamored of subjects from contemporary British literature, by Sir Walter Scott for example, an interest shared by many French romantic artists. He seems to have been open to different styles and fluctuated between a conventional neoclassicism and more personally inflected romanticism. After 1831 Cogniet became regularly engaged on prestigious public commissions under the regime of Louis-Philippe. He painted Bonaparte's Expedition to Egypt (1833-35), a ceiling in the Louvre palace for the newly created Musée d'Egypte, then several large canvases for the new Musée Historique at Versailles. For these official paintings Cogniet combined his early neoclassical style of clearly organized pictorial space and forms, crisp modeling in light and shade, and smooth surface finish with greater attention to natural-istic details, a looser or more casual composition. The artists adopting this style were called the juste milieu (loosely, "middle of the road"), a term first used in the political arena to identify politicians who espoused neither conservative nor radical ideas but those that, rather, benefited the bourgeoisie, the same class that most admired these paintings. In 1843 Cogniet enjoyed a huge success with Tintoretto Painting His Dead Daughter (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux), an invented scene of the great Venetian painter at the deathbed of his beloved daughter. In spite of its popularity, Cogniet exhibited only portraits at the following Salons, and his production fell off after the mid-1850s. He received the highest titles given to painters: Academician (1840), Legion of Honor (1846), and professor at the École des Beaux-Arts (1851). Teaching became an important aspect of Cogniet's later life. Besides the atelier for men that he established by 1830, he was also responsible for another for women, which his sister Marie-Amélie directed. He served as drawing instructor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1831 to 1876, where Degas (q.v.) was his student. He also taught at the École Polytechnique for sixteen years, which may have contributed to his interest in such new technologies as drawing machines and photography that he later integrated into his painting. Nevertheless, after the administrative and curricular reforms of 1863 were passed to reorganize the Académie and École des Beaux-Arts, Cogniet resigned from his teaching position there in protest. Among his hundreds of pupils were Bonnat (q.v.), Meissonier (q.v.), and Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921). --- measurements: Framed: 58 x 51 x 7.5 cm (22 13/16 x 20 1/16 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 44.5 x 37 cm (17 1/2 x 14 9/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review: 1978 opening date: 1979-02-13T05:00:00 Year in Review: 1978. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 13-March 18, 1979). title: In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Plein-air Painting opening date: 1996-05-26T00:00:00 In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Plein-air Painting. National Gallery of Art (May 26-September 2, 1996); The Brooklyn Museum (October 11, 1996-January 12, 1997); Saint Louis Art Museum (February 21-May 18, 1997). title: Paysages d'Italie. Les peintres du plein air 1780-1830 opening date: 2001-04-03T00:00:00 Paysages d'Italie. Les peintres du plein air 1780-1830. Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 75008 Paris, France (April 3-July 9, 2001). title: "un paese incantato" Italia dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot opening date: 2001-09-01T00:00:00 "un paese incantato" Italia dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot. Museo Civico di Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy (September 1-December 9, 2001). title: Maestá di Roma, da Napoleon all'Unita d'Italia: Da Ingres à Degas. Les artistes français à Rome opening date: 2003-03-05T00:00:00 Maestá di Roma, da Napoleon all'Unita d'Italia: Da Ingres à Degas. Les artistes français à Rome. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, NY (September 9-November 9, 2003). title: Rooms with Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century opening date: 2011-03-28T00:00:00 Rooms with Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 28-July 4, 2011). title: Viva Roma! opening date: 2018-04-24T04:00:00 Viva Roma!. La Boverie Museum, Liège, Belgium (organizer) (April 24-August 26, 2018). title: Stories From Storage opening date: 2021-02-07T05:00:00 Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * {'description': 'London, Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox. From Revolution to Second Republic (1978), no. 24 (repr.).', 'opening_date': '1978-01-01T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Brooklyn Museum; Saint Louis Art Museum. In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting (1996-97), no. 59 (repr.).', 'opening_date': '1996-01-01T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'Paris: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (4/3/01 - 7/9/01); Mantova, Italy: Palazzo Te (9/1/01 - 12/9/01) "Paysages d\'Italie. Les peintres du plein air (1780-1830), exh. cat. no. 6, pp 14-15.', 'opening_date': '2001-04-03T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici (3/5/2003 - 6/29/2003): "Maestá di Roma, da Napoleon all\'Unita d\'Italia: Da Ingres a Degas: Les artistes francais a Rome", exh. cat. no. 50, p. 219.', 'opening_date': '2003-03-05T00:00:00'} * {'description': 'New York, Dahesh Museum of Art (September 3 - November 2, 2003): "French Artists in Rome: Ingres to Degas, 1803 - 1873"', 'opening_date': '2003-09-03T00:00:00'} --- PROVENANCE Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London. Purchased by the CMA in 1978. date: footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Talbot, William S. "Cogniet and Vernet at the Villa Medici." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 5 (1980): 135-49. page number: Reproduced: cover, p. 134; Mentioned: p. 135-49 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25159675 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. 154-157, Vol. I, no. 51 url: Miller, Peter Benson. Studio Systems. New York, NY: American Academy in Rome, 2016. page number: url: Épistolaire 37 (2011) page number: Reproduced: Cover url: Ozvald, Serenella Rolfi. "L'artista allo Scrittoio. Un'immagine Controversa." Ricerche di Storia dell'arte. 125 (2018) 4-16.
 page number: Reproduced: p. 7, fig. 1; p.[97], fig. 1 url: Miller, Peter Benson. Studio Systems. New York; Rome: American Academy in Rome, 2016. p. 49 page number: Reproduced: P.49, fig. 6 url: Groom, Gloria Lynn. "The Empty Room." In Van Gogh's Bedrooms. Gloria Lynn Groom, ed., 28-35. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2016. page number: Reproduced: P. 30, fig. 1; Mention: P. 29, 35 n. 8 url: Pomarède, Vincent. "The Villa Medici, the Villa Malta, the Darchis Foundation . . ." In Viva Roma!: Artists and the Trip to Rome. Vincent Pomarède, et al., 100-113. Ghent: Snoeck Publishers, 2018. page number: Reproduced: p. 105 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.51/1978.51_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.51/1978.51_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1978.51/1978.51_full.tif