{
"data": {
"id": 149396,
"accession_number": "1978.51",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome, 1817. L\u00e9on Cogniet (French, 1794\u20131880). 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",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The Artist in His Room at the Villa Medici, Rome",
"creation_date": "1817",
"creation_date_earliest": 1817,
"creation_date_latest": 1817,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"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.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.58,
"height_inch": 22,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.51,
"width_inch": 20,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"depth": 0.075,
"depth_inch": 2,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.9375
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.445,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 0.37,
"width_inch": 14,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304286,
"title": "Year in Review: 1978",
"description": "Year in Review: 1978. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 13-March 18, 1979).",
"opening_date": "1979-02-13T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 208350,
"title": "In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Plein-air Painting",
"description": "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).",
"opening_date": "1996-05-26T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 219163,
"title": "Paysages d'Italie. Les peintres du plein air 1780-1830",
"description": "Paysages d'Italie. Les peintres du plein air 1780-1830. Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 75008 Paris, France (April 3-July 9, 2001).",
"opening_date": "2001-04-03T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 224507,
"title": "\"un paese incantato\" Italia dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot",
"description": "\"un paese incantato\" Italia dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot. Museo Civico di Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy (September 1-December 9, 2001).",
"opening_date": "2001-09-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 227961,
"title": "Maest\u00e1 di Roma, da Napoleon all'Unita d'Italia: Da Ingres \u00e0 Degas. Les artistes fran\u00e7ais \u00e0 Rome",
"description": "Maest\u00e1 di Roma, da Napoleon all'Unita d'Italia: Da Ingres \u00e0 Degas. Les artistes fran\u00e7ais \u00e0 Rome. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, NY (September 9-November 9, 2003).",
"opening_date": "2003-03-05T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 207363,
"title": "Rooms with Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century",
"description": "Rooms with Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 28-July 4, 2011).",
"opening_date": "2011-03-28T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304986,
"title": "Viva Roma!",
"description": "Viva Roma!. La Boverie Museum, Li\u00e8ge, Belgium (organizer) (April 24-August 26, 2018).",
"opening_date": "2018-04-24T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 383281,
"title": "Stories from Storage",
"description": "Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-02-06T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"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): \"Maest\u00e1 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": [
{
"description": "Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London. Purchased by the CMA in 1978.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "In 1817, L\u00e9on Cogniet won the Prix de Rome for history painting, allowing him to live and work in the city for five years. The helmet, shield, and swords seen at left refer to the expectation that Cogniet would produce a history painting each year to send back to Paris for review.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "L\u00e9on Cogniet was one of many artists who traveled from across Europe to Rome during the early 19th century, drawing upon the city\u2019s ancient past and its surrounding landscape for inspiration. In this formally composed scene, the artist stands within his studio, its walls bare and colorless in contrast to the dramatic light cast through his open window.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19963612"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1978.51-the-artist-in-his-ro"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1978.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 1 (January 1979): 3\u201347.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 19; Mentioned: p. 43, no. 31",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159613"
},
{
"citation": "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"
},
{
"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. 154-157, Vol. I, no. 51",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Miller, Peter Benson. Studio Systems. New York, NY: American Academy in Rome, 2016.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "E\u0301pistolaire 37 (2011)",
"page_number": "Reproduced: Cover",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "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": null
},
{
"citation": "Miller, Peter Benson. Studio Systems. New York; Rome: American Academy in Rome, 2016. p. 49",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P.49, fig. 6",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "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": null
},
{
"citation": "Pomare\u0300de, Vincent. \"The Villa Medici, the Villa Malta, the Darchis Foundation . . .\" In Viva Roma!: Artists and the Trip to Rome. Vincent Pomare\u0300de, et al., 100-113. Ghent: Snoeck Publishers, 2018.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 105",
"url": null
}
],
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"creditline": "Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund",
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"creators": [
{
"id": 1585,
"description": "L\u00e9on Cogniet (French, 1794\u20131880)",
"extent": null,
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"role": "artist",
"biography": "L\u00e9on Cogniet came to painting just as the pictures by Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault (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 \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts in 1812 and studied with Baron Pierre-Narcisse Gu\u00e9rin (1774-1833), but he was friendly with Delacroix (q.v.), G\u00e9ricault, 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, \u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris) and made his Salon debut while studying in Rome (Metabus, King of the Volscians, Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts, Chartres). The French state first bought his paintings at the 1824 Salon (Marius on the Ruins of Carthage, Mus\u00e9e 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 Mus\u00e9e d'Egypte, then several large canvases for the new Mus\u00e9e 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 (Mus\u00e9e 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 \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts (1851). \r\nTeaching 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-Am\u00e9lie directed. He served as drawing instructor at the Lyc\u00e9e Louis-le-Grand from 1831 to 1876, where Degas (q.v.) was his student. He also taught at the \u00c9cole 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 Acad\u00e9mie and \u00c9cole 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).",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1794",
"death_year": "1880",
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"weight": 1
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1978-08-10T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1817,
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"date_text": "1817",
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"updated_at": "2026-06-25 11:12:54.719000"
}
}