{
"data": {
"id": 149665,
"accession_number": "1979.57",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Ruin by the Sea, 1881. Arnold B\u00f6cklin (Swiss, 1827\u20131901). Oil on fabric; framed: 132.1 x 102.9 x 8.3 cm (52 x 40 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.); unframed: 111 x 82 cm (43 11/16 x 32 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1979.57",
"current_location": "219 19th Century European",
"title": "Ruin by the Sea",
"creation_date": "1881",
"creation_date_earliest": 1881,
"creation_date_latest": 1881,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Switzerland"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 132.1 x 102.9 x 8.3 cm (52 x 40 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.); Unframed: 111 x 82 cm (43 11/16 x 32 5/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 1.321,
"height_inch": 52,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 1.029,
"width_inch": 40,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"depth": 0.083,
"depth_inch": 3,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.25
},
"unframed": {
"height": 1.11,
"height_inch": 43,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
"width": 0.82,
"width_inch": 32,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.3125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower left: A B \r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304412,
"title": "Year in Review: 1979",
"description": "Year in Review: 1979. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 13-March 9, 1980).",
"opening_date": "1980-02-13T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 304561,
"title": "Visions of Landscape: East and West",
"description": "Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982).",
"opening_date": "1982-02-17T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 191818,
"title": "Object in Focus: Ruin by the Sea by Arnold B\u00f6cklin",
"description": "Object in Focus: Ruin by the Sea by Arnold B\u00f6cklin. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-March 14, 1999).",
"opening_date": "1999-02-09T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 223530,
"title": "Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences",
"description": "Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences. Montr\u00e9al Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (organizer) (November 16, 2000-March 18, 2001); Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris cedex O4, France (June 6-September 24, 2001).",
"opening_date": "2000-11-16T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Basel, Kunsthalle. Erinnerung an die Ausstellung Schweizerischer K\u00fcnstler (1883), 3, 4, Ruine am Meer (repr.).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Berlin, K\u00f6nigliche Akademie der K\u00fcnste. Ausstellung von Wercken Arnold B\u00f6cklins zur Feier seines 70. Geburtstages (1897-98), no. 74.",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Darmstadt, Mathildenh\u00f6he. Arnold B\u00f6cklin 1827-1901 (1977), no. 65 (repr.); private collection, Z\u00fcrich.",
"opening_date": "1977-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "London, Fischer Fine Art Ltd. 1860-1910 Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture (1979), unpaginated, Ruine am Meer (1881) (repr.).",
"opening_date": "1979-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 9 - March 14, 1999. \"Object in Focus: Ruin by the Sea by Arnold B\u00f6cklin.\"",
"opening_date": "1999-02-09T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Montreal, Quebec: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (11/16/00 - 4/16/01); Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou (6/6/01 - 9/30/01) \"Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences\" repr. p. 315.",
"opening_date": "2000-11-16T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "C. Wetter-R\u00fcsch, St. Gallen, by 1893. Hermann Nabel, Berlin 1897. Kunsthandel Eduard Schulte, Berlin 1902. E. Junghanns, Schramberg. Paul Landenberger Jr., Schramberg. Z\u00fcrich sale, Max G. Bollag, 23 March 1933 (lot 107), Ruine am Meer, reproduced. Private collection, Z\u00fcrich. Fischer Fine Art, London. Purchased by the cma on 17 August 1979.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Who used to live in this crumbling villa on a lonely shore? B\u00f6cklin's eerie painting seems to beg the question of the building's history and the circumstances of its ruin. Haunted by the past, this scene also contains premonitions of future peril.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "The dark, ruined villa in this painting is made especially mysterious by the strange cypress trees tossed by the wind. A nervous green light flickers through the scene. Influenced by German Romantic art of the early 1800s, B\u00f6cklin was preoccupied with dreamlike images suggestive of death.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19930785"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1979.57-ruin-by-the-sea"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \"The Year in Review for 1979.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: cat. no. 19, p. 74; Mentioned: p. 61",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25159667"
},
{
"citation": "Henning, Edward B. \u201c\u2018Metaphysical Interior\u2019: An Early Painting by Giorgio de Chirico.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 4 (April 1983): 138\u2013146.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 138-139, fig. 3",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159811"
},
{
"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. 34-37, Vol. I, no. 12",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Arendsee, M., and M. Steinman-Arendsee. \"Take the CAN disability aesthetics tour, at the Cleveland Museum of art.\" CAN Journal (Winter 2019/20): 76-87.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.84; Reproduced: p. 85",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1979.57",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1979.57/1979.57_web.jpg",
"width": "656",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "369514",
"filename": "1979.57_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1979.57/1979.57_print.jpg",
"width": "2498",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "5722020",
"filename": "1979.57_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1979.57/1979.57_full.tif",
"width": "4282",
"height": "5829",
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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": "Norma and Alfred Lerner Gallery",
"athena_id": 149665,
"creators": [
{
"id": 2775,
"description": "Arnold B\u00f6cklin (Swiss, 1827\u20131901)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "In 1845 Arnold B\u00f6cklin enrolled for two years at the D\u00fcsseldorf academy in the landscape class of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer (1807-1863). B\u00f6cklin traveled to Brussels and Antwerp, where he admired Flemish paintings, and then continued his studies with the landscape painter Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) in Geneva. In Paris during the tumultuous February and June Revolutions of 1848, B\u00f6cklin copied Old Master paintings at the Louvre. Couture's (q.v.) Romans of the Decadence (1847, Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris) made a strong impression on him, as did Corot's (q.v.) atmospheric treat-ment of landscapes. After a short stay in Basel, B\u00f6cklin moved to Rome in 1850 and married Angela Pascucci three years later. In 1857 he returned via Basel to Hannover, where he decorated the dining room in the Wedekind mansion (1858). He hoped this commission would relieve his financial burdens, but Wedekind was far from pleased with the result. B\u00f6cklin's first major success occurred when he exhibited Pan in the Reeds (Bayerische Staatsgem\u00e4ldesammlungen, Munich) in 1859 in Munich. King Ludwig I bought the work, and soon after B\u00f6cklin started teaching in Weimar (1860-62). In Munich he met Baron von Schack, who became one of his most important supporters. From 1862 through 1866 he lived in Rome and while there was in touch with Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880) and Hans von Mar\u00e9es (1837-1887). The trio formed the nucleus of the late-nineteenth-century \"Deutschr\u00f6mer\" (German Romans) who continued a tradition of German artists working in Italy using a classical vocabulary. B\u00f6cklin moved repeatedly, living in Basel (1866-71), Munich (1871-74), Florence (1874-85), and Zurich (1885-92) until he finally settled in Florence in 1892. In Basel he painted the murals for the Museum an der Augustinergasse (1868-70); Jacob Burckhardt's criticism of these works ended their close friendship. At the end of his career he had built a solid reputation and was praised as a distinctively German artist. His seven-tieth birthday was celebrated with exhibitions in Basel and Berlin. With other movements such as impressionism and modernism taking over, however, the esteem for his art soon diminished after his death in 1901. Except for the attention of artists like Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) and other surrealists, recognition of B\u00f6cklin's work did not reappear until the second half of the twentieth century. (For a self-portrait of B\u00f6cklin, see Blanche, fig. 11a.)",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1827",
"death_year": "1901",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1979-08-17T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1881,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1881",
"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": "2026-07-15 12:51:58.217000"
}
}