{
"data": {
"id": 150079,
"accession_number": "1980.284",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Still Life with Asparagus, c. 1880. Philippe Rousseau (French, 1816\u20131887). Oil on fabric; unframed: 36 x 65 cm (14 3/16 x 25 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Noah L. Butkin, 1980.284",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Still Life with Asparagus",
"creation_date": "c. 1880",
"creation_date_earliest": 1880,
"creation_date_latest": 1890,
"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: 36 x 65 cm (14 3/16 x 25 9/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.36,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.1875,
"width": 0.65,
"width_inch": 25,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower left: Ph. Rousseau. / \u00e0 son ami A Arago\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"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": 304521,
"title": "Year in Review: 1980",
"description": "Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).",
"opening_date": "1981-06-24T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 309664,
"title": "Consuming Passions: The Art of Food and Drink",
"description": "Consuming Passions: The Art of Food and Drink. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 26-October 9, 1983).",
"opening_date": "1983-07-26T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 399006,
"title": "Philippe Rousseau",
"description": "Philippe Rousseau. Van Gogh Museum (organizer) (September 10-November 14, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1993-09-10T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 293304,
"title": "Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820 - 1880",
"description": "Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820 - 1880. Kunsthaus Z\u00fcrich, CH-8024 Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland (organizer) (November 10, 2017-January 28, 2018).",
"opening_date": "2017-11-10T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 539355,
"title": "Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism",
"description": "Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism. The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (October 11, 2024-January 5, 2025) https://chrysler.org/exhibition/farm-to-table-art-food-and-identity-in-the-age-of-impressionism/; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (January 31-May 4, 2025) https://fristartmuseum.org/exhibition/farm-to-table/; The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (June 13-September 21, 2025); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (October 23, 2025-January 19, 2026).",
"opening_date": "2024-10-11T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA. Chardin and the Still-Life Tradition in France (1979), 34, 42, 75 (repr.), 76, 90, no. 26.",
"opening_date": "1979-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA; Brooklyn Museum; Saint Louis Art Museum; Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum. The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900 (1980-82). Text by Gabriel P. Weisberg. 150, no. 117 (repr.).",
"opening_date": "1900-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA; Beck Center for the Cultural Arts, Lakewood, Ohio; Beachwood (Ohio) Museum; Toledo Museum of Art. Consuming Passions: The Art of Food and Drink (1983-84), 9-10, fig. 6, 47.",
"opening_date": "1983-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Southampton, Parrish Art Museum; New York, National Academy of Design. In Support of Liberty: European Paintings at the 1883 Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition (1986), no. 74 (repr.).",
"opening_date": "1986-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum. Nineteenth-Century Masters 1: Philippe Rousseau 1816-1887 (1993), 63, no. 23, fig. 62.",
"opening_date": "1993-01-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Alfred Arago [1815-1892], Paris",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Inscribed \u201c\u00e0 son ami A Arago,\u201d this painting was given by Rousseau to his friend, Alfred Arago. Arago was a student of Delaroche and painted genre, history, and landscape paintings. In 1853, during the most successful period in Rousseau\u2019s career, Arago became Inspecteur des Beaux-Arts, an important post in the fine arts administration. Thus, the painting may have been not only a token of friendship but also a demonstration of Rousseau\u2019s appreciation for Arago\u2019s service.
"
],
"date": "After 1880- ?",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Charles Gu\u00e9rin, Lyon",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Bernard Lorenceau of Galerie Brame-Lorenceau furnished CMA with the name Charles Gu\u00e9rin, whom Lorenceau identified as a professor in Lyon who had died by 1983.
"
],
"date": "?",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(Sale, H\u00f4tel Drouot, Paris, May 9-10, 1977 (no. 100), sold to Galerie Galerie Brame-Lorenceau)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"The names of the consignors to this sale are not disclosed in the catalogue, which identifies the listed works only as coming from the \u201ccollection de Madame X et divers amateurs.\u201d There are no specific indications that Gu\u00e9rin consigned any paintings to this sale, so the source of Rousseau\u2019s painting remains unknown.
"
],
"date": "1977",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "(Galerie Brame-Lorenceau, Paris, sold to Noah L. Butkin and Muriel S. Butkin)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1977",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Noah L. [1918-1980] and Muriel S. Butkin [1915-2008], Cleveland, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Muriel S. Butkin",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1977-1980",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1980-",
"sortorder": 6
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Rousseau was profoundly influenced by the atmospheric still lifes of Jean Sim\u00e9on Chardin (1699-1779), whom the artist and other French painters like Fran\u00e7ois Bonvin (1817-1877) rediscovered in the mid-1800s. A comparison with Chardin's work, also shown in this gallery, indicates that Rousseau similarly depicted foodstuffs on a simple kitchen table, concentrating on rich textures and restrained colors.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60474649"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1980.284-still-life-with-aspa"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Weisberg, Gabriel P. The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing, 1830-1900. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980.",
"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": "Bernard Lorenceau, letter to Linda Jackson, Feb. 8, 1983.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Ho\u0302tel Drouot. Tableaux modernes. May 9-10, 1977.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sylvie Brame, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 29, 2015, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sylvie Brame, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 29, 2015, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Estate of Noah L. Butkin, Bequests to Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Murel S. Butkin. Estates, Gifts, and Funds, Series 1, Box 2:14. Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Phillippe Brame, letter to Linda Jackson, Oct. 4, 1983, in CMA curatorial file.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Estate of Noah L. Butkin, Bequests to Cleveland Museum of Art as a result of disclaimer by Murel S. Butkin. Estates, Gifts, and Funds, Series 1, Box 2:14. Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1980.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163\u2013219.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 178; Mentioned: p. 213, no. 68",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159730"
},
{
"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. 560-561, Vol. II, no. 197",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Koos, Marianne. \"Manet and the Reception of Chardin in Nineteenth-Century French Painting.\" In Praised and Ridiculed: French Painting 1820-1880. Zu\u0308rcher Kunstgesellschaft, ed., 44-55. Munich: Hirmer; Z\u00fcrich: Kunsthaus Z\u00fcrich, [2017].",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 164, cat. 97; Mentioned: P. 50",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Eschelbacher, Andrew J. and Lloyd DeWitt, eds.Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism. New Haven, London, Norfolk, VA: Yale University Press; in association with the Chrysler Museum of Art; American Federation of Arts, 2024.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pl. 48",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.284",
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"creditline": "Bequest of Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
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"creators": [
{
"id": 1591,
"description": "Philippe Rousseau (French, 1816\u20131887)",
"extent": null,
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"role": "artist",
"biography": "The son of an opera singer, Philippe Rousseau is said to have apprenticed with Gros (q.v.) and Bertin (q.v.). Their impact, however, remains minor, and Rousseau appears to have been largely self-taught. He made his debut at the Salon of 1834, and would exhibit there throughout his life. He initially painted landscapes, often depicting scenes from Normandy. It was not until 1844 that he began exhibiting still lifes. One year later he combined what would become his two principal genres, the still life and the animal painting, in a work entitled The City Rat and the Country Rat (1845, location unknown), for which he received his first Salon prize, a third-class medal. Based on a fable by La Fontaine, this sort of anecdotal painting would become representative of his oeuvre. When he painted animals, he typically chose small ones, such as birds, cats, and dogs, and he often integrated them in a still-life setting. For this latter specialty he had proclaimed Jean-Baptiste-Sim\u00e9on Chardin (1699-1779) \"his God.\" Rousseau paid an impressive tribute to his eighteenth-century predecessor in Chardin et ses mod\u00e8les (1867, Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris). In the center of that composition, Rousseau depicted a framed portrait of Chardin surrounded by many of the objects the artist used in his still lifes. Fortune shined on Rousseau and he was adopted by the establishment of the Second Empire-the court of Napoleon III, Princess Mathilde, Baron James de Rothschild, Alexandre Dumas, etc. He thus received a comfortable income at a time when many of his colleagues and friends were living in poverty. His art, moderately realist, gravitated around the styles of such artists as Bonvin (q.v.), but was less \"sophisticated\"; Vollon, but less \"Dutch\"; Fantin-Latour (q.v.), but less \"idealist\"; and Manet (q.v.), but less \"radical.\"",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1816",
"death_year": "1887",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
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],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1980-12-19T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1880,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1880",
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"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
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"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-17 11:22:18.399000"
}
}