{
"data": {
"id": 150841,
"accession_number": "1982.247",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "A Painter, 1855. Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815\u20131891). Oil on mahogany; framed: 39 x 33.5 x 6.5 cm (15 3/8 x 13 3/16 x 2 9/16 in.); unframed: 27 x 21.1 cm (10 5/8 x 8 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, 1982.247",
"current_location": "220 19th Century European",
"title": "A Painter",
"creation_date": "1855",
"creation_date_earliest": 1855,
"creation_date_latest": 1855,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on mahogany",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 39 x 33.5 x 6.5 cm (15 3/8 x 13 3/16 x 2 9/16 in.); Unframed: 27 x 21.1 cm (10 5/8 x 8 5/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.39,
"height_inch": 15,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.375,
"width": 0.335,
"width_inch": 13,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.1875,
"depth": 0.065,
"depth_inch": 2,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.5625
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.27,
"height_inch": 10,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.211,
"width_inch": 8,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.3125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right: EMeissonier. 1855 [EM in monogram]\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 309669,
"title": "The Year in Review for 1983",
"description": "The Year in Review for 1983. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 22-April 8, 1984).",
"opening_date": "1984-02-22T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 441330,
"title": "Ernest Meissonier: R\u00e9trospective",
"description": "Ernest Meissonier: R\u00e9trospective. Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 69001 Lyon, France (organizer) (March 25-June 27, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1993-03-25T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Salon. Palais des Champs-Elys\u00e9es, Paris, France (1857).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "International Exhibition. London, United Kingdom (1871).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "The Artist and the Studio in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (April 5 -August 13, 1978).",
"opening_date": "1978-04-05T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY (1902)",
"opening_date": "1902-01-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Countess Lehon [1808-1880], Paris, France, her sale, April 2-3,1861, lot 10, sold to Vente X . . . de Vienne",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1861",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Vente X . . . de Vienne, 1861, (possibly Georg Plach [1818-1885], Vienna, Austria",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"There are at least two sales at Drouot, 20 April and 1-2 May 1861, though neither catalogue lists a painting by Meissonier.
"
],
"date": "1861-1871",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "G. Simpson, by 1871",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "by 1871",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "John Grant Morris [1811-1897], Allerton Priory, Liverpool, United Kingdom,1883, sold to Samuel P. Avery",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1883-1884",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Samuel P. Avery, New York, NY, by 1884, sold to William H. Vanderbilt)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "by 1884",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "William H. Vanderbuilt [1821-1885], New York, NY, by descent to his son, George W. Vanderbuilt",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "George W. Vanderbilt [1862-1914], New York, NY, by descent to Cornelius Vanderbilt III",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Cornelius Vanderbilt III [1983-1942], New York, NY by descent to his widow, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1919-1945",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, his widow', [1870-1953], New York, NY, consigned to Parke-Bernet for sale",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1945",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "(Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, NY, April 18-19, 1945, sold to Mrs. Derek Spence)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1945",
"sortorder": 10
},
{
"description": "Mrs. Derek Spence [1905-1984], New York, NY, February 1976, consigned to Hammer Gallery",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1945-1976",
"sortorder": 11
},
{
"description": "(Hammer Gallery, New York, NY, July 1976, sold to Shepherd Gallery)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1976",
"sortorder": 12
},
{
"description": "(Shephard Gallery, New York, NY, July 1976, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1976",
"sortorder": 13
},
{
"description": "Mrs. Noah L. Butkin [1915-2008], Shaker Heights, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1976-1982",
"sortorder": 14
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1982-",
"sortorder": 15
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The fashionable attire worn by the subject of this painting is from the previous century. In order to ensure authenticity in his paintings, Meissionier collected accessories from local costume markets to assemble a \u201cwork library.\u201d",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Meissonier often depicted artists and musicians of the 1600s and 1700s engaged in their work. This artist is busy painting a small canvas depicting a nymph and satyr. The artist\u2019s 18th-century costume\u2014nearly 100 years out of date at the time of the painting\u2019s creation\u2014transforms the scene into a charming historical fiction. Meissonier exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon of 1857.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60474936"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1982.247-a-painter"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Auvray, Louis. Exposition des Beaux Arts Salon 1859 par Louis Auvray. Paris: Emile Allard, 1857.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 49",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Camp, M. de. Le Salon de 1857: Peinture, Sculpture. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1857.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 54",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Burty, Philippe. \"Les Oeuvres de M. Meissonier et les Photographies de M. Bingham.\" Gazette des Beaux-arts 20 (1866):78-87.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 86",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Mollett, John W. Meissonier. New York, NY: Scribner and Welford, 1882.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Shinn, Earl. Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection, Described by Edward Strahan [Pseud.]. Boston, MA: G. Barrie, 1883.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 48, vol. 4",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Waters, Clara Erskine Clement, and Laurence Hutton. Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works. A Handbook Containing Two Thousand and Fifty Biographical Sketches. Boston, MA: Ticknor, 1884.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 209, vol. 2",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Complete Works of E. Meissonier: With Biography. New York. NY: J.W. Bouton, 1884.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pl.xxxviii",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Durand-Greville, E. \"La Peinture aux Etats-Unis: Les Galeries Privees.\" Gazette des Beaux-arts 36 (1887): 250-255.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 252",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chaumelin, Marius. Portraits d'Artistes. Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1887.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 43, no. 55",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Stranahan, Clara Cornelia (Harrison). A History of French Painting from Its Earliest to Its Latest Practice: Including an Account of the French Academy of Painting, Its Salons, Schools of Instruction and Regulations. London, United Kingdom: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1889.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Gre\u0301ard, Octave. Meissonier, His Life and His Art. New York, NY: A.C. Armstrong, 1897.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 229",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Avery, Samuel Putnam, Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, H. L. Kleinfield, and Jeanne K. Welcher. The Diaries, 1871-1882, of Samuel P. Avery, Art Dealer. New York, NY: Arno Press, 1979.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 726-728; Reproduced: fig. 75",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \" Annual Report for 1982.\" The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXX, no. 6 (June, 1983): 230-232.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 231",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"Year in Review for 1983.\" The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXI no. 2 (February, 1984): 39-64.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 61, fig. 19;",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Vanderbilt, William H. Collection of W.H. Vanderbilt, 640 Fifth Avenue. New York. 1884.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 25, no. 41",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Patterson, Jerry E. The Vanderbilts. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1989.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 105",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Placidi, Kathleen S. \"Beyond Bootblacks: \"The Boat Builder\" and the Art of John George Brown.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 10 (1990): 366-82.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 377-78",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161306"
},
{
"citation": "Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 152",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Gotlieb, Marc. The Plight of Emulation: Ernest Meissonier and French Salon Painting. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 230, no. 53, fig. 38",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Becker, Edwin, and Elizabeth Prettejohn. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1997.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 94",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "D'Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four; European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 148",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Hungerford, Constance Cain, and Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier. Ernest Meissonier: Master in His Genre. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1999.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 67, fig. 28",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Antigu\u0308edad, Ma. Dolores, and Amaya Alzaga Ruiz. Colecciones, expolio, museos y mercado arti\u0301stico en Espan\u0303a en los siglos XVIII y XIX. Madrid, Spain: Editorial Universitaria Ramo\u0301n Areces, 2011.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 321, fig. 2",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "David Pullins, review of Delicious Decadence. The Rediscovery of French Eighteenth-Century Painting in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Guillaume Faroult, Monica Preti and Christoph Vogtherr. The Burlington Magazine 157, no. 1349 (August 2015): 550.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 550, fig. 27",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1982.247",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
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"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1982.247/1982.247_web.jpg",
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Victoire and Alfred Rankin Jr. Gallery",
"athena_id": 150841,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1661,
"description": "Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815\u20131891)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Ernest Meissonier had little formal or institutional artistic training, having studied only briefly in Cogniet's (q.v.) studio. Meissonier began his career making woodcuts for book illustrations, which must have served his craftsmanship and influenced his tendency toward working in a small format. From the beginning he was inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish genre painters, as attested by his first Salon painting, Dutch Burghers (1834, Wallace Collection, London). His subjects would eventually have a more typical French flavor, representing artists, musicians, or members of the bourgeoisie involved in leisurely activities, and mostly in eighteenth-century settings. Meissonier joined the French army during the Austro-Italian War (1859), after which he frequently painted military scenes, such as Napoleon III at Solferino (1863, Mus\u00e9e National du Ch\u00e2teau de Compi\u00e8gne). Along with the many small depictions of the soldier's life, Meissonier also produced some military paintings on a grand scale. Such works were his attempt to make history paintings and served to counter the criticism that his subjects were frivolous. His military paintings culminated in a partly finished project of four large canvases depicting events in Napoleon I's military career that occupied him from 1864 through 1876. But no matter the size or subject of his paintings, they were always meticulously executed. The Franco-Prussian War also inspired some important works, such as Ruins of the Tuileries (1871, Mus\u00e9e National du Ch\u00e2teau de Compi\u00e8gne). Meissonier's work was extremely popular with the upwardly mobile mercantile elite who appreciated his craftsmanship. Criticism came from artists like Degas (q.v.) and Manet (q.v.), who advocated a more Courbet-like realism, addressing contemporary issues rather than painting idealized reflections of the past. Meissonier led the jury that excluded Courbet (q.v.) from the Salon of 1872 because of his involvement in the Paris Commune in 1871. Yet in 1889 Meissonier was also involved in founding the more progressive artist's organization and exhibitions of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Nationale des Beaux-Arts that seceded from the traditional Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Artistes Fran\u00e7ais. Meissonier received many honors and was the first artist to be promoted to the grand croix, the highest rank of the Legion of Honor (1899).",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1815",
"death_year": "1891",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1982-12-20T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1855,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1855",
"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": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 07:47:07.341000"
}
}