{
"data": {
"id": 153382,
"accession_number": "1986.68",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "On a Terrace, 1867. Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815\u20131891). Oil on wood panel; framed: 50.5 x 40 x 8 cm (19 7/8 x 15 3/4 x 3 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Clara Louise Gehring Bickford, 1986.68",
"current_location": "220 19th Century European",
"title": "On a Terrace",
"creation_date": "1867",
"creation_date_earliest": 1867,
"creation_date_latest": 1867,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on wood panel",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 50.5 x 40 x 8 cm (19 7/8 x 15 3/4 x 3 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.505,
"height_inch": 19,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.875,
"width": 0.4,
"width_inch": 15,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"depth": 0.08,
"depth_inch": 3,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.125
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.302,
"height_inch": 11,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.875,
"width": 0.2,
"width_inch": 7,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right: \"EMeissonier 1867 [EM in monogram]",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310034,
"title": "Year in Review for 1986",
"description": "Year in Review for 1986. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 4-March 15, 1987).",
"opening_date": "1987-02-04T05:00:00"
},
{
"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": "Exposition Meissonier. Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, (1893).",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "Sur un balcon, collection de M. Leroy, (1867).",
"opening_date": null
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Ernest Secr\u00e9tan [1836-1899], Paris, France",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Georges Petit Gallery, Paris, France, March 15, 1908, sold to to F. F. van der Doucht, Brussels, Belgium, according to Knoedler sale book no. 7, p. 270, 15 March 1908).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(E. Le Roy & Co., by 1893, according to exh. cat., Georges Petit, 1893).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "by 1893",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "(Le Roy consigned it to Knoedler & Co., Paris, France, stock no. 8878a.)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Knoedler & Co., New York, NY, March 15, 1899, sold to Samuel L. Bronson)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1897-1899",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Samuel L. Bronson [1834-1917] New Haven, CT",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1899-1901",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "(Bought back by Knoedler, 8 May 1901 (stock number 9444) and sold 10 March 1908 to Thomas Henry Burchell)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1901-1908",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Thomas Henry Burchell [-1942] New York, NY, sold it back to Knoedler, November 3, 1910 (stock number 12199).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1908-1910",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "(Knoedler Gallery, New York, NY, April 15, 1911, sold to Frederick Gehring)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1910-1911",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "Clara Louise Gehring Bickford [1903-1985] Cleveland, OH, by bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1986",
"sortorder": 10
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1986-",
"sortorder": 11
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Meissionier was known for his masterful draftsmanship and scrupulous attention to detail. He amassed a \"work library\" of accessories from local costume markets to ensure that the subjects in his paintings were authenticity attired.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Trained as a printmaker and book illustrator, Meissonier specialized in small paintings depicting scenes from French history and literature. This painting on wood panel depicts a man dressed like a character from The Three Musketeers (published in 1844) by Alexandre Dumas p\u00e8re. Such paintings, admired for their technical virtuosity and romantic subjects, were immensely popular. Meissonier also painted contemporary military subjects and themes and became an arch-foe of the Realist painter Gustave Courbet.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60475907"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1986.68-on-a-terrace"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "The Complete Works of E. Meissonier: With Biography. New York, NY: J.W. Bouton, 1884.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Meissonier, Jean Louis Ernest. The Complete Works of E. Meissonier: With Biography. New York: J.W. Bouton, 1884.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pl. xlii",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chaumelin, Marius. Portraits d'Artistes. Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1887.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 51, no. 137",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Gre\u0301ard, Octave. Meissonier, His Life and His Art. New York. NY: A.C. Armstrong, 1897.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 194",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"The Year in Review for 1986.\" The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXIV, no. 2 (February, 1987):39-79.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: on cover; Mentioned: p. 62, no. 39",
"url": null
},
{
"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": "Mentioned: p. 188; Reproduced: p. 246, fig. 65",
"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. 149",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Thion, Ste\u0301phane. French armies of the Thirty Years' War. Auzielle, France: LRT, 2008.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: Cover and Title pages",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1986.68",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.68/1986.68_web.jpg",
"width": "583",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "370023",
"filename": "1986.68_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.68/1986.68_print.jpg",
"width": "2219",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "5003203",
"filename": "1986.68_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.68/1986.68_full.tif",
"width": "3915",
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of Clara Louise Gehring Bickford",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Victoire and Alfred Rankin Jr. Gallery",
"athena_id": 153382,
"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": "1986-09-26T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1867,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1867",
"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 07:55:23.688000"
}
}