{
"data": {
"id": 161770,
"accession_number": "2001.110",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Portrait of a Woman in Profile, Turned to the Left, 1890. William Sommer (American, 1867\u20131949). Charcoal with stumping and erasure; sheet: 50.8 x 39 cm (20 x 15 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph Erdelac in memory of Ed Henning, 2001.110",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of a Woman in Profile, Turned to the Left",
"creation_date": "1890",
"creation_date_earliest": 1890,
"creation_date_latest": 1890,
"artists_tags": [
"May Show",
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America, Ohio, 19th century"
],
"technique": "charcoal with stumping and erasure",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "light brown wove paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - American 19th Century",
"type": "Drawing",
"measurements": "Sheet: 50.8 x 39 cm (20 x 15 3/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.508,
"height_inch": 20,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.39,
"width_inch": 15,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed, upper right, in charcoal: May 30--1890-- / Munich / William Sommer [the 18 added later in pen and black ink]",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 223002,
"title": "Pioneering Modernism; Post Impressionism in Cleveland, 1908-1913",
"description": "Pioneering Modernism; Post Impressionism in Cleveland, 1908-1913. Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood, OH (organizer) (May 24-July 27, 2013).",
"opening_date": "2013-05-24T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood, OH (5/24/2013 - 7/27/2013): \"Pioneering Modernism; Post Impressionism in Cleveland, 1908-1913\"",
"opening_date": "2013-05-24T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Joseph M. Erdelac [1915-2005], Cleveland, OH, given to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-2001",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland,OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "September 5, 2001-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "William Sommer completed this unusually sensitive portrait drawing during his year of formal art training in 1890 at the Kunstakademie in Munich, Germany. Sommer's use of delicate gradations of charcoal to convey volume and shading are characteristic of the Munich school. Unlike many American artists, Sommer studied drawing rather than painting while in Munich---no doubt because his objective was to become a skilled commercial lithographer. Legend suggests that Sommer hoped to marry the woman he depicted in this drawing but was unable to because of his poverty. In 1907 Sommer moved to Cleveland to work for the Otis Lithograph Company. Soon after his arrival he became an enthusiastic advocate of modern art, as well as the founder of the Kokoon Klub, where Cleveland artists could draw from the model and exchange new ideas. The Cleveland Museum of Art owns many of Sommer's modernist works, but this is the first drawing in the collection to represent his earlier, academic style.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79984948"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2001.110-portrait-of-a-woman"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Adams, Henry, and Lawrence Waldman. Painting in Pure Color: Modern Art in Cleveland Before the Armory Show (1908-1913). Cleveland: Cleveland Artists Foundation, 2013.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 20",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2001.110",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Joseph Erdelac in memory of Ed Henning",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 161770,
"creators": [
{
"id": 9405,
"description": "William Sommer (American, 1867\u20131949)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Born in Detroit to a family of German immigrants, Sommer first studied drawing at the age of 11 with Julius Gari Melchers. Pursuing a career in commercial lithography, Sommer apprenticed at Calvert Lithography in Detroit, 1881\u201388, and subsequently worked at various lithography shops in Boston, New York, and England. In 1890 he went abroad for a year of study at the Kunstakademie in Munich. In 1891 he returned to New York and spent the next 16 years working as a commercial lithographer. In 1907 he moved to Cleveland to work for the Otis Lithograph Company, where he became friendly with William Zorach. Around 1910, and under the influence of Abel Warshawsky, Sommer began to experiment with impressionist colors; subsequently he experimented with a fauvist palette. He exhibited with the Cleveland \u201csecessionists\u201d at the Rorimer-Brooks Studios in early 1911 and cofounded the Kokoon Klub that summer. Around 1914 he moved to Brandywine, a rural valley about 20 miles south of Cleveland, where he converted an abandoned schoolhouse into a studio that became an important meeting place for modern artists, poets, and musicians. In May 1918 Sommer designed stage sets and programs for a production of Everyman by the Cleveland Play House. He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1922\u201350). In the 1930s and 1940s he exhibited on a regular basis in Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. During the Depression he was employed by various New Deal art programs to paint murals for Cleveland Public Hall (1933), Cleveland Public Library (1934), the post office in Geneva, Ohio (1938), and the Akron Board of Education (1941). After the death of his wife in 1945, he was struck by chronic bouts of depression and alcoholism. Sommer died in Brandywine.
\"Transformations in Cleveland Art\" (CMA, 1996), p. 238",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1867",
"death_year": "1949",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2001-09-05T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1890,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1890",
"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": "2026-05-01 06:52:20.415000"
}
}