{
"data": {
"id": 164836,
"accession_number": "2006.202",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Bedtime, 1940. Charles L. Sall\u00e9e (American, 1911\u20132006). Oil on canvas; framed: 86.4 x 66 cm (34 x 26 in.); unframed: 79 x 66.2 cm (31 1/8 x 26 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of June Sallee Antoine in honor of our parents, Charles Louis Sallee, Sr. and Cora Nell Collier Sallee, 2006.202. \u00a9 The Estate of Charles L. Sall\u00e9e",
"current_location": "228B Cleveland Artists",
"title": "Bedtime",
"creation_date": "1940",
"creation_date_earliest": 1940,
"creation_date_latest": 1940,
"artists_tags": [
"May Show",
"Cleveland Institute of Art (alumni)",
"male",
"Black American Artists"
],
"culture": [
"America, Ohio, Cleveland"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Cleveland School",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 86.4 x 66 cm (34 x 26 in.); Unframed: 79 x 66.2 cm (31 1/8 x 26 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.864,
"height_inch": 34,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.66,
"width_inch": 26,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.79,
"height_inch": 31,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.662,
"width_inch": 26,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 The Estate of Charles L. Sall\u00e9e",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower left corner: \"Sall\u00e9e\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 230821,
"title": "Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop",
"description": "Hardship to Hope: African American Art from the Karamu Workshop. Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Beachwood, OH (organizer) (September 13-December 31, 2011).",
"opening_date": "2011-09-13T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 443702,
"title": "Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus",
"description": "Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 20-June 26, 2022).",
"opening_date": "2022-02-20T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Exhibit by Karamu Artists,. Associated American Artists, New York, NY, (January 7-22, 1942).",
"opening_date": "1942-01-07T05:00:00Z"
},
{
"description": "Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland, 1920-1970. Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, (March 15-April 20, 1996); Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH (December 22, 1996-January 26, 1997) ; Riffe Gallery, Columbus, OH (April 24-July 12, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-03-15T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "June Sallee Antoine (the artist's sister)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Sall\u00e9e worked as an interior designer for many important clients, including the Cleveland Browns.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "After teaching at Karamu House, Charles Sall\u00e9e went on to become the first African American graduate of the Cleveland School (now Institute) of Art, earning his degree in 1938. Initially focused on painting and printmaking, he subsequently launched a distinguished professional career in interior design. Bedtime is the artist\u2019s most famous image, having earned national renown when it was featured in James A. Porter\u2019s groundbreaking survey Modern Negro Art, published in 1943.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60480354"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Litt, Steven. \"Cleveland Museum of Art Survey's America's Racial History Through Works by Modern, Contemporary Black Artists,\" Plain Dealer, February 27, 2022.",
"page_number": "P. D-2",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Porter, James A. Modern Negro Art. New York, NY: Dryden Press, 1943.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 238",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Rahn, Zita, and Ursula Korneitchouk. Yet Still We Rise: African American Art in Cleveland, 1920-1970. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Artists Foundation, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 34",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cole, Mark \"The Cleveland Gallery.\" Cleveland Art, no. 49 (September 2009):6.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 6",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Litt, Steven. \u201cA Sampling of the New Acquisitions on Display in the East Wing.\u201d Cleveland Plain Dealer June 21, 2009, P. H6.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Bassett, Mark. \"Charles Sallee's Joyous Work.\" Link 11 (Spring, 2012):5.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 5",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cole, Mark, Amy Sparks, and Rebecca Michaels. African American Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013. ..",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 11; Mentioned: p 20.",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2006.202",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of June Sallee Antoine in honor of our parents, Charles Louis Sallee, Sr. and Cora Nell Collier Sallee",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "William P. and Amanda C. Madar Gallery",
"athena_id": 164836,
"creators": [
{
"id": 7975,
"description": "Charles L. Sall\u00e9e (American, 1911\u20132006)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Charles Sall\u00e9e was born in Oberlin, Ohio, but later moved to Sandusky, where his father established a construction contracting company. Sall\u00e9e learned the building trade from his father but decided to pursue a career in art. In 1931 he moved to Cleveland and attended art classes at Karamu House, then known as the Playhouse Settlement. He studied lithography and etching techniques at the Huntington Poly technic Institute, 1932\u201333. He attended the Cleveland School of Art, 1933\u201338, studying with Carl Gaertner, Viktor Schreckengost, Rolf Stoll, and Paul Travis. In 1939 he earned a B.S. in education from Western Reserve College and began teaching art in the Cleveland school system. In 1936 he joined the local chapter of the American Artists\u2019 Congress. Sall\u00e9e worked on several Works Progress Administration projects, 1936 creating prints, then painting murals. His WPA commissions included work for Sunny Acres Hospital, the Outhwaite Homes, and Cleveland Municipal Airport, as well as the Fort Hays Homes in Columbus, Ohio. He exhibited in the May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1935\u201346), and in group exhibitions at Howard University (1937) and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (1940), the Tanner Art Galleries of Chicago (1940), the Associated American Art Galleries of New York (1941), and Atlanta University (1942). The North Canton Library in Canton, Ohio, organized his first solo exhibition in 1940. He was drafted into the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and worked as a cartographer and camouflage designer. After the war, he began a career in interior design. For the next four decades, Sall\u00e9e worked for various interior design firms in Cleveland, designing corporate offices, nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants for such clients as Cleveland Trust, Stouffer Hotel, and the Cleveland Browns.
Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 236",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1911",
"death_year": "2006",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2007-02-26T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1940,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1940",
"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 06:52:41.875000"
}
}