{
"data": {
"id": 167456,
"accession_number": "2009.269",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Rock at Sea, 1920\u20131922. Raymond Jonson (American, 1891\u20131982). Oil on canvas; unframed: 88.9 x 104.2 cm (35 x 41 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 2009.269",
"current_location": "226A American Modern",
"title": "Rock at Sea",
"creation_date": "1920\u20131922",
"creation_date_earliest": 1920,
"creation_date_latest": 1922,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Unframed: 88.9 x 104.2 cm (35 x 41 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.889,
"height_inch": 35,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 1.042,
"width_inch": 41,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed lower right inscribed into wet paint: Raymond Jonson 19 (CJ) 22; (written on the reverse of the backing board): Raymond Jonson, Rock at Sea 1922, Ogunguit, Maine; Oct. 1945 - varnished Taylor's Dammar Dull + Webers ",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 283968,
"title": "Higher States: Lawren Harris and His American Contemporaries",
"description": "Higher States: Lawren Harris and His American Contemporaries. McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Canada (organizer) (February 4-September 4, 2017); Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada (October 7, 2017-January 7, 2018).",
"opening_date": "2017-02-04T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Exhibition of Paintings by Raymond Jonson. Omaha Society of Fine Arts, Public Library Galleries, Omaha (March 24-April 20, 1924).",
"opening_date": "1924-03-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "An Exhibit of Paintings by Raymond Jonson. Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City (May 1-May 31, 1924).",
"opening_date": "1924-05-01T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1922-1978",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Edward and Bettie Moran, Alameda, NM",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1978-2002",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(Bob Copland, Santa Fe, NM)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2002",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Private collector, ME",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2002-by 2008",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, NY)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "by 2008-2009",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2009-",
"sortorder": 6
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Jonson admired this composition, recycling it years later for a mountainous New Mexico landscape painting.",
"description": "The radically stylized tendencies in Rock at Sea were motivated by Jonson\u2019s earlier work as an avant-garde scenic and lighting designer for the esteemed Chicago Little Theatre. Inspired by the jagged coast of Ogunquit, Maine, the painting\u2019s visionary rendering of nature embodies the artist\u2019s long-standing interest in communicating mystical concepts. Later, Jonson would move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and co-found the Transcendental Painting Group, an association of artists dedicated to expressing the imaginative and spiritual realms through abstract art.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60480481"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2009.269-rock-at-sea"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Exhibition of Paintings by Raymond Jonson: March 24 to April 20, 1924. Omaha: Omaha Society of Fine Arts, 1924.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Museum Notes.\" The Evening Bee: Omaha (Omaha, NE), March 28, 1924.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "An Exhibit of Paintings by Raymond Jonson. Kansas City: The Kansas City Art Institute, 1924.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 3",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"Acquisitions Highlights.\" Cleveland Art 49 (November 2009).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 11; Reproduced: p. 11",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Mann, Griffith C. \"Acquisitions 2009.\" Cleveland Art 50 (March/April 2010).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 17-18; Reproduced: p. 17",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2010-02/page/n15/mode/2up"
},
{
"citation": "Litt, Steven. \"Close Up: Painter's Interest in Abstraction Leaves Him Teetering at the Edge,\" The Plain Dealer, February 12, 2012.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: E5; Reproduced: E5",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Nasgaard, Roald, Gwendolyn Owens, and Lawren Harris. Higher States: Lawren Harris and His American Contemporaries. Kleinburg, Ontario: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2017.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 94; Reproduced: p. 14-15",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Hartel, Herbert R. Raymond Jonson and the Spiritual in Modernist and Abstract Painting. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 36-38; Reproduced: p. 37",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Marshall, Jennifer Jane. \"Routes to Modernism: 1913-1943.\" In Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now. Maggie Taft and Robert Cozzolino, editors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.",
"page_number": "Reproduced; p. 64",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Raymond Jonson Papers, 1910-1964. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Microfilm.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: RJ-8, frames 6198-6200, RJ-10, frame 7122",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2009.269",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.269/2009.269_web.jpg",
"width": "1043",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "759323",
"filename": "2009.269_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.269/2009.269_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2911",
"filesize": "8383992",
"filename": "2009.269_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.269/2009.269_full.tif",
"width": "5583",
"height": "4780",
"filesize": "80093716",
"filename": "2009.269_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Dr. Robert B. Benyo Trust Gallery",
"athena_id": 167456,
"creators": [
{
"id": 58611,
"description": "Raymond Jonson (American, 1891\u20131982)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1891",
"death_year": "1982",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2009-09-14T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1920,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1920\u20131922",
"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 08:37:39.825000"
}
}