{
    "data": {
        "id": 167530,
        "accession_number": "2009.277",
        "share_license_status": "CC0",
        "tombstone": "The Sphinx, c. 1853. John Beasley Greene (American, 1832\u20131856). Salted paper print from waxed paper negative; image: 23.2 x 29.6 cm (9 1/8 x 11 5/8 in.); mounted: 39.8 x 56.5 cm (15 11/16 x 22 1/4 in.); matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, 2009.277",
        "current_location": null,
        "title": "The Sphinx",
        "creation_date": "c. 1853",
        "creation_date_earliest": 1848,
        "creation_date_latest": 1858,
        "artists_tags": [
            "male"
        ],
        "culture": [
            "America"
        ],
        "technique": "salted paper print from waxed paper negative",
        "support_materials": [],
        "department": "Photography",
        "collection": "PH - American 19th Century",
        "type": "Photograph",
        "measurements": "Image: 23.2 x 29.6 cm (9 1/8 x 11 5/8 in.); Mounted: 39.8 x 56.5 cm (15 11/16 x 22 1/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)",
        "dimensions": {
            "image": {
                "height": 0.232,
                "height_inch": 9,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
                "width": 0.296,
                "width_inch": 11,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.625
            },
            "mounted": {
                "height": 0.398,
                "height_inch": 15,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
                "width": 0.565,
                "width_inch": 22,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.25
            },
            "matted": {
                "height": 0.508,
                "height_inch": 20,
                "height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
                "width": 0.61,
                "width_inch": 24,
                "width_inch_fraction": 0.0
            }
        },
        "state_of_the_work": null,
        "edition_of_the_work": null,
        "copyright": null,
        "inscriptions": [
            {
                "inscription": "mprinted in lower left of image: \"M: 46\"\r\nImprinted in lower right of image: \"John Beasley Greene\"\r\nWritten in pencil on recto of mount: \"75\"\r\nWritten in pencil on recto of mount: \"M-46\"\r\nWritten in pencil on verso of mount: \"YE1356\"\r\nWritten in pencil on lower right (then erased): \"J\"\r\nImprinted on verso: \"e\" with the remaining inscription removed\r\n",
                "inscription_translation": null,
                "inscription_remark": null,
                "sortorder": null
            }
        ],
        "exhibitions": {
            "current": [
                {
                    "id": 202979,
                    "title": "Pyramids & Sphinxes: Views of Egypt",
                    "description": "<i>Pyramids & Sphinxes: Views of Egypt</i>. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 6-May 24, 2016).",
                    "opening_date": "2016-02-06T00:00:00"
                }
            ],
            "legacy": []
        },
        "provenance": [
            {
                "description": "Estate of Jonathan Stein, a New York photography collector active during the 1980s and 1990s; [Lee Gallery, Winchester, MA]",
                "citations": [],
                "footnotes": null,
                "date": null,
                "sortorder": null
            }
        ],
        "find_spot": null,
        "related_works": [],
        "former_accession_numbers": [],
        "did_you_know": null,
        "early_education_description": null,
        "artlens_description": null,
        "description": "The son of a wealthy banker, Greene was an American but born and raised in Paris. At a young age, he became an avid archaeologist focusing on the Middle East. Before embarking on his first trip to Egypt in 1853 at age 19, he learned photography so he could accurately document excavations, discoveries, and inscriptions, but he also used the relatively new medium to produce elegant landscapes such as the view of Thebes nearby. Greene, who was involved in excavations of the Great Sphinx, died in Cairo in 1856, possibly of tuberculosis.",
        "external_resources": {
            "wikidata": [
                "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79999498"
            ],
            "internet_archive": [
                "https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-2009.277-the-sphinx"
            ]
        },
        "citations": [],
        "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2009.277",
        "images": {
            "annotation": null,
            "web": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.277/2009.277_web.jpg",
                "width": "1143",
                "height": "893",
                "filesize": "683088",
                "filename": "2009.277_web.jpg"
            },
            "print": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.277/2009.277_print.jpg",
                "width": "3400",
                "height": "2657",
                "filesize": "5840968",
                "filename": "2009.277_print.jpg"
            },
            "full": {
                "url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2009.277/2009.277_full.tif",
                "width": "4234",
                "height": "3309",
                "filesize": "42079864",
                "filename": "2009.277_full.tif"
            }
        },
        "alternate_images": [],
        "creditline": "Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund",
        "image_credit": null,
        "sketchfab_id": null,
        "sketchfab_url": null,
        "gallery_donor_text": null,
        "athena_id": 167530,
        "creators": [
            {
                "id": 439,
                "description": "John Beasley Greene (American, 1832\u20131856)",
                "extent": null,
                "qualifier": null,
                "role": "artist",
                "biography": "John Beasley Greene American, b. France, 1832-1856\r\n\r\nJohn Beasley Greene was born in France to American parents; his father, John Bulkley Greene, was a Boston banker working in Le Havre and then Paris. The younger Greene was a founding member of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 fran\u00e7aise de photographie and joined the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 asiatique. He combined an early interest in archaeology and photography, working in Egypt, the Middle East, and North Africa in the brief period from 1853 until his premature death in 1856. During this time, Greene produced a body of work using the waxed paper process, outstanding in its aesthetic and technical merits and unusual in its clearly personal approach. Frequently spare and almost minimalist to a modern eye, his work emphasizes abstract form, tempered by the visual textures of his negatives and paper.\r\n\tIn 1854 Blanquart-\u00c9vrard published some 94 of Greene's prints in Le Nil. Monuments et paysages. Explorations photographiques. Although similar in subject to that of Maxime Du Camp and F\u00e9lix Teynard, Greene's work remains unique\u2014depicting poetic landscapes of the Nile and the distant desert inhabited by ancient monuments. T.W.F.",
                "name_in_original_language": null,
                "birth_year": "1832",
                "death_year": "1856",
                "use_in_caption": true,
                "include_extent": false,
                "weight": 1
            }
        ],
        "legal_status": "accessioned",
        "accession_date": "2009-09-14T00:00:00",
        "sortable_date": 1848,
        "date_added_to_oa": null,
        "date_text": "c. 1853",
        "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": "2026-09-12 11:31:24.211000"
    }
}